The movie “Knocked Up” has been starting a lot of conversations, most notably, because of its lack of discussion of abortion (which I want to discuss and will later) and its highlighting of the “Beta Male.”

Beta Males are the opposite of the alpha dogs: they’re not tall, dark, and handsome. They are allegedly the guys who wanted to stay fraternity brothers forever, and after college sit in their mother’s basements, wearing stained undershirts and playing videogames all day, occasionally sauntering out to the bar to meet their buddies to drink cheap beer and say dopey things. Newsweek, the Washington Post*, and Glamour have all written about beta males. It’s a caricature too good to be true… because it is.

I don’t think “beta males” actually exist.

Instead, I think beta males were contrived by the media as a reaction to Supergirls. If women are overachieving and powerful, then the mainstream media seems to think that men must be slow and pathetic by contrast. The media is painting beta males as cowering in the tall shadows of Supergirls, when, in reality, women are still the oppressed party. As Linda Hirshman told us, even though young women are graduating from college at higher rates, young men are graduating from better colleges with better job offers with higher starting salaries. Plus, none of the guys I know are dopey like that: they are pensive, smart, ambitious guys heading off to law school and medical school, who are intimidated by powerful women.

*I feel really bad ripping this Washington Post article because I really love the Genderations column and Laura Sessions Stepp (her book, Unhooked, is brilliant and one of my favorites), but I don’t think the mention of guys retiring home to play Wii is particuarly accurate.