A Movie About Male Strippers

This weekend I went to see “Magic Mike” by myself (go ahead, judge me!), and it was an experience chock full of interesting anthropological observations.

First of all, I came away with a whole new slew of data to refute the strangely common belief that women (normal women!) are not driven by simple carnal desire for male bodies.

There were A TON of people there, lined up down the hall and around the corner, including some you wouldn’t necessarily expect, like old people and mother-daughter pairs and at least a dozen Muslim women in conservative dress complete with head-covering.   When you put male strippers in a movie rather than in person to take away the “I might get a strange man’s sweat on me” factor, you find that, in fact, women from all walks of life want to watch barely-clad men gyrating and humping a variety of things.  Lust isn’t just for sluts anymore!

And the men!  The male moviegoers were so rich with angsty hilarity. There were the two guys who went to the concession stand for some nachos, then came back and reported to their wives that they made sure to explain to anyone they interacted with on the way that they ARE NOT GAY (Dude, I’m sure the concession stand girl doesn’t care whether or not you’re gay, but way to be secure about it).

Another guy in line in front of me loudly announced “This is the line for The Avengers, right?  Cause there is no way I’m here to watch a bunch of guys strip, HAR-HAR!”  I wanted to tell this guy two things: #1, nobody in this line would have noticed you enough to question your manliness if you hadn’t started shouting and drawing attention to yourself, and #2, given the fact that you let your girlfriend pick the movie and now she’s about to spend 110 minutes looking at Channing Tatum and Matthew MaConaughey’s naked bodies, you’re very likely to get laid tonight.  I don’t know if the same can be said for the guys who are seeing The Avengers.  Man Card restored!