Why Is Life So Hard for Today's Straight Guy? | QDaily Research Lab

Don't bother with your looks and you're a tasteless "straight man cancer" case; take a little care and your sexuality becomes a mystery. The world is wide, yet it has no room for an ordinary straight guy who is neither.

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These days, if you insist on social media that:

Women should put away their girlish dreams and settle down, and must never do a doctorate, because past 26 nobody will marry them; whether a woman sits at the table to eat is a small matter, but fighting over it upsets the whole family and harms the building of socialist spiritual civilization; girls should be pure, with long hair and white dresses, must never tell dirty jokes, and may listen to Fei Yuqing's songs but had better not listen to anyone else's——

you will at once come under siege from every corner of the internet.

When a man has full-blown straight man cancer, everyone has a social duty to scold him awake.

But even if you don't have straight man cancer and are just a simple, harmless straight guy, life is hard for you these days too.

Once "loser," "scumbag," "weirdo," "creep" and "no taste" were all stuffed into "straight man cancer," the words "straight man" changed meaning with them and became an insult that has nothing to do with sexual orientation. As a heterosexual man, you now have to work hard to explain that, yes, you are straight, but not the straight man of "straight man cancer," so you don't get caught in the crossfire.

A bit tiring, right? Don't worry, it gets worse.

Sometimes even your straightness can't be taken for granted. Show the slightest ambition about your quality of life or your appearance, and you may face questions like these:

You say you're straight, so why do you love potato chips / yogurt / preserved plums / Pocky? Are you really straight? Have you considered the other possibility? Why not think it over? Your life might turn out very differently, you know.

You say you're straight, so why do you wear Christmas-colored socks / leopard-print sneakers / trousers with such skinny legs? Are you really straight? Have you considered the other possibility? Why not think it over? Your life might turn out very differently, you know.

You say you're straight, so why do you put on lip balm, and so seductively? Are you really straight? Have you considered the other possibility? Why not think it over? Your life might turn out very differently, you know.

Such is the modern man's helpless position: best not to eat snacks, best to dress conservatively, and best to get through the change of seasons with chapped, peeling lips if you want to count as manly. If you really must use lip balm, remember to apply it in a manly way, with the motion modeled on gnawing a chicken leg. Otherwise, you might as well pick an auspicious day and come out of the closet.

Don't bother with your looks and you're a tasteless "straight man cancer" case; take a little care and your sexuality becomes a mystery. The world is wide, yet it has no room for an ordinary straight guy who is neither.

Poor boys.

Drawing on QDaily Research Lab's surveys about men over the past year, we found that the straight man's plight now reaches every corner of life. We've sorted it out for you. Take our advice or leave it:

1. How to Eat

To gauge attitudes toward how men eat, QDaily Research Lab once ran a poll, "What way of eating makes a man seem effeminate to you." We received 3,208 responses. The top answers: taking small spoonfuls of pear and tremella soup / turtle jelly / bird's nest (26.6%); insisting on cutting fruit into small pieces, putting them on a plate and spearing them with toothpicks (23.1%); and drinking water from a cup with a straw (10.5%).

Two things make a man's eating look effeminate. One is the manner: eating with elaborate methods and utensils (that is, being rather fussy) makes people more likely to find you effeminate. This has nothing to do with how you handle the food itself, though if you crook your little finger, there's no saving you, thank you. The other is the food: foods stereotyped as feminine, such as bird's nest, ice cream, lollipops and strawberries, also look effeminate when a man eats them. And if you love sunflower seeds and like cracking them in public, you won't just seem effeminate; you'll seem like an old auntie...

So for straight men who want to look more virile, our advice is this: besides building muscle and keeping some stubble, eat meat and drink liquor in big mouthfuls, eat watermelon in big slices, bite straight into apples, and eat rice with your hands...

In short, the less civilized, the better.

2. How to Groom

A research report previously released by Mintel said men's skincare routines are getting more complicated and the facial care market keeps growing: by 2019 it will be worth 15.4 billion yuan, almost double the 2014 figure. In a world that judges by looks, face wash alone no longer satisfies the guys who keep up with the times.

To find out how far people's tolerance for men's grooming has stretched beyond "Dabao every day" (the slogan of a classic budget skin cream), QDaily Research Lab ran a poll, "Which men's skincare habit strikes you as weird." The results were not bad: apart from men wearing eyeliner, which people found hard to accept (46.4%), using face cream, eye cream and the like was seen as fairly normal. Another 18.3% found all of it acceptable, holding that taking good care of yourself is a great virtue.

This is the most male-friendly poll result so far. It's moving.

But don't celebrate too soon. The real problem with men's skincare isn't the risk of being laughed at; it's the lack of suitable products.

Another QDaily Research Lab poll, "What do you dislike about men's grooming products," drew 8,472 responses. The verdict: men's grooming products are all formula and no love. The ad always features a muscleman beaded with water droplets, as baffling as every shampoo ad needing a heroine tossing her hair and a hero with a hair fetish (18%). Labeling a product "sport" doubles the price (14.2%). Brands assume all men love a cooling sensation, so eighty different problems get one answer, "refreshing and powerful," cooling until your face hurts (13.6%). Add a bit of mint and the women's version becomes the men's version (12.4%). And anything in blue packaging gets called a men's line, which is lazy.

Several readers said in the comments that when a man buys skincare, the first rule is to avoid anything "for men." Fine, but then the straight friends left with no choice but women's products are back in the endless loop of "Is this too effeminate?"

3. How to Choose a Hairstyle

When a grown man has reached 27 and still hasn't found a hairstyle that suits him, it's a rather sad thing.

An earlier QDaily Research Lab poll, "Which men's hairstyle do you hate most," drew 3,787 responses. The most hated hairstyle is still the "wash, cut and blow-dry" look (the spiky, dyed, heavily blow-dried style of small-town salon boys), which topped the list by a startling margin: 46.2% of people found it hideous.

Frightening as it is, though, that look has gone out of fashion and is rare these days. After it, the two most disliked men's hairstyles are the bald head (20.1%) and the mushroom cut (12.3%).

Hair loss is painful enough that mocking a receding hairline is wrong. Although baldness drew many votes, one reader righteously pointed out in the comments that "baldness isn't anyone's fault, and bald people deserve basic respect." Under that righteous comment, however, a very bad reader tagged Prince William.

When hair loss can't be fixed, many people think it's better to shave it all off than to cover it up (painstakingly slicking other hair over the bald patch). One reader said baldness isn't scary and is fine if your head has a good shape (Deckard Shaw, for example).

The mushroom cut is a bit strange. It began as a symbol of the women's liberation movement, a rebellious way for women to shake off convention and run toward freedom. Later it grew popular, with fashion icons washing and blow-drying twice a day to keep its shape. But on a man it is still too avant-garde. As one reader put it, "A man with a mushroom cut must be tired inside."

Even after avoiding these minefields, an ordinary man doesn't find a suitable hairstyle easily. He wants to leave behind the five- or ten-yuan buzz cut from the campus barbershop, but can't face getting up early to wash his hair, apply wax and sculpt it, then washing the wax out before bed; and his face can't carry a pretty boy's ornate styles. So he tries again and again, and finally takes the advice of a stylist named Tony, growing his hair to a certain length for a "casual, fashionable" style, at the cost of a stubborn tuft that sticks up every morning and refuses to lie down.

Heartbreaking.

4. How to Dress

The Hong Kong humor site 9GAG once published a cartoon mocking straight men. It said condoms are 98% effective at preventing pregnancy, and something even more reliable is dressing so badly that women want nothing to do with you.

According to QDaily Research Lab's survey on men's clothing, if you insist on tucking your shirt in and hiking your trousers up to your waist, wearing socks with sandals, popping your collar, or pairing a suit with sneakers like a Korean oppa but ending up looking more like Liu Neng (a bumbling, tacky character from a hit Chinese TV comedy), then congratulations! Your taste is bad enough to work as contraception.

Yet when a modern man makes a little effort with fashion, he gets called effeminate. Another QDaily Research Lab survey, "What have men given up the right to do so as not to look effeminate," drew 6,482 responses. These were seen as rather effeminate: wearing bright colors (18.6%), wearing a scarf (7.9%), and showing your ankles (7.5%). The reason? There isn't one: "There's no basis for it, but a boy dressed like that still comes across as a bit effeminate."

So for a grown man trying to look a little tougher, the only safe outfits are probably the engineer's "IT dog" look and the middle-aged entrepreneur's mountaineering look built around a shell jacket. If you really want to stand out in the hunt for a mate, your only option is the fairly conservative "sexless" minimalist look. Ah, what a perfect paradox.

5. How to Talk

In an age that demanded displays of male strength, manliness meant "killing a tiger with your bare hands." To find out what people expect of manliness today, QDaily Research Lab ran a poll, "What do you think manliness is," and received 4,162 responses. Readers nominated and voted on the options, and the result was startling: the top three all had to do with talking less. Talk less, do more, keep your word and take responsibility (702 votes); don't run your mouth, just quietly get things done (554 votes); respect and few words (264 votes).

Why does talking less and doing more matter so much?

Here's a familiar example. What a sick girlfriend least wants to hear from her boyfriend is filler like "What happened? Why weren't you more careful? Get to bed early and drink plenty of hot water." What she wants is for him to turn up at her door with hot porridge and medicine, without a word except two: "Open up."

Knowing when to shut up and kiss her is indeed a basic rule of flirting, but of course it isn't enough. Besides getting things done, you'd better be able to tell a few dirty jokes and sing, and in a fight you must never give her the cold shoulder. Even if she's scowling, you have to take the initiative and talk the problem through. That is the complete self-cultivation of the new-era straight man. Because although ascetic, old-cadre types like Jin Dong and Huo Jianhua are charming, a chatterbox like Xue Zhiqian also makes people want to marry him. In short, what everyone really wants to know is when the combined model comes out.

All in all, being a straight man is not easy these days.

We feel deep concern for straight men, a group struggling to survive inside a love that can't make up its mind. Think about it, and both "effeminate" and "manly" turn out to be sly presumptions: stereotypes at the small end, gender hegemony at the large end.

Compared with harsh reality, the online world looks a little better. On social networks people are saying that men can be refined and women can be strong, and that both can move toward the androgynous. Add some light entertainment banter, and this may slowly stop being a big deal.

For now, the crudest yardstick for weighing a straight man's taste against effeminacy is looks. If your face is good, a man using Clarins or wearing polka-dot socks is no problem at all. In every survey, some female readers said they never notice whether a guy's behavior is a bit effeminate; they only look at the face.

Does that sound even worse?

There may be a way out.

Looks shouldn't be the only answer. The new sexy is a high IQ. At the end of 2014, OkCupid, the largest dating site in the United States, added a series of new sexual orientation labels. One of them is "sapiosexual," meaning a person, or an orientation, attracted to intelligence. It sits at the very top of the pyramid: "We look at neither gender nor face; we look only at IQ."

So, born a straight man, your situation is hard, but there are still shortcuts to winning against the odds. If you don't have the looks, for example, work on being a bit wittier. Who knows, you might become the next Huang Bo.

This is as far as we can help you.

You're welcome.

QDaily Research Lab is an investigative column of QDaily, an interactive platform for exploring questions of lifestyle. It may look at changes and trends in how people live, or at the service of a particular brand. Here you can vote, vent, and take a stand.