The Art of Manliness

I’ve been working on various websites for a long time. For the last two years, the bulk of my work has been on a men’s website. One thing that really started to irk me was how the genre tended to go for the lowbrow, easy-target traffic.

Sports fails, bikini babes, redneck stunts, etc. And this practice started finding its way to respectable news sites. Life.com featured a gallery of hot cheerleaders. The Huffington Post had their fair share of sexy world cup fan photos.

So imagine my relief when I found The Art of Manliness.

Brett McKay — who started the site with his wife Kate — was inspired to do so by another failing men’s medium. Magazines. He found the two-dimensional coverage of so-called man issues to be somewhat lacking. Six-pack abs and great sex were really the only things men were concerned with, if you believed the coverlines that is.

With very few exceptions, media forms aimed at men seem to only think of their audience as simple knuckle-dragging, beer belching, babe groping, sports watching, ball scratching, farting little boys. Brett’s site tries to revive the art of presenting solutions to life’s varied problems in a mature, sophisticated way.

Of course, Brett doesn’t completely blame the media. More and more, men just refuse to grow up. Not in a boring, stuffy, buttoned-up sorta way. You can still be a fun guy while taking responsibility for your own life. Look at me. I’m a total goofball, but I take seriously the things that need to be taken seriously.

So I gravitated towards The Art of Manliness because it deals with the question of how to be a man without getting preachy or losing its sense of humor. It’s a well-written site with Brett, Kate and a team of guest writers covering topics like Looking Sharp While Traveling the World, Unleash the Power of the Nap, Stop Living for the Approval of Women, How to Make the Perfect Snowball and more.

Personally, I really like the recent post on 22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin.

So men (and you women who love them), go check out The Art of Manliness today.

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The Art of Manliness