Growing up, I was the sort of girl who had a varying array of nicknames for, not my sister, but my father. For example, I'd harp "Good one, Einstein" after he made, in my young eyes, a blatantly obvious comment.
Or I'd give his soft, round stomach a little pat/punch and exclaim "Fat Boy" when he'd come home from work every night, kiss us on the heads and head right to the bag of Cheetos. His typical response to my unprovoked barbs and jabs? He'd usually just chuckle it off - as his belly wiggled like Santa Claus.
No doubt about it. I was an original daddy's girl. In all honesty, though, it was my father who should have had the last laugh. Over summer vacation in California a few years ago, as my family and I sat on the hotel balcony overlooking the San Diego skyline, we came across an article in the newspaper. The article described a new and evolved breed of man. The metrosexual. That's what experts of the day called it. This man - think Frasier or Niles Crane - was so comfortable in his manly skin that he has no shame in indulging in the finer things and letting his feminine side roar.
I dug up these tell-tale signs of the new-age metrosexual:
• They love to shop with their gal pals
• They buy and use skin-care cream
• He's religiously glued to shows like "The OC" and "Sex & The City"
And yet I couldn't help but muse: Wasn't that a near-perfect description of my father some 10 years ago? Was he not the first undocumented metrosexual, forming a mold for generations to follow? I knew I had to examine the evidence. It would be a fitting tribute to him, I reasoned.
A lot of my girlfriends bonded with their fathers in the "traditional" ways. I'd heard the stories: working on the family car, making a kite or model airplane, throwing the baseball around the field and running the bases. Well, seeing as my father never owned a baseball (as far as I know) and my mother, like all good mothers do, was in charge of our car and took it to the dealership the second any little thing seemed out of the ordinary, tradition was never really our thing.
Frankly, it never seemed to bother my father or me. It never bothered us during our trips to the mall, for example, when we'd walk up and down each corridor and "ooh" and "ahhh" at the pretty outfits in the window or when we'd laugh as we browsed the selection of celebrity magazines in the bookstore. Like the proper shopping partner that he was, my father of course lugged my many bags of loot for me - and even treated me to a soda in the food court.
Metrosexual trait No. 1. Check.
It never bothered us (well, most of us) when we'd be waiting in the car, already late for a family function, while my father had just stepped out of the shower after a 30-minute lather-and-rinse session in which he probably used our girlie shampoo and then proceeded to dry between every single toe after he got out (Who does that?). Nevermind that his favorite phrase was "Oh, you'd better put some salve on that" and had a cream for everything imaginable.
Metrosexual trait No. 2. Check.
And it certainly never bothered us (especially me) when we'd curl up on a Wednesday night and watched as Dawson desperately tried to woo Joey away from Pacey on "Dawson's Creek," or when my dad then tried to woo my mother by using the same lines he heard Dawson utter just minutes before. And ironically, we never thought it the least bit odd when he casually sat down (with his Cheetos, of course) to watch Carrie and company strut through love, life and the streets of Manhattan. I'm sure if he were alive when it premiered, he would have been riveted by "The OC" rich kids too.
Metrosexual trait No. 3. Check.
So what grand social statement am I trying to make? Fathers don't always come in the cookie-cutter, stereotypical package; contrary to the popular myth, there is no such thing as a father factory or the father stork. No two fathers are exactly alike, but they ultimately do have the same goal in mind: to spend time with you. In any way, shape or form. Whether that involves a day of girly indulgence, it doesn't matter. He gets to be with you, talk with you, listen to you and hopefully laugh with you. Maybe that's not really such a grand statement after all.
