A fairly self-explanatory trope which hinges on the lauding of vulgarity, poor hygiene and boorishness as the epitome of masculinity. Works that use this trope proudly revel in uncouth stereotypes of adult men as being poorly mannered, lazy, obnoxious, drunken, gluttonous, vulgar, filthy, and... well... slobs.
When this trope is used, it is almost always combined with Men Are Uncultured, though the opposite need not be true. Often a key component of Mars and Venus Gender Contrast.
It may be because they are a 40-year old Manchild trying to cling to their hard-partying Fratbro 20s, so their apartment is littered with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes. Or if they are an Absent-Minded Professor or eccentric inventor, maybe they're so immersed in developing cold fusion that they forget to clean their house.
Contrast with House Husband. Sister Trope to Men Can't Keep House and Lazy Husband. Compare with Lonely Bachelor Pad which sometimes invokes this trope as well but not always.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Countless beer and fast-food commercials feature men whose social graces are at a level only just above those of baboons. You'd think depicting your product's target demographic in this manner would be a bad idea, but it obviously works or else they would have stopped doing it by now.
Anime & Manga
- Cells at Work: Bacteria!: Downplayed and gender-inverted. The host body (a teenage girl in high school) doesn't seem to have any serious issues, but she doesn't seem to have the healthiest eating habits. The good bacteria even question how a teenage girl could eat so much meat.
Comics
- The Far Side comic captioned "Giorgio Armani at home".
Fan Works
- The Great Alicorn Hunt: When Twilight, Flash Sentry and Spike are going undercover in a town, Flash claims that as college men (their cover identity), he and Spike are expected to be "TOTAL SLOBS!" Which is why he's wearing an old, stained hoofball jersey as part of his disguise. Twilight just rolls her eyes.
Films — Live-Action
- I Love You, Man has fun with this. Jason Segel's character has many aspects of this trope.
- So much inverted in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason with the underwear-folding-before-bed Mark Darcy compared to his girlfriend, Bridget Jones, who has an apartment that would resemble a teenager's room. She takes it as evidence of how he's not spontaneous enough.
- Just One of the Guys has a nasty men's locker room scene.
Literature
- A major point of Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys.
- In This Is Not a Werewolf Story, Raul is thinking of advice that he could give the new kid at their boarding school, including "if you forget to shower a few days or weeks, you're a boy, so it's only expected." This becomes a bit dark when you find out that, having a depressed and very neglectful father, Raul literally didn't know what soap was until a social worker arranged for him to come to the school.
Live Action TV
- The earliest television example seems to be the I Love Lucy episode "Men Are Messy", back in 1951. Neat Lucy gets tired of sloppy Ricky messing up their apartment, and starts several zany schemes to get him to reform - including but not limited to dividing the apartment down the middle.
- Jayne Cobb from Firefly, who can be remarkably irritating in his superficiality about such things. He is the only one aboard who claims that the doctor is unmanly because he is a dandy. The others (including Mal and Book who would be very good judges on that score) all respect the doctor's courage even when irritated at him.
- Jack McCoy on Law & Order is a mild case. In “Double Down”, Brisco, Curtis, Ross, and Van Buren come by McCoy’s apartment at 2 am to discuss a case. It is noticeably disheveled, mostly strewn with books and papers. Ross appears to be reluctant to sit down, though the older and wiser Van Buren is unfazed.
- Magnum, P.I. is a mild example of this, as Thomas Magnum and Higgins have a constant slobbery vs snobbery war. But this only goes so far and they are actually friends beneath the mutual snarkery.
- Inverted on The Big Bang Theory: Sheldon is very clean and organized, and his female neighbor Penny is the slob. Sheldon once even broke into Penny's apartment to clean up. Given that Sheldon has OCD and Penny is a struggling actress trying to balance a full-time waitress job, it's actually pretty realistic.
- Onslow on Keeping Up Appearances. His perpetually soiled sleeveless shirt is in particular rememberable.
- Ken Hutchinson from Starsky & Hutch, who sometimes leaves quite a mess in his LTD.
- The short-lived 1990s sitcom Pig Sty is about five male bachelors living in one apartment. The name of the show tells you all you need to know.
Radio
- Walter Denton in Our Miss Brooks. In "Mr. Boynton's Parents", Walter mentions he leaves his clothes lying around his room for his mother to pick up.
Theater
- A Russian comedian, Yevgeniy Petrosian, had a sketch once where he outlined the typical man's schedule and the typical woman's schedule. The man's schedule consisted mostly of meals, TV, fishing, rest and "relaxation after rest". But it added up to more waking hours, so his conclusion was that men should have Mondays off.
Video Games
- League of Legends: Neeko has a few lines to this effect when she mimics male champions.
Neeko: [Mimicking Graves] Yuck, take a bath! Gross.
- Pepsiman: The man who appears in the live-action cutscenes between each level to cheer on the player and spout Gratuitous English slogans advertising Pepsi is always seen drinking Pepsi while shoveling some kind of junk food into his face. By the end of the game, the area surrounding his chair is practically buried in empty Pepsi cans, and he must wade through them when he finally feels the effects of all that Pepsi he drank.
Web Original
- The Art of Manliness acknowledges this is often true and seeks to teach men how to be a little more clean cut (in other words, defy this trope)
- The Image Macro character "Foul Bachelor Frog." Subverted in that he does have a Distaff Counterpart (Foul Bachelorette Frog) who is just as lazy and disgusting as he is, if not moreso.
Western Animation
- Futurama: Fry and Bender seem to go out of their way to make their apartment look like a total pig sty. This is best illustrated in "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back," when Fry's slobbishness proves a point of attraction for an uptight, organized bureaucrat.
Other
- Among Israeli youth movements the song "Yona Pa'amona" was popular for years. The song describes a camp with four tents: one for boys, one for girls, one shared, and one for the kitchen. Naturally, the girls' tent is perpetually clean, while the boys' tent is perpetually filthy and full of flies. If you speak Hebrew, you can find the lyrics here.
