Great! Newsletter #8: How to Appropriate Dad Culture
Be a Dad (even if you don't have kids) with these tried and true methods from a certified Dad expert.
What’s cookin’, good lookin’? I’m Alexandria Love: writer, comedian, and 3rd runner-up of a very poorly attended Dolly Parton look-alike contest. This is my newsletter, Great! I call it Great! because it’s named after me, and I am great. I name all of my projects using words you can use to describe me, so keep an eye out for my other newsletters: Stacked, Sweaty, and Slightly Anemic.
Father’s Day is this weekend and it can be a challenging time for some. I feel lucky to have my old man, especially because there are many who don’t have one or don’t have good relationships with theirs. I know I was a handful as a teenager, so I wanted to honor my Dad with today’s newsletter. And I know what you’re thinking: “Alex, you’re just trying to be nice so that your dad will write you back into his will.” That’s not true! The only things I plan to inherit from my parents are high blood pressure and an inherent love of casinos.
I’m a certified Dad expert (I’m actually dating yours!), and while I know I would be a terrible mother, I think I’d be a great dad because I have a deep understanding of Dad culture. So whether you’re a dad, dad-in-waiting, dad-adjacent, or just a little Dad-curious, I have the crash course you need on how to become the top pop!
Dadding 101
Step 1: Get the Dad Fit
You know the look. Jean shorts, Sketchers or slides, and crew socks that get higher than me and my cousins after we “take a walk” at the cookout. Perfect for standing around a grill and saying, “You’re gonna wanna flip that pretty soon.” Ray-bans are optional but encouraged for being outdoors in the summer and saying classic Dad lines like, “It’s not the heat that gets you. It’s the humidity.” You can find this look at my new clothing line, Dad’s Warehouse. You’re gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it.
Step 2: Attempt to fix everything in the house, but actually break everything in the house
Need to clean out the gutters? Rotate the tires? De-clog the cat? Just put on a toolbelt and tell everybody that you’re going to fix it…then do the opposite. Channel your inner Joe Biden and make things juuuust a little bit worse than how you found them. Sure, you could hire a professional to do it for you correctly the first time, but where’s the fun in that? Be so consistently unhandy that anytime someone sees you with power tools, they have 911 pre-dialed in their phone. Remember, you’re not a real Dad unless you have violated at least six OSHA laws.
Step 3: Get way too invested in Formula 1 racing
Sports are a big part of Dad culture. Every Dad has a sport. If you’re a rich Dad, it’s probably golf. (If you are a rich Dad, please text me.) A safe bet for today’s modern Dad-on-the-go is Formula 1 racing. Like many other parts of male culture like your inability to respond to texts or your fascination with Ryan Reynolds, I do not fully understand it, but I can appreciate it. I hope that your guy drives his little car faster than his buddies!
Step 4: Perfect the Dad sounds
Being a Dad is mostly about knowing when to make the right noises. For example, when you’re getting out of a recliner, you have to make a noise like a lonely humpback whale, or a rusty lawnmower being revved up for the first time in 75 years. The most important Dad sound to master is the iconic Dad sneeze. A Dad sneeze should be so loud and unsettling that it makes liquids vibrate like that one scene in Jurassic Park. In a perfect world, your Dad sneezes don’t make other people say “Bless you.” It makes people flinch and say, “What the fuck was that?”
Step 5: Have way too many remote controls
One is for the television, one is for the Roku, one is for the sound system, and one is just for looks so that the rest of the household knows you mean business! All of them are absolutely necessary, and none of them have batteries. Keep your eye on them because, much like your favorite show on a streaming service, they can disappear at any time. Hey, wait, where did it go? I just had it! Are you sitting on it? Stand up!