Although much has been said about how independent young women are today (they earn more than men in big cities, boldly ask out attractive men, and confidently remain single when no suitable mate can be found), clearly there are still some women who can be defined as clingy when they’re in  a new relationship. A lot of men do not enjoy dating clingy women because they feel it hinders their ability to have a life outside of the relationship, and internally it reveals just how insecure the woman they are dating is about herself.  No one wants to date a person who runs around fearing they are going to be dumped or cheated on every minute. To be fair, it’s normal to feel a little insecure when you first start dating someone because the relationship’s status is so up in the air, but there is something called quiet insecurity.  When you start letting it show… [Read more]

Back in the day weight-lifters looked like crazy people to a population of Hippies that had become accustomed to guys with skinny arms and slender builds. To see an Arnold Schwarzenegger roll up into the mix and take a hit off their joint probably resulted in stares of wonder. During most of the 80s and early 90s bodybuilding exploded and people became desensitized to the nasty neon tank-tops, wrestling shoes and parachute, pajama pants that those freaks wore. Now in the late 2000′s after the steroid witch-hunt had taken all the victims that it could afford and skinny jeans are back in effect, being a muscular freak is not so special anymore. I can get absolutely jacked and I would not receive that much more stares than if I decided to become emaciated and get my Calvin Klein model on. Still the world may have changed but my mind didn’t, I still get offended when… [Read more]

Seriously, most guys aren’t alphas so the promise of sex from an attractive female will keep a dude around longer than he cares to admit. Young guys will lie and tell their peers that they “already hit it” or will keep her a secret until they finally do. This is due to guys not wanting to seem like suckers or weaklings for not being able to wrap it up in a couple weeks. There are guys out there who have gone a month, 2 months and even a year. Let’s not even talk about the guy who doesn’t have any male friends, he’ll go for a celibate chick and deal with it. See for every ideal there is an ugly reality. On this site we broke down males into 3 categories: Hunter, Member of the Tribe and Sloth – renamed as Alpha, Beta and Omega. The three types are super general and many men exhibit… [Read more]

Editor’s Note: In my rounds I tend to come across many blogs that offer up gems that can help us all do better int he quest of becoming a modern gentleman. Diggame of “From Ashy to Classy” is a man on the same quest who shared his series The Marcus Graham Chronicles on another site and I asked him to bring it here, to the Hall so that you too can enjoy it. Please check out his blog “From Ashy to Classy” and his wonderful opinion articles on black dating and beyond.This is a truncated version of the original which you can read HERE. The Marcus Graham Chronicles is my personal journey of dealing with love and relationships. It is called the Marcus Graham Chronicles because of my affinity for the movie “Boomerang” and how the main character of Marcus Graham relates to me as the “black professional” man. You can check out earlier posts… [Read more]

“Yo, the Older God put me on how to rock this, maintain 360 law and live prosperous. It only takes a lesson a day, just to analyze life, one time in a respectable mind” – Ghostface Killa I am a happy bastard, in the literal sense of the word. Let me explain, when I was a boy I lacked a father, the reasons are beside the point so let me just say I am the black male stereotype. I grew up with a strong mother who had several failed relationships, I am semi-successful but a product of my environment so running off to marry some chick is somewhere at the bottom of my list of priorities along with things like travel the world and cure Cancer. While I didn’t have a father around, my mother’s outgoing nature led us to having tons of people around, some of which were some real men of honor. Of… [Read more]

There aren’t any rituals, rites of passage, memorized chants or graduation ceremony for manhood or womanhood. As men our sisters get the benefit of nature assisting their ascension through puberty, the first period and several other private things. For men we get theories, comparison checks to our forefathers and conflicting feedback on what constitutes a “man”. It is something that we never think about in detail but it has to leave many guys pondering, “am I truly a man, or am I a boy pretending at this grown-up thing”? It seems as if the blood, sweat and tears spilled by women of the past to gain equal grounds with their testosterone fueled mates, has left many men scrambling to figure out our respective “roles” in a family structure. If you think I’m making this up just observe the barbs being thrown across gender lines in 2010 by the single, middle-class, each blaming the decline of… [Read more]

You know the confusion and misinformation on men and our choice of hairdos will never come to an end in the black community but maybe I can shed some light on the observations I’ve made amongst my fellow “men of color”. The natural hair movement is in full effect as former perms are being replaced rapidly by ceasers, afros and natural braids. With this movement there will be those who tell you that they made “the big chop” for hair health reasons and others who say that it is only another hairstyle that they are trying out. The stigma with natural women however seems to be that they are all stuck-up, Erykah Badu types that point fingers at women who kept a perm or weave. Just Look Good in Your Tresses One of the other tired attack memes on black males (besides our inherent love for fat blondes and prison… rolls eyes) is that we… [Read more]

I don’t get men who brag about tricking, its almost as if they believe that confession to the boys will cleanse their soul of the sin. We all know guys who brag on this, the ones who are quick to tell you that they spent $300 for some skull at the local seedy strip club and the ones who told you that they bought a street walker on the way to church on Sunday. Most of the time they volunteer the information without being asked. As friends we don’t judge them, but we do frown upon it in our own way… just don’t expect us to talk about it. Listen up tricks, no matter how much you try to convince yourself that you got over on  a prostitute by bartering her down to an affordable cost, it still isn’t anything to brag about. Tricking is tricking regardless of whether or not you brag about it…. [Read more]