a real man

[ritaxis]

whenever I visit romance sites I bump into the non-question: "Is there anything sexier than a former Marine with a gorgeous body?" (Really. every time)

Yes, yes, there is.  A former marine isn't sexy to me at all.  Show me a real man -- a railroad engineer, a nurse, a chef, an archaeologist, a mechanic, a hairdresser, a guitar repairperson, a tailor, a phlebotomist, a glassblower, an irrigator, a dentist, a gandy dancer, a crab fisherman -- not a marine.

And those bodies that can only be achieved by carefully symmetric, exactly counted, perfectly time repetitions of precise movements and measured weights, and evenly tanned all over to some peculiar ideal?  They're boring and unattractive.  I want the ones that develop from real-life activities and experiences, a sinew there, a muscle there, a lump of fat there, a tan line, a freckle, a mole, a scar, something real and imbued with story.  I don't care what a man can bench-press.  I want to read his story.

I knew an ex-marine that I liked very much.  He joined to defend democracy.  When I knew him: he was a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Comments

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I am spending way too much time trying to figure out what could possibly be inherently sexy about a former Marine.

[redbird]

There is something profoundly annoying about the assumption that everyone--or even all women who are attracted to men--find the same things attractive. (If it was true , a lot more people would wear their hair long, to match my tastes.) I know I don't exist in their world, but I don't have to like it.

And, like Pantryslut, I wonder what it is about former Marines. some sort of machismo With reduced risk that he'll be shipped around the world and come back injured If at all?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I still can't quite get my head round the American view of the military because it's so different to the British one. I possibly don't frequent the right web sites, but I've never heard the equivalent to "Is there anything sexier than a former Marine with a gorgeous body?" This would presumably be something like, "...nothing sexier than an ex-member of the SAS," but I've never heard anyone saying that and in fact if they're regarded as anything, it's macho and scary, not sexy.

I was also somewhat boggled the last time I was in Boulder Colorado to see a sign on the hot dog stand where I purchased lunch one day saying that any soldiers should announce themselves and get free food. And then recently I read (can't remember where now) that you don't see the coffins of dead soldiers returning from Afghanistan on US TV. (This could be wrong, because it was on journalist's view in an article, so I don't know how reliable it is.) Whereas over here we regularly had a little item at the end of a news bulletin showing the coffins of the latest British dead being unloaded from the plane and driven through the streets of the little Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett.

Anyway, I really don't think that the military or former military are idolised in that way over here.