It is, my friends. Men are turning into softies and there's nobody around to do manly things such as dominating women:
More women are drawn to softy fellows, which is prompting more men to get dolled up at hair salons, adorn themselves in the latest hip fashions and paint up their noggins with the latest from Mary Kay.
Whatever the cause, the trend may not bode well for America.
If your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, will there be any regular fellows around who know how to fix things and don't mind getting their hands dirty?
The best you may be able to hope for is that a modern fellow stops his car to offer consolation and hand you a cell phone from his purse.
There's something terribly sad about a man who tries to justify the whole existence of manly men with references to changing tires and such.
But even sadder is the author's explanation for the demise of real manly men:
A scientific study, highlighted in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, offers a theory as to why more women appear to be drawn to softy men.
It may have to do with the contraceptive pill.
When a woman is fertile, a few days a month, she is attracted to men who are assertive and masculine.
Her DNA directs her to pick a mate whose genetic makeup is rugged and dissimilar to her own, thus increasing her chances of having a healthy child.
The pill blocks fertility -- thus, women are more prone to go for boyish, softy men?
Note how those silly evo-psycho studies get knitted into the popular culture in no time at all?
The study, having to do with female students ranking pictures of men they'd like to date, did not allow those students to explain why they ranked certain faces higher than other faces. And it's hard to know how pictures of faces can be assertive or how anyone knows whether the DNA of the men in those pictures is "rugggeder" than the DNA of some other men.
It was the researchers in that study who provided the interpretations so eagerly applied in the linked piece. I wish I still had the link to that study, because the faces of the "tough guys" and the "softies" don't look very different at all. And all the study really used as evidence were those faces. Nothing about the actual DNA compatibility. Nothing about assertiveness.