I once wrote an essay, humour piece actually, on the ideal TV male. The gist of it was that men suffer at least as badly as women do from comparing themselves to the artificial characters. Think about it: the TV female may have mountainous breasts and hair that puts the empire state building to shame, but these things can at least be bought. The TV male does no visible work, unless it is dramatic or highly rewarding, is perpetually endowed with ample funds, drives a sports car at enormous speed, never has a hair out of place, always says exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, and is perpetually encountering females with mountainous breasts and hair the size of a building. Generally these women need to be rescued from bad people, which the TV male does with great aplomb, employing a number of martial arts and occasionally killing three bad people with every bullet. Then he drives off in his sports car, with every hair in place and the female straddling his stick-shift.
How are we supposed to buy all that? Isn't the male that grows up comparing his puny masculinity to this yardstick at least as emotionally scarred as the female that has to compare herself to the TV archetypes?
I once saw a chart on a site that purported to record the decline in the silica content of the earth's crust against the increase in the size of Pamela's breasts. Funny, though I haven't the foggiest notion of what she looks like, as I watch very little TV. |
