It’s the holiday season. And here’s some advice for men that you won’t hear from Dr. Phil or Dr. Drew or even Dr. Quinn: eat up, boys.

Yes, stuff your face. Let some food drop down your shirt, then look up at the rest of the table like a dog who’s been caught drinking out of the toilet. To top it off, undo a button and stick your hand in your pants. Why? Because if what we see on television is to be believed, that’s the height of masculinity, baby. That’s the seductive "come hither" for the new millennium. No New Year’s resolutions needed. Your out-of-shape body, average job, and total resignation are the stuff of which female fantasies are made.

Don’t believe me? Just turn on the tube. From sit-coms to advertising, this is what men are being sold. No longer are Hollywood and Madison Avenue trying to make men say, "I want to be like that guy!" Now they’re selling us, "That guy wants to be like me!" Gone are the days of Magnum, P.I. and the Marlboro Man. Today’s king lives in Queens. He’s your average paid-by-the-hour stiff with a couple of one-liners and a few extra pounds, yet he still manages to marry Leah Remini. And he ain’t the only royal in prime time. From Still Standing to According to Jim to Bud Light commercials, TV men are beer-swilling louts going about their menial routines, somehow surrounded by these omni-competent babes who weigh about as much as their duvet covers. It’s Fat Guy and His Hot Wife, tonight at eight on ABC.

On the surface, this is nothing new. Television has always trafficked in packaged fantasy. And when it comes to what’s beamed into our living rooms, we should all be prepared to suspend some disbelief. I mean, I’ll take a car that talks and solves crimes. I’ll assume Stone Phillips’s breathless intensity is genuine. And sure, that’s Joan Rivers’s face. But when a guy like Jim Belushi is married to a woman like Courtney Thorne-Smith, haven’t we gone too far?

Or should I say, haven’t we men gone too far? As anyone who’s dated since Webster went off the air will tell you, these scenarios are total horseshit. Top-shelf women didn’t suddenly start dating Old Crow men, and nothing has happened to make moping around all weekend in sweatpants and an NFL replica jersey sexy. In other words, Julia Roberts hasn’t come down from her perch to marry her cameraman ... er, scratch that.

It’s easy to see how these TV pairings would irritate women, the implication being that a woman doesn’t want an attractive, ambitious man who challenges her and treats her as an equal; no, she wants one whose best years were in high school and who cracks wise about the in-laws. In other words, according to ABC’s own According to Jim Web site, they want "a simpler man who makes her laugh" and "a husband who knows that the key to a good marriage is nodding when your wife talks." All these ideas are insulting enough. And that’s to say nothing of how these shows contribute to the idea that a woman on TV must look a certain way, while men are allowed to appear pretty much however they please. Personally, I’ve always found the difference in weather forecasters interesting: the women all look like former Miss America contestants, while the roly-poly men do Parade magazine interviews about how much better life is since they got their stomachs stapled.

What I don’t understand is why putting forth the idea that men are these vanquished über-slobs doesn’t offend, well, men. Is this really our fantasy? Listlessness and a hot mommy-wife? In the past, at least we deluded ourselves. We wanted to be James Dean, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra. We wanted to be rebels and tough guys and Indiana Joneses. Even David Lee Roth, if that was your thing. But now we seem to be content with David Schwimmer, a man who plods across the screen with all the excitement of a guy whose girlfriend just told him his cock isn’t big enough. Men on TV today are lazy, infantile, and defeated. And they’re portrayed that way not so we can look down on them; it’s so we can relate to them. No wonder we don’t find it all that offensive. It’s us! And check out our wives!

But we men have begun to slip. Because as society moves forward, we’ve been forced to cede more and more of our power to women. And instead of adapting, we’re throwing in the towel and pretending. We’ve replaced masculinity with some sort of pathetic "maleness." Perhaps this phenomenon is best captured by the new Coors Light campaign, which has us imagining we’re watching football, boozing, and "eating way too much," and still getting it from a pair of twins in cheerleader outfits. If this is a slippery slope, we’re in serious trouble: tomorrow Miller Lite will have us dressed like Fred Flintstone, dragging women around by the hair and shaking our bones at the camera. I mean, today it’s Mark Addy and Jami Gertz; tomorrow it’s Larry Flynt and Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s time to stop the madness and come to grips with this immutable fact: "maleness" doesn’t attract women. It gets you Maced.

Just imagine a TV sit-com that starred Roseanne as a wife who, when she’s not bitching about her job at Yankee Candle Company, sits around with her college friends and watches reruns of A Dating Story, then A Wedding Story, then A Baby Story, until her husband kicks them all out so he can tell Roseanne how wonderful she is. Oh, and her husband is played by Brad Pitt. Come on — they’d have to run it on the Sci Fi Channel.

I think maybe it’s time men applied a fraction of that cynicism to the TV marriages we’re buying into, because that’s not the stuff female fantasies are made of. But don’t take my word for it or Dr. Phil’s or Dr. Drew’s.

Just ask Dr. Quinn.

Jay Jaroch, who is no longer welcome at Hooters, can be reached at jayjaroch@msn.com.