I have been living among the urbanites in the Lower 48 for a little over a decade now. Before that, I was happily ensconced in my Alaskan home but feeling like I was missing something. So, I went traveling Outside. The following is the first of a three part series that will examine male urbanites, female urbanites and the last series that will examine their mating rituals.
What I have learned whilst living amongst the urban inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest is that people rush around, trying to find work and money and then they rush around some more trying to pay for food and shelter with ever dwindling amounts of money. In this mad rush for dwindling resources, I have also observed the ubiquitous straight peoples blithely going about their business without a regard to any other worldview aside from their own. What arrogance! What great inconsideration! What a fantastic opportunity to learn from this interesting and complex culture!
I am beginning with the Male Urbanites as they are somewhat easier to describe than their counterparts, the Female Urbanites. For the sake of brevity, the male urbanite seems to have placed firm boundaries around what is "acceptable male behavior." Whatever falls outside of these firm boundaries represents a threat to the male urbanite's sense of self and sense of his culture and must be dealt with in very violent terms. The male urbanite's very idea of self may be challenged if he does not fit into a very narrow definition of what it means to be a male urbanite. While some males do step outside of these norms, they are not the majority and can be mostly ignored at this time.
Deeks
First, the ubiquitous straight guy is slightly unkempt to downright slovenly groomed, as if on purpose. From the questionably coifed (think "Deeks" on NCIS:LA) to the crew-cut to the shaved-to-the-skin look, it can be said that the hair fashions open to male urbanites of this era have radically opened up compared to even just 60 years ago. However, it is their facial hair that strikes me the most. Many of these male urbanites seem to shave with dull razors or they seem to have quite forgotten how to attain a clean-shaven look entirely. While I do appreciate well-groomed beards, mustaches or mutton-chopped sideburns, I do not understand the scruffy overgrowth that resembles neither a beard nor a well-scraped cheek.
Their choice in clothing is quite interesting, as well. Some wear their trousers significantly below their hips, sagging nearly below their knees. I want to ask them if they know that they are flagging that they are "open for business," but know that they would answer that they were blissfully unaware that they were offering their bodies for that sort of work.
Sagging pants
Then, you have the ones who wear their pants on their hips, but do not know how to hem their cuffs. I am assuming that this is a fashion statement, but one never can tell.
Continuing on in the clothing realm, their shirts range from rumpled t-shirts to rumpled button-downs. They never quite seem to have time for an iron. Unless they are white collar professionals, then their pants and their shirts all have a certain crisp line to them. But, non-professional or recreation styles always seem to be just on the verge of being too big, and seem to have been picked up off the floor just before being put on for a night out on the town.
Now, these cultural specimens go out on the town after a hard day or week at work. They congregate at local watering holes called 'coffee shops,' if the evening is still relatively young. Later in the evening, they will migrate to 'bars, pubs, brewhouses, or clubs' in an attempt to attract a sexual partner. Usually, after "going clubbing," these same contingents of urbanite males (sometimes missing a few cohorts, if those cohorts were fortunate enough to "get lucky," a term we will discuss in Series 3, the Mating Rituals of Straight Urbanites) will make a stop by the local fast food restaurant on their way home.
As these straight male urbanites are making their way around their natural surroundings, they are inundated with images of scantily clad female forms, caricatures of what their society deems masculine (but what appears to be hyper-masculine with unnaturally swollen upper bodies and no regard for lower body proportions) and everything else that represents the straight culture in all manner of stereotype.
From practically naked women draped over cars (are they selling the cars or are they selling the women on the cars?) to billboards saying that all he has to do is give women copious quantities of jewelry and he'll find all the sexual partners he wants (or is it that the ideal sexual partner for him will fight for the jewelry he presents to many potential mates?), as his sexual prowess is tied to jeweled baubles.
Even food products can be sold with scantily clad or sexualized female forms! Everything from hamburgers to tacos has some version of the idealized female form presented for the urban male to view. Yes, that old adage, "sex sells," is in prominent display in cityscapes all around the world. And, judging from the prominence and sheer magnitude of these idealized female forms, sex sells quite well.
So, what are we to draw from the ubiquitous straight male's environment? I believe what we are to learn is that the ubiquitous straight male is being given constant reinforcement for negative behaviors and counterproductive ideas that tend to reinforce the idea that his worldview is the dominate worldview, and being the dominate worldview, it is necessarily the "only" and "right" worldview. These ubiquitous straight males do not think there is anything wrong with their behavior, because if you look around their environment, their world really does revolve around them. The urban straight male and his environment are in a parasitic symbiotic cycle of feeding his ego, realizing his fantasies and sucking his wallet empty. The end result is that he internalizes what he sees around him as being how the world works.