Ryan Gosling = Awesome Dad

Ryan Gosling is going to be the best Dad ever.  And the Daily News has the proof.

Click here to see what it means to be the Best Dad Ever!!!

What's that?  You are wondering why a bunch of pictures of Ryan with other people's kids in movie photo ops, with his dog, hugging a lady friend and having a coloring book about him (my personal favorite) are proof of forthcoming awesome-Dad-ness?  Yes, me too.  Once again we are confronted with evidence that the bar for being a great Dad is set pretty low (a favorite topic of mine which you can also see in Father of the Year).  Take a good picture, take your dog with you everywhere, be enough in touch with your emotional side that you can - gasp - hug someone (who happens to be a hot co-star) and you're set. We all know that kids and dogs are exactly the same and movie publicity stills are as real as it gets.  Oh, and have someone make a coloring book about you.  We really can't forget that one, which exhibits mad Dad skills.

Meanwhile, in serendipitous fashion, this little nugget appeared on the very same day in my Facebook feed.

They forgot tinker, tailor, soldier, spy.  Oh wait, those are boy jobs

First of all, I have to say that it seems a little lazy that the first item on the list is actually Mother.  If you look up the definition of goddess, the first word is not goddess.  Or if you look up, say, dumbbell. You know what I mean. Okay, I feel better with that off my chest.

Onto more substantial things.  Now I'm sure Mr. Hedges thought he was being utterly complimentary towards women with kids by outlining for us how many things we do and ending with a flourishing finish - comparing us to a Superhero (no disrespect to Wonder Woman - she rocks) and an overall statement as to our awesomeness.  Quite frankly I hate lists like this that seek to glorify Mothers by dropping a load of tasks that read more like a job description for indentured servitude, with a couple of emotive phrases thrown in (best friend?  worst enemy?) to make sure it doesn't actually get confused with indentured servitude.

Of course, there are most definitely nuggets of truth in there in terms of the ongoing tedious tasks of being a parent.  Do you see what I did there?  I used the gender-neutral word "parent."   Because I hate to break the news to Mr. Hedges and the world but you can also do and be those things if you have a Y chromosome.  If you are one of two adults in a household with kids, then you better be able to do a hell of a lot more than take a pretty picture and carry a dog.

This could have been an inspirational "What is A Dad" picture but they don't seem to exist
How ever do they manage to feel good about themselves without it?

Oh well.  The good news is that Mr. Gosling is from the land of celebrity where believe it or not, there is actually some equality in views of parenting.  After all, this is apparently a Mother multi-tasking...

So I guess you can get away with just being able to take a pretty picture after all.