Dave Barry was born in 1947 and being the author of more than twenty humor books, he has composed a fantastic Complete Guide to Guys (1995), which is going to be discussed. Barry’s personal observations and assumptions about the male half of the population are provided in the following abstract. This paper’s main purpose is to respond to the article considering whether it is appropriate to talk about men in this way.
Gender roles, masculinity, and relationship expectations are eternal topics to argue due to the flexibility of people’s attitudes. Barry’s text is not an exception and the ironic style of the article obliges to appeal to stereotypes to create a comical situation. For instance, the statement “I’m not saying guys are scum” is refuted in the very next paragraph, “Okay, so maybe I am saying guys are scum”, which proves the idea of building the whole article on the contradistinctive (Bullock et al., 2016, p. 945). Thus, the writer’s goal is to draw readers’ attention to men’s oddities, make fun of them, and show that they are normal and not seen as absurd anymore.
In this piece, women are also portrayed as irrational human beings, who can start rearranging furniture in the middle of the night. Preventing the resentment and flurry of discontent, Barry confesses that he is making “gender-based generalizations” and humorously ruins the religious stereotype of God being a man by defining this concept as “she” (Bullock et al., 2016, p. 943). As to my concern, there is no word for defining an immature adult female, unlike the guy describing such a male person. It displays that little attention has been paid to this aspect so far.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that neither men nor women should take his assumptions seriously. I adore Dave Barry’s humor because it is built on the expectation destruction method to show how ridiculous it is to be offended by such mundane things, which make both men and women so special. Therefore, every writer has their own way of expressing thoughts on various social themes and Dave Barry’s viewpoint has the same right to exist.
Reference
Bullock R., Goggin M. D., & Weinberg F. (2016). The Norton Field Guide to writing with readings (4th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.