Slacker Nation

Tripp Takes a Sip - Picture courtesy Paramount Pictures

by blogSpotter
For two weeks in a row, TIME magazine has featured editorialists discussing a similar topic. In "Guys Just Want to have Fun" Barbara Ehrenreich expounds on slacker males. It seems nowadays that men are less likely than women to enroll in college or complete a degree. They are likelier to major in easy subjects that allow for keg parties and playing hoops. Far from seeing it as dysfunction, the business world is welcoming this new “laziness”; businesses now place a higher premium on likeability, personality and team spirit than they do on technical acumen. Yesterday, it seems the world was divided between blue and white collar workers; today it’s divided between affable "players", and personality impaired techno-nerds.

Now comes along Belinda Luscombe in this week's TIME. In "Where Have All the Cary Grants Gone?" she despairs that in recent movies (e.g., The Breakup, Failure to Launch) adult men are portrayed as slackers and bums -- pathetic slobs that need rescuing by a woman. Luscombe speculates that young men raised by working “super moms” now expect nothing less of all their women -- the nurturing should continue all through adulthood. She does conclude that some men actually are smart and competent -- romantic movies should periodically show them that way.

I wrote a blog back in January ‘06, "The Macho Imperative", where I discussed a related phenomenon -- where high school boys think it's unhip to make good grades. In that blog, I focused on boys from lower class homes, where college and career are less the focus than staying out of jail. My blog was based on much of the same statistics quoted by Ehrenreich, although our articles didn't emphasize all the same things. All three pieces, mine included, are talking about an emergent "Slacker Nation" where men loll about hoping to sell a screenplay or play pro sports; meanwhile women do the “dirt work” accounting jobs. Here are some reasons I see for the development:

• Globalization and Degree Deflation -- A Bachelor's Degree now has about as much zing as a high school diploma once had. Then, with the influx of highly educated Chinese and Indian workers, one must work much harder to appear academically distinguished in a given field.

• High divorce rate -- There are probably more single women raising families than ever before. The fleeting father figure isn't just a problem of black subculture, it also now plagues the culture overall.

• Automation and Integration -- Fewer occupations call for unbridled machismo or muscle; most work is easier now than it was even 50 years ago. Also, "macho" jobs such as policeman, firemen and construction worker have been recently filled by more women. Military women are more prominent in Iraq than ever before.

In a pride of lions, the females do all the hunting; the males luxuriate, toss their manes and look beautiful. We may now be headed into Lion World -- a wild kingdom that seems to suit animals OK. I have unease about a Slacker Nation where the men sip coffee at Starbucks while the women do all the work. But maybe unfamiliar does not equate to incorrect -- time will tell. If women become as high-maintenance as their slacker men, we will surely have a problem then.

© 2006 blogSpotter.