A year ago, I posted the following quote from Susan Faludi:

In the past where there have been efforts to show a caring man or a Mister Mom, the popular culture has a very low threshold ... They'll have one or two Mister Moms and the media will be filled with stories about how the sensitivity of the politically correct male has gone too far. Then we'll be treated to a wave of trend stories saying 'Real men are back.' So I predict next year you'll be doing a story on a brawny Brawny Man.

She was referring to the "new" Brawny Man, but her comments were clearly meant more broadly. I, being a perpetual optimistic, commented at the time that I thought that us sensitive guys were here to stay. Suffice it to say that Faludi has a far better Ouiji board than I: the Washington Times just threw this dumb-as-can-be manly man story out there. The story is based on a survey concocted as a marketing tool for Dodge trucks, which makes it suspect, and the questions asked go well beyond the silly ("90 percent of women said they prefer low-maintenance, easygoing guys."). Here's the lead quote from the story, from Carrie Lukas, director of policy at the reliably kookie Independent Women's Forum:

It just shows that there are some things that you can't change and that, while feminism for a long time has been pushing us towards androgyny with little girls with trucks and guys with dolls, women tend to have feministic traits and guys the opposite. If anything, it shows what feminism hasn't been able to accomplish.

What a crock. Feminism has mostly failed to keep truck companies from relying on increasingly outdated stereotypes. But I don't think that's high on anyone's agenda. What has been accomplished is the creation of an environment where kids (and adults) are increasingly free to do what makes 'em happy, Ozzie and Harriet be damned. Men can raise kids, girls can play competitive sports, women can run a boardroom, boys can cook. And that freedom to escape the straightjacket of stereotype is only going to grow, no matter what Dodge says.