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Lee Pitts: It’s the Pitts 12-17-12

Lee Pitts
Morrow Bay, Calif.

Men, I don’t know about you but I’m getting sick and tired of reading articles, usually written by women, about so-called men who have become lacto-ovo vegetarians, who are having spa treatments and pedicures, and who aren’t embarrassed about hosting baby showers for their fellow emasculated males friends. I can only associate this epidemic of the feminization of men with one thing: the declining consumption of red meat. Especially beef.

It’s no coincidence that if you chart the decreasing consumption of beef the last 20 years and the sighting of men wearing earrings, fanny packs and purses, (now known as murses) you will find a direct correlation. My theory is there is something in meat that makes men MEN and that we started losing our masculinity about the time tofu and sushi became popular. The next thing we saw was men accompanying their wives and girlfriends to the movies to watch chick flicks and afterwards going for dinner of vegetarian lasagna and herbal tea.

I have seen far too many men who are now playing bunco with their wives instead of watching Monday Night Football, for it to be just a coincidence. The less beef we ate the more men we’ve seen wearing loafers without socks, getting facials, laying around on Sunday mornings in their sweatpants and fuzzy robes, reading novels and snuggling. It seems a guy can’t even go on TV these days without breaking down in tears, sobbing and confessing to Ellen that he once spanked his Shih tzu.



Shameful, I say, just shameful.

I needed a haircut the other day and went to one of those unisex hair cutting joints and they asked me if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed and plucked?

Supposed men are now wearing pony tails, drinking wine instead of beer and going on retreats to get in touch with themselves. I’ve even heard of men asking directions, reading instructions, and worrying about what position they left the toilet seat. What’s next, males taking bubble baths and shaving their legs amidst scented candles?



What’s that you say, some men already get regular leg waxings! I suppose the next thing you’ll say is that some men are getting their backs shaved!

Speaking of which, I needed a haircut the other day and went to one of those unisex hair cutting joints and they asked me if I wanted my eyebrows trimmed and plucked? Are you kidding me? Wait just a darn minute! It’s bad enough I can no longer find a real barber shop where I can read Sports Illustrated and Field and Stream in peace and talk about manly stuff. But, sadly, this too has changed as we ate less beef. I picked up a supposed man’s magazine at this clip joint and one article was about “male menopause” and another was, get this, Fall Hairstyles For Men! I kid you not.

Since when do real men have hairstyles?

It’s due to their lack of red meat that men are no longer behaving like men. They are keeping journals, watching soccer instead of baseball, and ordering fruit salads instead of biscuits and gravy and chicken fried steak. There’s been a role reversal. Men are driving BMW’s and women are driving monster trucks. It’s the men who are now getting sudden headaches. Just the other day I saw a guy in the store checking the fat grams on a Hostess Twinkie! If it were up to me I wouldn’t invite him to the next poker night or community craps game. I suppose he’d rather spend the evening anyway with a bunch of women debating the merits of arugula versus radicchio.

In the manly NFL you hardly ever hear of any veg-heads, unless they are a punter or place kicker, and in areas of the country where men still eat their share of beef, like west Texas and South Dakota, you don’t see men sobbing and taking deer heads off the wall. The evidence is clear and I think we should take some of the beef checkoff money and spend it on research to find out what it is in red meat that makes men behave as men. And then we should slip some of it into their Sunday morning quiche. ❖

Lee Pitts

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