'Mad' men's misguided fem fury

THE NEW issue of Men's Health magazine contains a test that promises to rate readers based on 45 "guy skills."

"What's your Man score?" a headline wonders.

It's a trick question, fellas.

If you're taking a test in Men's Health magazine to determine your "Man score," your score is zero.

This was on my mind as I considered the recent controversy surrounding "Mad Max: Fury Road," which has infuriated a subset of men in the "androsphere" (you encounter it on websites like returnofkings.com), where it is believed that aggressive man-ism must be asserted to counter feminism.

The website has its own economist, Aaron Clarey, and he believes that feminism is ruining movies. Men don't have enough manly things to do ("Taken" movies notwithstanding), and women are doing too many manly things, like fighting, or they're not soft and shapely enough, or the movies themselves do not smell enough like AXE deodorant, or something.

He demands a boycott (man-cott?) of "Fury Road," in part because the director consulted Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monologues") to research sex slavery, which is featured in the movie, but apparently not to Clarey's liking.

Clarey also complains that there is too much footage in "Fury Road" of Charlize Theron.

This is where he lost me.

How, even in the bro culture corners of the Internet, could advocates for "heterosexual masculine" values (their words) complain that there is such a thing as too much footage of Charlize Theron?

In the androsphere, isn't that like bitching about too much beer, too many pickup trucks, too much "Call of Duty" or being apportioned too much like Ron Jeremy?

Too much Theron?

I interview actresses all the time. I go into hotel rooms and talk to them, often alone. I've chatted with the most beautiful women in the world, in person, and I generally behave myself.

Embarrassing exception: press day for "The Legend of Bagger Vance." I'm yawning, waiting for Will Smith to show up. In walks Theron, and she's 9 feet tall with these blue sapphire eyes atop a cascading waterfall of luminous skin.

It took me two minutes to find my jaw, on the floor, and push it back up to my face. When my turn came, my question was: "Phhlsm Blgapfrst?"

A kindly publicist - obviously prepared - wiped spit from my lips and the roundtable interviews moved on.

I did a certain amount of stammering in the presence of Halle Berry, too, but this was rock bottom as far as deportment goes.

So, my feeling, and the feeling of "Fury Road," is that when you have an asset like Theron, you deploy it.

No, say "Fury Road" mantagonists. They believe Furiousa (Theron) does too much fighting. There's not enough for Mad Max to do, they whine. I guess I saw a different movie. Her entire mission is doomed unless Max decides to help. In fact, it's a classic damsels-in-distress plot, which has changed little since the first director tied the first actress to the first railroad track.

Some of the damsels in "Fury Road" help themselves, but this has always been so.

Gary Cooper was a goner until Grace Kelly pulled out that Winchester and (spoiler alert) shot Ian MacDonald in "High Noon." (The men refused to help, and this was 1952, the manly Eisenhower era.)

Maddy Ross joint-ventured with Rooster Cogburn to shoot up Ned Pepper's gang in both versions of "True Grit."

You've got Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in "The Terminator," Biehn and Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens." You can draw an unbroken line of men and women killing together, happily and productively, going all the way back to the dawn of cinema.

And beyond. Former "Mad Max" Mel Gibson wants to mount a large-budget epic about Boudica, the Celtic warrior queen who led barbarian armies against the Romans 2,000 years ago.

There's nothing new about females who fight.

What's new is a generation of men made nervous by them.

Too much Theron?

I don't know what to make of "men" like that.

But I think there's a quiz for them in the new issue of Men's Health.

Online: ph.ly/Movies