#77 – “Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man” by Tim Allen

All Real Men are Just Like Me

 by Beau Dashington

Editor’s Note (Admiral Fartmore): My mother loves Tim Allen and keeps a copy of this book in her dining room.

 

We’re nothing if not topical here at the PSBC. We’re always covering current events like the OJ Simpson Trial, the Mighty Ducks book-of-the-movie, and even the hit video game Mortal Kombat. And so in that vein, I am reading a book by the guy from that tv show in the 1990s where he likes tools and complains about his wife all the time.

Tim Allen is famous for playing characters who are supposed to be identifiable to all American men; they are uneducated, they like sports, and they have a career with solid blue-collar credentials even though they make significantly more than the average blue-collar man. Its a standard formula in American comedy well worn by actors (and I use that term loosely) like Kevin James and Adam Sandler. For example, Allen’s famous character in Home Improvement – Tim the “Tool Man” Taylor – is a handyman who makes big bucks by hosting his own TV. In his more recent show Last Man Standing, he is an owner of a sports stores. This allows him to retain his blue collar credentials, while having access to a lifestyle beyond that of the average viewer.

 

Credit where credit is due; that’s a hell of a tie.

 

Allen’s book Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man was first published in 1994. It is a requiem for manhood and masculinity – at least the kind of manhood and masculinity that Tim Allen identifies with. It is structured as a series of unrelated commentaries, roughly grouped together in chapters. One may be on Allen’s attraction to porn, the next on his favourite type of vacuum. Allen seeks to explain men, and also women (mostly through their relationship to men). And this is a lofty goal. As Allen notes, “there are many dynamics in the world.”

Allen argues that men are born for conflict, that boys are born to fight with each other. “Conflict is something men must do, but you’re bigger in the end.” He describes how as a youth he would bully other children, body-shaming then in the shower. He doesn’t say this with regret; he says it proudly, joking that some kids really deserve to be bullied. Some elements of Allen’s life are tragic, however. When Allen was a child, he lost his father to a drunk driver, a genuinely tragic event. He grew up learning about what men were through serials like Combat! I’m not going to make any pop pscyhological diagnoses, however you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to observe that there could be a connection between this tragic loss and a life-long quest asking what it means to be a man. In later years, Allen was arrested for narcotics possession, leading to one of the all-time great mugshots.

 

Credit where credit is due; that’s a hell of a mustache.

 

Perhaps Allen struggled with what it meant to be an adult, having lacked a father-figure, perhaps not. Who am I to say? Whether or not it was his personal quest, it certainly is the aim of the book; to describe what Allen feels is a “real man.” Anyone with an even passing knowledge of Allen’s comedy will already know what this image is. To be a real man, you must like tractors and beer, and engines and guns, and football and being dirty. You must be English-speaking and uneducated, with an aversion to art, literature, and foreign cultures. But doesn’t stop at just explaining men.

The most painful parts of the book are when Allen turns his attention to women. He helps the reader understand with observations including how “her period is the perfect example of how completely different men and women are.” Technically he’s right, I guess. And he pulls no punches laughing at both the ladies and the fellers, observing how real men like engines and watching TV in silence, while “women take forever in the bathroom.” He opens his section on feminism by first saying that he doesn’t know what it is, and then proceeding with a “List of things men never want to hear”, including “No!” and “Is it in?” In a uniquely self-unaware fashion, he turns to a discussion on difficulties of picking up women, concluding that when women turn you down you can “dive in for a for a kiss anyway.”  Overall, the book is the same topic as his standup, and as Home Improvement, and his most recent show Last Man Standing; a man overcoming women’s attempts to erode manhood. Just watch this particularly painful and spectacularly-badly-written scene from his recent show, in which the “real man” successfully overcomes what he sees as the attempts of modern society to feminize him;

 

 

But it gets worse. He claims in the book to have invented “masculinism” as a response to feminism. “Feminism celebrates female traits. Masculinism celebrates male traits. They collide to create the volatility of life.” Why must they collide, I hear you asking? Allen gives us the answer, its because men and women are fundamentally different, and because they are engaged in constant struggle against one another. As he puts it;  “Masculinism and feminism embody those differences. We love them, we hate them.”

So, in order to be a “real man” we must hate women? Or just their characteristics? Tim Allen’s identity is from a different era, where real men all come from the same mold; where no-means-maybe; and where its okay to publicly shame and attack people who are different from you.  But in fairness to Tim, he’s a comedian, not a sociologist. So I’ll close by given him a few compliments. Firstly, he talks about the terrible pop spiritualism book The Celestine Prophecy, which he describes as “bullshit”. Having read that book for the PSBC, I couldn’t agree with him more. Secondly, he ends the book with a non-sequitur which was genuinely funny; how if he had one wish, he would wish for a big set of tits, so that he could surprise his friends, and hear them say, “God damn, Tim. You’ve got a great set of tits.”

Having seen the weight Tim Allen has put on lately, it seems he has finally gotten his wish.

 

Beau Dashington
March 24, 2018