I used to really like the Travel Channel. For a broke ass bitch, it was a place to go to dream. Even though I couldn’t stand perky Samantha Brown’s over enunciated “l’s” I liked watching her shows about Europe, planning all the cities I’d visit one day.
I don’t know what happened, but today the Travel Channel seems to revolve around ghosts and men eating gluttonous amounts of food. There isn’t a whole lot of travel happening on the Travel Channel anymore. Even Anthony Bourdain has jumped ship for CNN.
So I only flip to the Travel Channel with the most half-hearted hope that they’ll be showing something about a place I’d actually like to go. Even HGTV’s House Hunters’ International, the methadone of travel shows, seems to be on a long term hiatus.
A couple months ago I stumbled onto a show called “Top 21 Manly Man Adventures.”
My hackles went up immediately. I don’t like the word manly. I didn’t like it as Laura Ingalls’ nickname for Almanzo Wilder, and I don’t like it as a semiotically-loaded adjective to describe masculinity. Manly makes me think of too much neck and too little interest in who wrote Jane Eyre. Manly means shooting animals just for funsies. Manly is saving damsels in distress. I don’t like it, not one bit.
So what, you might ask, encompasses a “manly” vacation? I only caught the end of the show, and despite my best efforts at using the googlemachine, I can’t find a comprehensive list of all 21 adventures, but here are the top 5, with a little bit of voiceover commentary about each (anything in parentheses is my personal commentary):
5. Guinness Store House Tour, Dublin – “After exploring seven floors packed with treasures from the past and present (treasures? Really? Is there a gold-plated keg in there?) guests from around the world gather at the Gravity Bar. One skilful, methodical pour later, and beer lovers are treated to the perfect pint, the creamiest Guinness on the planet.” (At around $18 your complimentary beer is way more expensive than just wandering into ANY PUB in all of Dublin.)
4. Baha 1,000 Off Road Race in Baha California, Mexico – “Over the course of roughly one thousand miles, racers attempt to conquer a rocky, unforgiving terrain with nothing more than determination, creativity, and the most tricked out off-road vehicles anywhere.”(Big cars go vroom!!)
3. Weekend in Vegas – “Las Vegas has no shortage of ways to indulge all your vices.” They recommend the Hard Rock Hotel, Play Boy Club (with Playboy Bunny servers and dealers!) and throwing a party in an exclusive luxury suites. “In Las Vegas you can find a play to eat, drink and party, 24 hours a day.” (Because women only like to eat, drink, and party before their coach turns into a pumpkin at midnight.)
2. Bloukrans Bridge, SA – World’s highest bungee jump. (I think this is self-explanatory. Girls don’t like anything that will make their cellulite jiggle.)
1. Kings and Corn Trip, Tordrillo Mountains, Alaska. This is a real quote: “A helicopter provides access to virgin corn snow. You may be the only person to ever ski that run.” (Um, do men notch mountains on their bedpost like women? Does deflowering a ski trail arouse men as much as breaking a hymen? I guess no one wants to ski a mountain that’s been plowed by another man’s pole (amIrightoramIright?)) (Then there’s salmon fishing. I’m not gonna touch the fish metaphor. Even though salmon are pink…)
Directly after this show, another program came on called “Food Paradise: Manliest Restaurants.” These included a couple of barbeque places, a fried chicken place, a steakhouse, and a place where if you eat a 5 pound sandwich in 15 minutes you get your picture on the wall. There’s also a place with buffalo meat, a place with REALLY BIG portions of Italian food, and a place where the put the fries and the coleslaw RIGHT INTO the sandwich.
So let’s do a quick recap of what’s manly:
Beer
Off-road vehicles/competition
Partying with grown women dressed as sexy small mammals
Adrenaline/stupid risks (what, me, editorialize?)
Virginal snow (and fish)
Meat/gluttony
Is any of this helpful? To, you know, anyone?
I like beer. I like meat. More to the point, I have a healthy appetite and don’t mind packing away my weight in cheese or bacon, or both. Doesn’t this “manly” show just reinforce the less-than-healthy idea that women should eat in moderation, and even then, only fruits and vegetables? Kind of like a bunny, no?
Also, I like *some* forms of adrenaline. I know braver women who like more adventurous activities – talking to strangers, going without a bra in public. But I am a bit competitive. I like to play darts. I like to bowl. Half the commentators on the Manly Adventure show were women, describing how awesome these adventures are. So why do these vacations have to be aimed at men? These programs reveal so much of their attitudes in what’s left outside the manly box: women aren’t/shouldn’t/can’t be competitive, or risk-takers, or boozy partiers, or pioneers (of virginal mountains or anything else). These qualities aren’t lady-like.
These ideas are so tired, so cliché, so boring.
Furthermore, these shows are so prescriptive about what it means to be a man. Why do we have to reinforce limiting, unsatisfactory stereotypes about masculinity? These are the things men “have to” like, these are the things men “should” want to do. Isn’t perpetuating a “testosterone-fueled” view of manhood how we wind up with overly aggressive, insensitive douchebags? Further down the list was the Kentucky Bourbon Trail – so at least three manly adventures revolve around drunkenness – because that’s the kind of man we want, right, ladies? Drunk off his tits and making an ass of himself. Or objectifying bunny-women. That’s sooooo attractive.
Why isn’t it manly visiting the Cabinet War Rooms in London, where Winston Churchill ran the freaking second world war? Or how about Giverny, where Monet painted water lillies. A grown-ass man, painting flowers. Or Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst Massachusetts – that bitch barely left her room and still wrote some of the best poetry the world has ever seen. Why isn’t respecting female creativity a “manly” activity?
Anyway, I miss Rick Steves. He wasn’t getting into car chases like Jason Bourne or drinking his martinis shaken, not stirred like James Bond, but he knew his way around the culture and sights of Europe, and that’s a man I’d like to hang out with.
Lady Parts 