It all started this morning when I went to my local bakery to buy my decadent monthly treat. It ended up being about dodgy dudes.
My decadent indulgence is a big cream stick doughnut, with lashings of homemade strawberry jam and enough cream to drown out any guilt that I should have felt for having dared to challenge my body’s right to have an opinion on the matter.
I buy two – one for me and one for my Mum. We sit in the sunroom, Royal Albert teacups in hand, serviettes at the ready and our toes curled up in unison as we delight in our guilty pleasure. It is a lovely wicked indulgence and I have tried to feel bad about it. I truly have. But I don’t care. For about 10 minutes, once a month, we sit there laughing smiling, oohing and aahing about a cream doughnut that makes us forget all the nasty in the world, all the PC rubbish, all the political treason and the misery that is modern-day life.
We are constantly being told not to eat this, not to drink that, not to think this, say that or deviate from all that we are told is “ good for us. “
It is like a giant “ F you “ to the world: every calorie, every wonderful cholesterol boosting bite is filled with an index finger pointing upwards.
Anyway, back to the bakery… There was a group of schoolkids, aged around 16 or so standing at the counter in front of me. I could only see them from behind. They had long hair, were wearing their school uniforms and I could not make up my mind if they were boys or girls. Their shapes were very female so I assumed that they were what I used to call “ girls. “ But, as they turned to leave, I saw that they were indeed male. Yet, from behind, they had slight frames, narrower shoulders, girlie hips and plump bums.
As I sat with my Mum, relishing the yummy bakery treat, we often talk about things that, these days, we feel unable to discuss with anyone else – for fear of offending. I told her about the girly boys’ figures and she said that, like me, she had observed that young men today look increasingly feminine.
Before anyone reading this thinks that we are a pair of old biddies who haunt bakeries searching for young butts to behold, no. We are just old biddies with questioning minds.
As we spoke, we wondered: is it because young males today don’t get enough sport or do enough physical labour? When my brothers were in their teens, they went hay baling every summer, picked spuds, grubbed gorse and played sport.
Yet, we decided, it wasn’t just that. It is almost as if they are changing shape.
Is it possible that young boys and men are getting so many hormones in the food we all eat that they are losing testosterone and getting too much estrogen?
The term “ soy boys “ is so prevalent that we tend to forget why that terminology was created in the first place. Having looked it up on our friends at Google, apparently, it is a far-right term. Who would have thought that my 87-year-old Mum was an alt far right?! Because she nodded and said “ well, it sounds like they are soy boys. “
When we were kids, my brothers, as I said earlier, holiday worked for a local Chinese farmer and he used to yell at the lads “ Too much sit down, not enough chop chop. “
Maybe that is one part of the problem. But the other could quite simply be that those boys at the bakery need a decent feed of good old fashioned meat and 3 veg.
These young chaps are so lucky that they don’t have my Mum in charge of their daily routines. They would be up at 6 am, sitting down to a brekkie of mince on toast, a glass of hot milk and then they would be off to make their beds. Off to school, home to mow the lawns, chop some firewood, do the homework and dishes… they would be too worn out to skive off to take drugs or get into mischief.
And if they were lucky, they might get to have a doughnut once a month. Testosterone would be pouring through their veins.
We can learn a lesson or two from our parents and grandparents; keep it simple and keep it real. And too much sit down and not enough chop chop is not doing these lads any favours.
Stop worrying about guns and start worrying about boys too scared to use them.
Let’s face it, soy boys don’t join the army.