Agony Aunt: “HELP! Women keep asking me to open pickle jars!”

Human females are puny and weak—just look at Wonder Woman. But human males are dead tough and hypermasculine—just look at Burt Bacharach.

And so it has been, for millions of years, that human females ask human males to open really difficult jars. Usually in the form of pickle jars.

The consequences of this on the male psyche are vast and unfathomable. Yet we’re here today to fathom them as one human male asks the pertinent question: “Does opening pickle jars for women… define… me?”

Pickle Jars and the Hypermasculine Crisis

Hi agony aunt, I’m Lucas. I’m 42 and in good health, quite a big burly type of guy and strong. All my life WOMEN have EXPLOITED my superiority by asking me to open difficult jars for them. And I’m SICK of it! You know, I should be CELEBRATED for my fine physique as a towering mountain of a man. Instead, I’m relegated to slight women asking me to open jars of pickles for them. I counted, it was 122 times in 2021. 122! Can you imagine?! By the end of the year my wrists were destroyed, some of the pickle jars I had to open took all my manly might… I needed PTSD counselling to try and get over it. The relentless exertion. The stress. The pressure. These women handing me pickle jars seemingly sealed shut by an unholy force and I’m there put on the spot thinking, “If I can’t get this open they’ll think I’m a weakling. I’ll never get over it. They’ll tell all their friends, colleagues, and society will judge me.” The anxiety it caused, agony aunt. You’ll never know… I couldn’t hack the pressure! It was too much. I started to hit the drink, turning to energy drinks like Red Bull to ensure I had the physicality to wrench open a pickle jar at any given moment. At my worst, I was drinking 25 cans a day. I got insomnia, but even when I could sleep a few fitful hours I’d dream of pickle jars and having to open those goddamn sons of bitches for those goddamn sons of bitches women! In the end, I broke my arm with a sledgehammer just to STOP women from ASKING me to open pickle jars. But then the arm healed and they started asking me again! THERE. IS. NO. ESCAPE. My life… my formative years, studying to be a top class solicitor, but changing career and now I’m a supermarket store co-manager. And… the pickle jars. They haunt my every turn! Is this what defines me? Pickles? Jars? At the present rate, on my gravestone it’ll read: HERE LIES THE BODY OF LUCAS BROWN, THE GREATEST PICKLE JAR OPENER THAT THERE EVER WAS (but not much else) This can’t be my lasting legacy, agony aunt! You’ve got to help me! Yours, Lucas

Hi Lucas. Thank you for your message. Unfortunately, under current laws you can’t do much about this.

The Opening Difficult Jars For Women (Pickles & Otherwise) Act 1992 stipulates in section 33 (F) on page 431, verbatim:

“Burly geezers are required to open pickle jars, and jars in general, for any woman who asks the aforementioned burly geezer to do so.”

We understand that’s not what you’ll want to hear, so take solace in this quote from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness:

“Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.”

If you’re too stupid to understand what that means, then let us explain. Actually… we’re not sure what he means.

But we guess the gist is to take satisfaction in your brilliance as a pickle jar opener for slight women. You’re clearly a genius at it and highly accomplished—122 in one year. Outstanding!

We can’t all be astronauts or shelf stackers on the Marmite aisle.

Yes, you won’t be as celebrated as Gandhi or as revered as Marlon Brando. But human females need you, Lucas! Without you, their desire for pickles would not be slaked. And that would be a terrible thing…

So, dust yourself off, GET OUT THERE, and you open those pickle jars like a man!