Made from ingredients like cocoa butter, peppermint oil, and beeswax, it serves the same function as any other natural lip balm. The key difference is that it’s tactical as shit.
Source: Dude Stick, the manly chapstick for manly men, raises so many questions
This is hilarious. Both the product and the article.
The Modern Internet Manly Man is in a precarious position. On the one hand, his masculinity must be unimpeachable. On the other hand, he wants to have it all.
I’ll be frank: this kind of marketing totally works on me. I love things that are stainless steel or matte black. I like Mag-Lites. I adore my skeletool. It is the most beautiful piece of hardware I’ve ever owned. Sometimes I take it out of my pocket and fiddle with it just because it makes such a satisfying “chunk” when it’s closed.
I also like hand moisturizing lotion. Because my hands dry out really easily. Lately I use an organic handmade lotion from an incredibly talented soapmaker in Pennsylvania. It has a scent derived from leather and tobacco leaves. It is literally the best-smelling hand lotion I have ever used.
Super manly, right? Heh. Let’s be honest here. Would a lumberjack even use moisturizing hand lotion? Doubtful. Or if he did, it would probably be a quick spritz of WD-40 (they say it’s good for arthritis!)
Does the Stereotypical Manly Man (you may insert a mental picture of Nick Offerman here, if that helps) carry a knife everywhere he goes? Of course he does. Does he write pictorial blog posts where his knife is tastefully posed with other “everyday carry” tools? Hell no he doesn’t. He just carries the thing, uses it when he needs to, and doesn’t say a goddamn word about it. Maybe one day he gives it to his kid.
Me, I enjoy a lot of this “manly”-marketed stuff. But I’m under no illusion that buying it makes the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt smile down on me from moose-back in heaven. It just makes me a happy, perhaps slightly effete, consumer.
Happily for me, I don’t feel the need to justify my love of gunmetal gewgaws and yes-I-swear-it’s-manly unguents as something other than what it is. Because I know a secret: manliness is a great big tent. (A canvas, olive-drab tent, naturally. A vintage staff tent, if you can find one.) I don’t need to live up to a stereotype. I’m comfortable with being somewhere in between backwoods loner and giddy gadget-fancier.
And being comfortable in your skin is pretty damn manly. [1]
[1] Also, womanly, person-ly, and just generally awesome for anyone who can manage it.