Self-Aggrandizement in the form of a "Klassic Kolumn"

During a bout of vanity last night, I searched my own name in Google. It took four or five pages of results, but I ran across a column I wrote over five years ago for the TCU paper. It was one of my favorites, so I am posting it here in its entirety, mostly because I never tire of making myself laugh or patting myself on the back for making myself laugh. So, without further introduction....

Some things are best left to men
Mustaches, tobacco are less than feminine

I'm not a misogynist, nor am I a belligerent male chauvinist. I support women, and I agree that their fight against glass ceilings, societal expectations of demure behavior and a host of male-propagated double standards is far from over.

However, I do have a few shreds of conservative sensibilities left which, unfortunately, lend to my reactionary preference for a few of these hypocritical fetters. I'm sorry ladies, or whatever it is I'm supposed to call you, but there are a handful of things men do that should stay that way.
Recently, I witnessed a girl chewing tobacco. Before I delve further into my tirade, I would like to point out that anyone loping around with that telltale lump protruding from his or her lower lip grosses me out. If I had my druthers, no one would chew tobacco. However, seeing women dip is especially revolting.

There are several reasons for this, the most salient being that I am attracted solely to the opposite sex. When women mash a chaw into their mouths, their attractiveness diminishes exponentially. One might infer from this that chewing tobacco is a surefire way for women to express masculinity without those annoying trappings of feminism. I can deal with women smoking, and I've humored women who think they like cigars, but as far as I'm concerned, Skoal and estrogen don't mix.

Some men, like Tom Selleck, Snidely Whiplash and my dad, like to wear mustaches. To my dismay, some women prefer to wear mustaches as well.

I agree that beauty is more than skin deep. I know that facial fuzz has no bearing on one's ability to function in society (unless one works in the Swedish porn industry), and I also acknowledge that men have no business telling women how to look any more than women have telling men how to drive. But women, if you are sporting a caterpillar under your nose, do yourself a favor, and WAX IT! If you want to have hairy legs, or, God help me, hairy armpits, fine, but the mustache is decidedly not key. I can see how hairy legs or pits might make some sort of political statement, but blatant fur on the upper lip won't score any points with the phallacracy.

Of course, women don't want to score points with the phallacracy, nor should they have to. Rather, they should focus on beating us into submission. Or so it seems, and I am sick of this. Contrary to what one might glean from Maxim, men are not all obnoxious louts driven by their genitals. Certainly, this is hard to swallow if you're female and have ever been to a bar, but it's true.

We are not out to screw women over, just as women are not out to diabolically ruin men and then brag about it in Cosmo. I am a nice guy, and I expect to be treated according to my own merits, not on the basis of some ego-starved cretin whose self-worth is tied up in how many skirts he can pull.

It's a bit of a stretch, but I believe that the gender wars would conclude much sooner if both armies would let bygones be bygones, stop struggling to have the last word and treat each other as equals.

In my book, which has yet to be read by anyone but me, mutual respect goes a long way toward solving any conflict. Holding onto past injustices, however, extends the conflict indefinitely.
I guess it's a good thing that I am graduating in five weeks because I have now made myself a pariah. Next week, I will return to the role as sensitive, opinionless opinion columnist. So while you wait for next Thursday, please look for the intended hyperbole scattered throughout this week's read, and re-read that part about my being a nice guy. Meanwhile, I have to go wax my lip.

Steve Steward is a senior political science major from Lodi, Calif., and knows nothing about women. Tell him what a creep he is at (haoledubstyle@hotmail.com).

Hahahahahahaha! See how cute and equality-minded I used to be? Sometimes I think I feel obligated to put a little moral at the end of everything I write, like Jerry Springer does with his final thought at the end of the show, which always boils down to a plea to base human beings to exhibit a little bit of the ol' golden rule. It's an effort to absolve himself of the previous forty-five minutes spent coaxing out the lowest common denominator of human behavior. I put a moral at the end of every story because tying up loose ends is a compositional habit as ingrained as taking a wizz after waking up in the morning, but not this time. Today, I am simply amoral, in a very literal sense.

--The Robo-Pirate

p.s.
There is a funny story about how this column came to be and how it almost didn't make it to print. I'll get around to that later.