The mystery of machismo: where's lifetime for men?

Yuppie girls get all the glory in the media, if you really think about it. We get Lifetime, an amazing "Just for Women" network that unabashedly flings Golden Girls episodes and Tori Spelling TV movie, stuffing in as many shameless Kim Alexis Monistat ads, and sunny "I have a secret" girls in a series of Tampax commercials. The mere presence of the chick-flick and its never-ending range - from "Single White Female" to "Notting Hill" salutes American women with both cheerful and turbulent visions of womandom. From girl powerful Fiona Apple to woman powerful Oprah Winfrey to Polident powerful Eartha Kitt, pop culture absolutely swims in images of femininity for the American woman.

Yuppie guys, on the other hand, until recently, have lacked the range that women have been privy too. So-called "dick" flicks are not nearly as interesting or varied as movies more geared toward us of the skirt persuasion (even the name isn't as fun) - only lots of guns and strippers, or some wicked combination of both. And while I can easily revel in South Park, if some poor bloke happens to stumble upon any movie with Sally Field, it is indeed a sign of the apocalypse. I once caught (caught is the key word here) my father whimpering over a Lifetime rerun of Designing Women when Delta Burke leaves Sugarbaker's for good, and I have to admit I found it rather, um, disturbing. Trix are for kids, and Lifetime is for women.

Which is why the recent flush of movies geared toward men that seem to have fewer guns and more thought has been terrifically surprising. Fight Club, in particular, has gripped preview audiences with its maze of guy angst. (Since when have guys had angst? Girls patented angst.) The story of a charismatic anarchist (Brad Pitt) who starts up a group of men who beat the crap out of each other for fun, drawing in yuppie men chucking their grey flannel suits for a life of chaos. Other yuppie violence movies have stirred the male psyche recently - American Psycho and American Beauty just to name two. These movies all explore the deeper male mind, swimmingly (or perhaps frighteningly?) portraying academic vision of the subliminal self of the modern male. This string of sympathy for a group of people rarely sympathized with is only the beginning; nipping on the heels of Susan Faludi's much acclaimed study of the betrayal of the American man, these movies divulge further and further behind the cursory Bruce Willis-ized front that American media has loaned to the yuppie male.

This changing characterization certainly makes sense - AK 47's and thick hair are certainly twice-removed from most male lives. Yet, it still frightens me that men might be that much more profoundly alarming than even we girls imagined, and that we girls are not the only angst uncertain ones out there in the universe. The violent form this angst is taking is even more disturbing - the thought that that pretty boy I-banker that sits next to us on the train may be harboring thoughts of man-anguish chaos certainly disturbs me. I think I may prefer an abstract Mr. Willis shooting down the entire world than this haunting - and scarily authentic - perception of my American yuppie. This new analysis of men, however, plucks an uneasy chord in evangelical Hollywood; that the average man might have a much blacker psyche than South Park suggests. Perhaps we women really should learn to share our Lifetime.