So the Association of Men for Action and Research (Amare) has created the Nasi Lemak! Award to search for the most annoying, face-palm, gut-wrenching, you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me instance of virtual emasculation in Singapore.
The Nasi Lemak! Award is also a response to the Alamak! Award for sexism recently announced by Amare’s arch-enemy, the Association of Women for Action and Research.
It's all about equality. (And achieving happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.)
As executive director and founder of Amare, I hereby present the Nasi Lemak! Award nominees:
1. The London Weight Management “suicide” commercial.
The ad has been decried as being insulting to women. The company has since removed the video from YouTube.
In the ad, the husband treats the woman badly. But after she loses weight, he’s all smiles.
This is an insult to all men everywhere. Are we so shallow? Real men don't behave like this.
In the ad, the woman also loses her job and yet could still afford to sign up with the weight loss company.
Who do you think will be paying for it? The husband won’t be smiling when he sees the bill.
2. The four-storey high Abercrombie & Fitch ad featuring a topless male model outside Knightsbridge mall.Real men are not four storeys tall. We don't need to be made to feel smaller than some of us already do.
To further reduce men to nonhuman sex objects, the model in the ad is not only topless, he is also headless.
Is this another case of covering the face and firing the base?
3. The man found sleeping in a plastic bag at the stairwell of an HDB block in Geylang last week.
Someone thought he was dead and called the police. Pathetic.I, too, have slept in the stairwell once when I was accidentally locked out of my flat. (At least, my wife claimed it was “accidental”, but sometimes I wonder.)
I came home late one night and unlocked the door, but couldn’t open it.
You know why? Because it was latched from the inside!
I pounded on the door and tried calling my wife with my mobile phone, but she was sleeping so soundly that only my snoring next to her could’ve awakened her.
I eventually gave up and decided to sleep in the stairwell so that I could use the step as a pillow.
A very hard, angular pillow
When morning came, I tried calling my wife again. She finally woke up and opened the door to face a very haggard, angry husband.
Did I have anything to keep me warm in that stairwell apart from the clothes I was wearing? No, I did not.
Real men don’t sleep in plastic bags.
But I really missed my bolster though.
Fortunately, no one called the police.
The Geylang man was wearing an army T-shirt. I was from the navy. More proof that navy men are manlier than army men.
And there you have it, the three nominees for the Nasi Lemak! Award.
For some reason, I feel like some nasi lemak now.
- Published in The New Paper, 2 October 2011
Good Evening boss!
Here are some pictures highlighting exactly why Amare should exist! Gender equality is dead because of things like this.
Additionally, my name, Jamie, has been viciously classified as "only for girls".
Whenever I introduce myself, I get these funny looks and the million-dollar question: "Isn't Jamie a girl's name".
I'll just sigh and go "Yes, I get that a lot."
What has the world come to when even the world has failed to accept Jamie as a boy's name too.
It doesn't help that famous dudes with the name "Jamie" aren't big manly people but chefs and singers. (Damn you Jamie Oliver!)
Now I'm resigned to having to defending my name each time I introduce myself.
Oh the humanity!
Yours truly,
The marvelous, extraordinary, awesome to the power of infinity, intelligent and smart Jamie.
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