Women of a certain age enjoy talking about being bombarded with less-than-empowering media messages when they were girls.
They’re right, of course. Madison Avenue’s idea of the appropriate aspirations for females tended to focus on bouncy hair and mastery of avocado-colored kitchen appliances.
But males have had their own challenges. And summer is the perfect time to bring this up.
Countless impressionable comic-book readers were confronted with the Charles Atlas bodybuilding ad, “The Insult that Made a Man Out of Mac.”
You know the story: Skinny guy, Mac, gets insulted by a big lunkhead on the beach. The bikini-clad girl Mac had been sitting next to immediately grows cold and distant. Mac orders the Atlas program and bulks up. Then, back on the beach, he decks the bully and hears that same girl coo, “Oh, Mac. You are a real man, after all!”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being strong or capable of defending yourself. Both are good things.
But I sure hope the brighter boys seeing that ad eventually realized that women like Mac’s sudden-turnaround admirer were way more dangerous than any beach bully could ever dream of being.
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