The world is full of ridiculous gender stereotypes and tropes: girls like pink and Barbies; boys like blue and cars, to name but two of the most obvious.
And yet, when it comes to masculinity, we didn’t know hydration could prove such a fraught subject.
However, one Twitter user (named only as Chloe) has sparked an impassioned debate after publicly announcing: “Men who carry water bottles out in public give me the ick. Especially at the airport.”
She then added, by way of explanation: “You can’t go a few hours without having your little sips of water? Carrying around anything is a feminine trait.
“The only things men should be carrying around are his wallet and a pocketknife.”
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Her tweet racked up 6.5 million views and more than 4,220 shares in less than two days as commentators shared their take on her assessment.
Inevitably it was met with fury by many, who suggested it be added to a seemingly endless list of things “masculine men aren’t allowed to do (according to social media)”.
“Now we can’t even enjoy the most vital nutrient known to mankind,” lamented another.
Others pointed out that carrying a penknife in an airport was far from advisable, with one writing: “This idiot is missing her flight because her man tried to bring a pocketknife through security and along with his uncomfortable strip search is gonna have to buy a $7 bottle of water to quench his thirst after a tense hour in the TSA’s custody.”
Others described Chloe as “Andrew Tate’s dream girl”, and pointed to laughably ridiculous comments he once made about men who carry water bottles not being “combat ready”.
Meanwhile, Chloe doubled down on her original statement, writing that men should “take [their] sips of water in private”.
In response to another comment which read: “Real men drink sparkling water at nice dinner [sic],” she wrote simply: “Yes, this is true.”
Her replies prompted numerous commentators to suggest the whole thing was either a joke or a sneaky attack on masculinity itself.
One such observer wrote: “I truly think the way to defeat patriarchy would just be to make up increasingly impossible and random standards of masculinity until men break and admit they aren't into this whole masculinity thing anyway.”
However, if you glance through one of Chloe’s Substack blogs, you’ll note it’s not the first time she’s expressed a belief in polarising gender standards.
In one piece, in which she analyses the cult right-wing book ‘Bronze Age Mindset’, she writes: Every man should read this book if they wish to reclaim their masculinity and innate life-force that modern society has taken away from them.”
All we can say is, we need more than a sip of water after all this.
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