Brad Pitt: The Cause of All Our Problems

There's been a lot this hubbub recently over an article (about a book [about a video]) on the deterioration of guys. For those of you unwilling or too hurried to actually read the article/watch the video -- and let's be honest: if you're on the internet, you definitely fall into one of those two categories -- I'll sum it up for you: online porn and video games are ruining dudes. Ta-da! Come on, that's stating the obvious. There's no way all that sitting in a darkened room playing with a joystick of one type or another can be good for you. The lack of vitamin D, the manual strain, the crying afterward...it's not a healthy environment for any involved. Nobody ever said that excessive use of these things would be a good thing, and anyone who suggests otherwise is probably blind from spending too much time at the keyboard. There's not much discussion in that area. Let's focus on something a little more subtle. For instance, let's talk about what CNN saved for the second-to-last paragraph: "guys are totally out of sync in romantic relationships". Yes, hello, CNN and the people who wrote that book (Dr Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan, for those wondering)? I'm a teenage guy and I'd like to refute this. Okay, not refute it, just defend against it. And my defense is Brad Pitt.

Yes, Brad Pitt. You know, the famous one? The one from Troy, Fight Club, Ocean's 11-13, Benjamin Button, etc? Of Brangelina fame? Of "Sexiest Man Alive" notoriety? The one with the string of extremely attractive celebrity girlfriends? Yeah, that Brad Pitt.  Well, maybe it's not fair to lay the blame entirely at Brad's feet. He's not the only reason guys are so done for nowadays. I just picked him because he ranked at the top of my girlfriend's celebrity crush list, not that I'm jealous or anything. But you could go with any of a number of Hollywood stars: Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper, Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum, the guy from The Notebook-- all of these guys have unwittingly doomed the rest of their species. Accidentally, sure, but still doomed nonetheless.
See, in those movie thingers that all them are famous for being in, they play (more or less) super-attractive, charming, suave, witty, doable, insert-good-adjective-here guys that either get the girl, or are male strippers and thus won't get the girl on screen but are male strippers handsomely muscled enough they'd probably get the girl after the movie's over. They have been written as every woman's dream man, since that's how you sell tickets. This is just fine and dandy for them, because they are adored around the globe by swooning womenfolk just dying to tear their clothes off and rub baby oil on their chests. Oh, how my sympathies go out to you poor actors. Not only are you famous, but now you're also the object of half the female population's fantasy. Must be hard to be you -- except wait not so much. It's probably a lot more difficult to be every other guy on earth who isn't one of you "Hollywood Royalty," because you screwed every single one of them over.
Before this cadre of gorgeous actors entered the public eye, life was easier for regular dudes. Local women's only examples of strong, desirable male figures were each other's fathers and maybe a young hot English teacher from out of town. Guys could get girlfriends easily (relatively speaking) because the ladies didn't know any better; while they may have realized that the local manfare wasn't the deepest end of the gene pool, they at least were unaware of the greener grass located elsewhere and so settled for what guys were around. Then Hollywood came onto the scene and decided, hmm, we should really start pushing rom-coms! and thus the male species was doomed. I'm simplifying the issue, of course. Rom-coms were not the only genre that ruined men's chances at getting any; chick flicks and low-lit thrillers also screwed us over. Basically, by using males like Brad or Channing in films and playing to their natural talents of foofy-hair and strong jawlines the movie industry has set a ridiculously high man standard (or "mandard"). It's a sixty-foot high bar to jump over, and the rest of us are midgets in concrete boots. Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr flies by in his robot suit and waves down at us dwarves below the limbo stick known as attractiveness.

Get it? 'Cause he plays Iron Man? Shut up, it was clever.

Through its movies about love, life, and the pursuit of drug paraphernalia Hollywood has shown time and time again that ladies don't need to settle for the mediocre guy nearby because around every corner awaits a tall, strapping, Nordic hair model who needs to be taught how to love. Hold up: isn't that what life's about? Giving up something you really want in exchange for something you're fine with because the really-wanted thing isn't available? As anyone who's ever been last in line for burgers knows, sometimes you have to pick something else and be okay with it. Like chicken fingers. Often there will only be chicken fingers, ladies, and you'll have to accept them as the life-sustaining meat they are. You need to forget everything Hollywood has taught you about men and relationships, because it was written in advance and thus is useless anywhere in the real world. The two types of winning guys in the cinematic world (strong and muscular with a heart/thin and nerdy with inner testicular fortitude) do not exist in life in the quantities you would assume from the number of movies with them, on account of not everyone being a winner in life. Not every man can be Brad Pitt because very few men actually are Brad Pitt. And chances are most ladies will never date the Brad Pitts of the world, because the Brads are off cheating on the Jennifer Anistons of the world with the Angelina Jolies. Yet Hollywood tells the regular chicks to keep looking for him, so they do, and overlook every chicken finger around them. Most men don't avoid romantic relationships, but rather are avoided by women because they don't fit the Hollywood-set mandard of beauty and date-ability. Thanks a lot, movies. We really appreciate your contributions to society.
In conclusion, Dr Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan, your names both sound like Bond villains. I also think that if you're going to talk about guys being "totally out of sync with romantic relationships," at least discuss the reasons why they're so out of sync. You make it sound like all the blame rests solely on male shoulders, which isn't true; sure, we haven't exactly helped ourselves, but we didn't do it all to ourselves. Women and Hollywood are just as, if not more, culpable for our lack of romancing ability. Damn The Notebook. So yes, what I'm saying is that you should have talked about Brangelina more in your book. That would've solved our problems instantly.

Maybe they can just adopt the whole world, and save us all.