Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I’ve been determined not to write anything on any of Halley’s posts about Alpha Males, other than a link here or there for fun. Today’s posting made hash of that, though.
There’s so much about this posting that really describes ‘everyman’ not just that mythical man beast, Alpha Man. And in many ways, I can enjoy Halley’s posting, when she writes:
At work he spends a good part of his day trying to dodge the bullets of getting fired, trying to climb the ladder to a promotion — only now it’s an escalator that used to go up but looks more like those endless automatic walkways in airports — stretching flat for miles with occasional rises — and when he’s not losing heart over his own circumstances, he’s called on to help other guys and gals deal with the same disturbing business terrain, which he does with good humor, courage and generosity.
What’s not to like, or to empathize with regardless of one’s sex? But then there’s a paragraph such as the following:
At breakfast, he’s doing 2nd grade math with his daughter who’s braiding Barbie’s hair and doesn’t care much about carrying. She does light up when he scribbles the answers next to the problems and lets her copy them in her scrunchy writing in the right place. His coffee isn’t the way he likes it since they’ve run out of half-and-half. Watch what our hero does — does he think, SHE forgot to get half-and-half and adds one more disappointment to his list of wifely misdeeds — NO! He looks over at her and sees she’s up to her ass in alligators as well, packing lunches, writing notes to teachers, dashing for school buses. She’s half dressed and not the sexy girl he married by a long shot. No, she’s not Dr. Holly Goodhead, but he goes over and gives her a hug and says something terrific like, “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” and tells her how great she is. Wow! This guy knows how to do the right thing.
And I have to push back because the image of little girl too busy playing with Barbie to learn math, and Big Daddy helping her to cheat after he refrains from not yelling at his wife because she didn’t buy half-n-half shows us Mr. Hyde to go with Dr. Jeckyll. In this case saying the ‘right thing’ doesn’t erase the wrong image.
My first reaction was a complete rejection of the posting, but then I read Jeneane Sessum’s reason why she liked the post. In Jeneane’s comments, she wrote:
What I liked about it was that this one, unlike the others, had “her” in it–in other words, she was observing, not stating the case for all me/women. To me it seemed like she was waking up, going through the day with, and then encountering her dream alpha male as she walked down the street. I love when people put themselves into their posts. Like you!
I love when people put themselves into their posts Suddenly I could see what drew other people to the post, and to much of Halley’s writing — she does put herself into her posts. She draws people in.
I envy Halley. Not the Alpha Male stuff, which I see more as tongue-in-cheek. She connects with people, as if the weblogging medium is a clay that she can mold and extend from the page. Jeneane’s kindness aside, this is something I don’t do. Even at my most intimate, I am not intimate. Chances are very good that l will never meet other webloggers, or only a few. My connectivity with all of you will be through these pages, through these words, which I wrap around myself like a soft, warm comforter in a cold night.
I love my words, I love to write, but they make a thin comforter. Sometimes, this all becomes just too damn flat — like being a line person in the land of the three-dimensional.