You know how it is: you're a man. A red-blooded man. You enjoy consuming steaks, lifting iron in the gymnasium, and fucking your woman like, every day. But when you get older things change. To maintain your manhood, have you considered sucking estrogen from a fertile woman's body, like a vampire?

I mean, that's just one method you could pursue. I imagine there are also pills you can take. The point is that Real Men have always been "turned off" by the idea of estrogen because—hello, fellas—we use testosterone, over here, on the Real Man side, with testicles. Am I right, fellas? Fellas know what I am talking about. We don't eat soy, consume birth control pills, or fraternize with dudes who wear golf shirts in various shades of teal, because all of those things could soak us in estrogen— the enemy. Testosterone: the hormone of choice for men.

Or is it? Do not forget that real men also keep up to date with the latest scientific research. And according to a new study, estrogen plays an important role in your manliness, just like testosterone does. Turns out they'd never even thought to study the possibility until now! (And why would they? Men scientists are men, my friend.) When they actually did study it, they found that you can't just slather testosterone gel all over your middle-aged ass in order to get back that "Weirdly Ripped Old Guy in The Club" macho flair. It takes estrogen, too. From the New York Times:

While dwindling testosterone levels are to blame for middle-aged men’s smaller muscles, falling levels of estrogen regulate fat accumulation, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, which provided the most conclusive evidence to date that estrogen is a major factor in male midlife woes. And both hormones are needed for libido.

“Some of the symptoms routinely attributed to testosterone deficiency are actually partially or almost exclusively caused by the decline in estrogens,” said Dr. Joel Finkelstein, an endocrinologist at Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author.

All your stringent avoidance of soy milk was actually making you fat. Looks like the wifey was right after all, fellas! High five, fellas. Fellas: don't fear the estrogen. Go ahead and cuddle up with the wife (or, if menopause has already occurred, with a younger "sugar baby" surrogate) while surreptitiously slipping a hypodermic needle into her abdomen to siphon off her sweet, sweet estrogen and use it for your own nefarious manly purposes.

Real men don't give a fuck which hormone it takes, as long as it gives us that one big bicep.

[NYT. Photo of you: FB]