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Macho! It’s such a bad word for so many different reasons. But when did it become a bad thing to be a macho, and why? Personally it’s always bothered me to hear people say “oh he’s such a macho… what a chauvinistic pig!”
Not all machos are chauvinistic and not all chauvinists are machos. Somewhere along the way the two have become mistakenly intertwined and now everything about us guys that people don’t like, seemingly can be cast under the same category of being either machista, machismo, or macho. Yet, to be quite honest, I believe every guy needs to be a little macho.
It’s part of who we are and it’s okay
Our veins aren’t flowing with estrogen. It’s testosterone we’re running on, and every once in a while we do need to roar. It isn’t machismo. It is genetics.
That’s just the way it is. Now, before you go getting too upset and drafting up that nasty email to me, let’s just consider why a good macho can still be a good mate.
Let’s face it. There are simply certain things you don’t want to bother with, or at least most women that I know, don’t. When the trash needs to be taken out, when the yard needs to be mowed, when that rat needs to be run out of the house, when your car needs an oil change, when that flat needs a fix, isn’t convenient to have a macho at your side who can take care all of these things without you having to get your hands dirty at all?
Anything you can do, I can do better
Certainly there are many mujeres who can do all of these things better than or just as well as any man, but isn’t it just as convenient to know you don’t have to? At our house, there aren’t really any hard and fast rules about this stuff. I doubt there are in many households. Anjelica likes to read instructions. I don’t.
This usually means she can build things with instructions much more efficiently than I can. At least, there are much fewer outbursts of frustration. Still, when it comes to cleaning up the yard or crawling underneath the house, especially when it’s muddy, to check something out, or, my personal favorite, when there is a strange noise outside, she is definitely quite alright with me taking the lead on figuring these things out.
I like to point it out to her in the moment because I know she is not a big fan of the word macho either. The only downside is whenever there’s a task at hand that neither one of us wants to do she can always just say “orale… you’re the man right!”
Owning up to being macho
Hmmm, maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way all of these years?
Maybe… but the truth is I am a macho and I am a little machista and I’m okay with that. Turns out when we need to be put in our place, women don’t seem to have any trouble doing that either.
Read related: About the origin of the word gringo
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