MRAs can now shampoo away the grey in their neckbeards in just five minutes with Just For Men’s Rights Activists special neckbeard formula gel! Now with a new, angrier formula!
I found this faux trading card on Reddit’s AgainstMensRights subreddit, which is devoted to skewering the MensRights subreddit. The OP says his girlfriend got it at an art show, but alas I do not know where that show was or from whom she got it.
Click on the pic for a bigger version, in which you can see that this formula comes in Fedora Brown, and was “voted best for neckbeards by a panel of elder misogynists.”
Ironically, the beards depicted on real Just for Men boxes aren’t much more believable than the one on the parody box.
Also ironically, I am sporting a bit of a neckbeard today. No bulging veins in my forehead, though.
I think part of this is the nature of movies. The audience is almost always going to empathize with the main protagonist, so if he’s being a jerk and pining after a woman it’s really easy for the overall take-home message to veer into Nice Guy territory. It’s a lot easier to make it clear that the protagonist doesn’t really deserve that kind of sympathy in a book.
With 500 Days I think part of the problem is that the writer himself wasn’t quite clear on what he intended. He did want to make it clear that Summer was a real person with her own agenda, but at the same time we’re really obviously supposed to feel sorry for the guy, even when he’s being a jerk. Which again is part of what annoyed some viewers, having a movie basically say “yeah so this guy is an unreasonable, immature brat but don’t you feel bad for him because he’s so sad?”. That’s a lot to ask of a female audience who’re watching the character in question treat his girlfriend badly.
As far as man-patiently-waiting-for-his-female-friend-to-fall-for-him-and-eventually-gets-her-trope goes, I think the Odo-Kira romance in Star Trek Deep Space 9 was pretty okay. I generally don’t like the Star Trek romances since everyone who dates or even get married seem to argue all the time and have tons of conflict, as if that were the normal state of things. (I hate the myth that arguing a lot and having lots of conflicts are normal; that stupid myth played a large part in me staying for a year with a complete idiot when I was nineteen.) But two good things about the Odo-Kira romance are
a) the main reason Kira didn’t return Odo’s feelings for the first few years he went pining for her seems to be that he’s so tight-lipped that she has no idea how he feels, she’s actually convinced he’s completely aromantic. After his feelings for her were revealed through a weird and unexpected chain of events he STILL can’t TALK to her about emotions, so it’s just awkward. When he EVENTUALLY relaxes a bit when it comes to romance they become a couple
and
b) Kira had two boyfriends during the years Odo was unhappily in love with her, and both were portrayed as great guys whom she was really happy with. (Then boyfriend one got ill and died a tragic death, and boyfriend two and her simply broke up after a while in an undramatic fashion.)
I agree with Some Girl by the way – if the movie had ended with Summer walking away from him after their conversation on the bench then the overall meaning would have been much less Nice Guy-friendly.
I saw “my best friend’s wedding” many years ago, which had a pretty unexpected ending. It starts up as a Nice Girl ™ thing, where Julia Roberts’ character realizes she’s actually in love with her male best friend and most stop him from making the mistake of marrying the terrible Cameron Diaz. I kept watching dead sure it would end with her friend realizing his mistake and marrying her instead, but surprisingly it ends with Julia Roberts realizing she was an idiot the whole time.
I haven’t seen DS9, but I so wish there was a lot more
in movies/on television. Undramatic fashion is how, if the world were perfect, almost all break-ups would be and it would be great if our entertainment modeled that for us. (Same thing for having less of the constant arguing and drama in relationships.)
Totally agree Some Gal! Actually, there are more such undramatic break-ups in DS9. Bashir and Leeta dated for a period of time, but then they just broke up, completely friendly. Jake also had some girlfriend early in the show (who’s name I don’t remember now), but their relationship just dwindled out when she moved to another planet to go to university. Which is really the kind of stuff that happens all the time in real life, but not that often on TV.
I thought “My Best Friend’s Wedding” did a good job of making you feel bad for Cameron Diaz, too. It would have been nice if they had made it a little more clear how fucked up a sudden realization of “I love him, I must have him” is when it happened, but overall that was very nicely done.
Funny how they can get it right (or at least more right) when women are acting like assholes than they can when men are, huh?
Yeah, I’m really trying to come up with some male version of “my best friend’s wedding” but can’t…
Another movie with a woman being an asshole/Nice Gal is “The Object if My Affection.” (Lots of reasons that movie is very different from “My Best Friend’s Wedding” not the least of which is the “love interest” is gay.) Thinking of that, though, which I saw when it came out and barely remember, and I remembered “Chasing Amy.”
That is an anti-Nice Guy(TM) movie that doesn’t reward the main character with a girl at the end. So, that’s something. Hardly a big mainstream movie like “My Best Friend’s Wedding” though.
Oh, I just realized that in Star Trek, there are at least two examples I can think of now of socially awkward guys being unhappily in love with a female friend – and NOT ending up with her.
1. The Doctor in Voyager was really good friends with Seven and secretely in love with her. Nothing ever came of it.
2. Barkely in TNG was secretely in love with Deanna. She found out and it was AWKWARD. She continued to be friends with him but eventually married Riker.
It is interesting that screenwriters can apparently pull off writing about a Nice Guy when he’s actually a Nice Girl instead, and not feel the need to provide a new babe/potential stalking victim at the end.
Awkward is an understatement for Barkely, I’d say. I don’t know if I’d call them friends (although iirc Deanna does, but that is like reason #542 that she isn’t a very good counselor), but he does get over it and all of his bitterness (over Deanna and other crew members) is very much portrayed as wrong.
I thought all of Deanna’s romantic stuff was very maturely handled. Riker could be a controlling jackass at times, though.
@CassandraSays
And the only example I can think of that doesn’t do that is semi-autobiographical. Says something that the truer it is, the fewer rewards you get just for being a decent human being.
And I can’t imagine why that would be …
/sarcasm
Falconer: Mazel Tov, and Slainté!
May they soon be sleeping like adults!
help
Well, “adults who don’t have newborn babies in the house,” maybe! 😉
I’ll settle for sleeping right now, actually.
I’m not surprised!
But I mustn’t wish away their lives by wishing for older babies.
They will never again be this small. I should cherish it.
Do you and your partner take turns in terms of who gets up to look after the babies? If so then earplugs for the one not on duty on the nights they’re not on duty!
You try the washing machine trick yet? Supposedly babies will decide it might be sleepy time if you put them in their car seats up atop the washing machine (while it runs)
Car rides have the same effect I hear, but I’d be paranoid about taking newborns in a car for the hell of it — I don’t drive for a reason, I have absolutely no faith in other people’s ability to drive (or my own for that matter). Washing machine seems safe enough though.
If all else fails, and they don’t need changing or food or anything, put in ear plugs. Also, they’ll be sleeping soon enough, this is definitely one that does get better with time.
FTR, I don’t have kids, or much experience with tiny ones, but they really do sleep within a few months. You just have to survive until then! (Good luck!)
I dunno about the washer. Seems like too much potential for a bad fall.
I haven’t tried car rides yet. The glider rocker seems like it works for now.
We do trade off. I’m going back to work full time Monday, so we’ll see how our schedules work out.
Thanks for all your well wishes!
Oh good, it’s not just me. Even if I could afford a car – and one would be mighty useful – I really don’t like the idea of learning or trusting myself or all the lousy drivers on our roads.