The New Basic Training

In the days when men were men and women wore pearls while making meat loaf on black and white sitcoms, drill sergeants were the exclusive province of the testosterone set. They were a rite of passage. You grew up, got drafted and spent six weeks in basic training getting yelled at by a guy who looked like Jack Webb. He'd train you for war by forcing you to clean the latrine with a toothbrush if you didn't make your bed right; so in that sense, basic training was a little like cotillion on steroids. But still, you got to do all the things your mom spent her last years before being institutionalized telling you not to do: play in the mud, climb over the neighbor's fence and shoot. Then you'd go out on leave, drink beer, commit a few felonies and argue about the point spread on the Giants game. It was testosterone in motion.
Nowadays the toughest drill sergeants aren't in the armed services and they aren't male. They're leading exercise classes with names like "Morning Crunch" and "Crack of Dawn Hip Displacement." The "recruits" are all women, and they're not drafted. They actually volunteer to plunge into ice-cold pools in November and do three hours of water aerobics, led by drill sergeants named Brenda, who have ear-splitting whistles and a voices like idling garbage trucks. After the ordeal is over the estrogen kicks in, and they're off to Starbucks to drink lattes or venti triple ratamacues and talk about the kids. But you've got to hand it to them: these women are tough.
So, is this the beginning of a broader role reversal? Will women start renting Vin Diesel movies? Will men start watching "Monday Night Football" while getting eucalyptus rubs at the spa? Probably not. But men had better toughen up to keep up.
See you in the pool.