A conversation in this threadabout the manliness of chefs got me thinking. What professions are manly when you really think about it, but aren’t the stereotypical “manly” professions? What makes them “manly?”
No firefighters, construction workers, police or anything that would appear in the Village People’s line-up. I want you buggers to think!
I’m putting chefs on this list. Using knives and other tools that have the ability to maim or cripple, ability to deal with heat (and getting burned), quick reflexes, dexterity, ability to handle multiple items at once and turn them all out with perfection… I think it’s pretty manly. Not to mention the sense of humor that thrives in kitchens. Those are some of the manliest senses of humor I’ve ever heard!
You don’t see all that many women making suits, and when you go to the suit shop and need some alterations, it’s rare for a woman to assist - it always seems to be a short balding Greek man.
Then there are the tailors making things like custom motorcycle leathers. All of the tools are amped up from “normal” sewing. There’s a lot of big sharp knives ready and willing to cut off a finger, (took about two years for my fingertip to grow back fully) plus hammers and mallets, and if you’re in a large-scale or high-end shop, there will be big hydraulic power tools with immense capacity to maim or drag you in. Even the sewing machines are waiting to snag an errant finger and sew right through.
There are also a number of top fashion designers who are pretty manly straight males. Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein are among the most well know and wealthiest but there are lots of others too. Males don’t dominate the profession but they do tend to be among the most successful. If you include gay males, the list gets much longer.
Auto mechanics. My older brother is a mechanic/custom car builder and has the scars, callouses and busted-up knuckles to prove it; the cat spends his days up to his elbows in grease, gas and steel. Muy macho.
Nurses.
Triage ER nurses are a manly as they come. The take-charge, who’s-your-daddy, let’s-kick-death’s-ass-types don’t seem like nurses because Hollywood has a hate on for men who nurse. Is America not ready to see a man portrayed as more than one thing? Smart AND strong AND decisive AND tough AND compassionate ?
Cyn, RN, who is too much of a candy ass for the ER
Sysadmin/DBA. I’d go with techy-types in general, but I work with a fair number of female programmers. The sysadmins and DBAs are almost universally male. Not exactly a “macho” job (although lifting servers can take some muscle), though.
In a similar vein…mental institution orderly. At least in the movies, there always seems to be a team of (often black) guys ready to throw someone into a straightjacket.
How is that “non-stereotypically manly?” A lot of the greatest folk heroes of all time have been criminals, from Robin Hood to John Dillinger to Tupac Shakur. And it’s always seen as a manly thing to do anything illegal, since it takes courage “balls” to break the law.
I think the OP is asking for jobs that, at first, you might not associate with “manliness,” but on deeper analysis, have many macho attributes. Cook and chef is an excellent example. Cooking in the home has always been thought of as a woman’s territory, but cooking outside of the home has always been basically a blue-collar occupation requiring a lot of hard physical labor.
That’s EXACTLY what I’m looking for. I’m not looking for professions that are preformed predominantly by men. I’m looking for ones that if you were talking to a guy at a party and he said, “I’m a ___” you’d laugh at him and call him a pansy. Then he’d explain why doing that job makes him more manly than you, Mr. Construction Worker. Or at least as manly.
Nurse was great, as was tailor/designer. It takes a manly to know what a manly man wants to wear.
Another one I thought of today was Elementary School teacher. Most people think of women doing it, that motherly thing, but I think it takes a lot of toughness to wrangle munchkins all day. Patience, of course, but sometimes pure strength and firmness are needed.
I suppose the ideas that toughness, pure strength, and resolve could be womanly attributes is just too ridiculous to entertain.
You and Argent Towers have fun playing “22-Year-Old Kids Who Like to Pretend They Live in Victorian England Talk About Manly Virtues” But you’ll have to count me out: I never was a big fan of that game to begin with. Maybe Ross Douthat can take my place?
I’m not saying women aren’t tough or strong. I’m the one in my household who fixes broken drains, manages the finances, knows what a Dremmel is and how to use it. We’re talking stereotypes in this thread and challenging them.
We’re talking about the stereotypes surrounding the occupations and busting through them. A man can be a great nurse, teacher, chef, etc. and these are possible reasons why those jobs would be “manly.”
I’m all about equal rights. Women are just as good as men. I’m not about unequal rights… women are better than men.
Hey, how about you and I burn our bras and use them to set fire to one of the many, manly and oh-so-dated Boy Scouts troop meetings?
