Something is happening to the men in this country.
I’m not sure if we should blame global warming, video games, or the inorganic phosphates in chicken nuggets, but for some reason males have developed an urgent need to go underground. To return to the primeval ooze. To black out their basement windows and to build themselves – drum roll, please - a “man cave.”
Now a “bat cave” I understand. Who wouldn’t want to don leather, drive a cool car and boss around a butler named Alfred? But a man cave? That’s so Cro-Magnon. Instead of enhancing our evolutionary biology learning to fly, live under water or populate Mars, the modern Homo Sapiens wants surround sound, a plasma TV and a recliner with built in beer fridge and waste removal system.
There’s even a website – mancaves.org – with a logo depicting a blonde brute, knuckles grazing the ground, toting a club and wearing a leopard skin muumuu. Experts on the site say that the man cave is a metaphor, representing “the last bastion of masculinity,” where "you can spill a beer or leave a hamburger overnight, who cares?" I hate to break it to you Igor, but if a carpeted hole in the basement reeking of stale beer and animal fat represents the best the male sex can hope for, sex-change clinics in Sweden should be booming.
An intellectual type on one of those talk shows that nobody watches in the middle of the night suggested that “the man space” is a reaction to feminine domestic power. Apparently, women are going crazy with doilies and Febreze and making key life decisions about what to put in the microwave.
Unquestionably, men have to make a stand against these sorts of inroads. If the site of the male Alamo happens to be in the basement, in the corner where the pack rat previously lived – or may still live - so be it. If it’s war those darn females want, let them just try and wallpaper the beer keg.
Sam Martin, author of “ManSpace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory,” believes that “when men have their own manspace...what they put inside of it is really an expression of who they are. Manspace is about establishing an identity for a man.” Really? After 200,000 years of evolution, men have no better symbol of how far they’ve advanced than a hole in the ground, marking their territory with the smell of burgers and urine? What happened to this generation’s Wright brothers? Neil Armstrong? Jacques Cousteau?
It is a sad state of affairs when the best we can aspire to is hiding out in a dungeon under the stairs. No matter how you tart it out, no matter how many mint condition GI Joe dolls or animal heads line the walls, no matter if you have a vintage 8-track or an X-Box 360 dashboard, to hail the man cave as the epitome of what it means to be male is saying, “we give up.” We tried it out in the real world but couldn’t cut it. We just want to be left alone. No girls allowed.
(Although once a week it would be nice it you’d bring down the Febreze and exercise your domestic power in the smelly corners.)
