Ask Men No Questions About Their Reading

The Cost of A Better You, According To AskMen.com

AskMen.com is many things: crassly commercial, mildly misogynistic and… apparently Canadian. I apologize to the rest of the world on behalf of my nation, especially since it styles itself as a lifestyle advice resource.

Just what kind of a lifestyle is it advising you to pursue though? To find out, I had a look at its list of “10 Books To Read Before You’re 30.” I expected a fairly standard list of fiction, the kind of dude-driven collection that always has titles like Catcher In The Rye, 1984 and On The Road, with a least one classic (that’s usually Dickens.) Instead, I found one cookbook, several self-help books and one lonely collection of essays and short stories (Book #8: How To Tell A Story, by Mark Twain.)

The inclusion of book #7, The Joy of Cooking, might be a hint that none of the books are meant to be read. A better title would be “10 Books To Buy Before You’re 30,” and if you don’t believe me, all of the entries have handy links to Amazon that should clear up your confusion. They even have their own guide to male style, The Style Bible, on there as book #6. I look forward to the “10 Ask Men Publications To Buy Before The Next Month.”

Once bought though, it’s time to crack those spines so you can better yourself, since you are useless at cooking, badly dressed, worse at sex and bad with your money. I’m not writing that because, as a bitter, cranky feminist, that’s what I think all AskMen readers are like. I’m writing this because that’s what, judging from their copy, they think their audience is like.

If you log on to AskMen.com, your “girlfriend entertains her friends with the hilarity of your awkward sexual fumbling.” Your cooking skills end at “ordering pizza and microwaving ramen noodles.” And you even fail at sleeping. Without the decent financial education that only Book #4, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, can provide, you might have money misconceptions. And these “make everything you do less profitable before you even get out of bed in the morning.” Fool! Losing profits with every REM movement!

It’s kind of like putting women’s magazines up to a mirror and on the other side getting a world where men are the target and their insecurities about their bottom line and masculinity, instead of their looks, are tools by which they’re pried from their money.

What kind of fearsome man would result if some guy ever got around to “reading” all these books and improving himself accordingly? Would he give a woman time to talk between anecdotes about Old Fashioneds (Book #10: Bartending: The Fine Art of Fixing Drinks) and intimations that he’s, like totally down with going down (Book #5: She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Sex)? Or would he just steamroll over her with a seamless transition from hockey talk (Book #9: The Game, Ken Dryden) to the importance of eating mostly plants (Book #3: In Defense of Food.)

But most of all, I wonder if he could reconcile following advice to “Crush Your Enemy Totally” (Book #2: The 48 Laws of Power) with getting the rest of your life philosophy from a Holocaust survivor (Book #1: Man’s Search For Meaning)?

I don’t think anyone can, without abusing that bartending book.