Four Thoughts I Had When I Saw the “LIONS NOT SHEEP” T-shirt
And the surprising findings when I checked my assumptions.
As I walked out of my favorite cigar bar recently, I saw a couple approaching me. The woman was blonde, statuesque, and wearing an elegant black dress. The man was muscular, immaculately coiffed in beard and hair, and wearing a T-shirt that said “LIONS NOT SHEEP.”
I have heard this particular phrase before, and it’s always irritated me. It turns out that it is the catchphrase for a hyper — masculine product company and coaching/lifestyle brand. I won’t link to it here, but as a member of the masculine genre, I had some thoughts about the shirt.
I thought about writing those thoughts as a rant. But I try to be an ethical writer, so I fact-checked my assumptions — and ended up discovering not only surprising contradictions, but a whole new (and in my view, better) archetype for manhood.
Here were my thoughts:
- ”Male lions don’t do much.” Like many, I’d listened to the reports and studies that said that the lionesses did the bulk of the hunting. Turns out I was wrong! There’s new data (“new” being 2013), showing that male lions not only do their share of the hunting, they do it by laying in wait in the bush.
Ok, so maybe the lion as…
