Close your eyes and imagine the manliest place in America, a city inhabited by so many bikers, cowboys, cops and construction workers it looks like the site of a Village People cover band convention. Now open them.
Welcome to Oklahoma City.
The snack food Combos has announced its fourth annual list of America’s Manliest Cities, and the winner is far from the sweaty clubs of New York City or the hollerin’ streets of Memphis.
The beloved and, we guess, fairly manly junk food joined forces with Bert Sperling, the author and number-cruncher who publishes the Cities Ranked & Rated guides to the best places in America to live.
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Together, they used a variety of hetero-normative factors to make the distinction: a high concentration of tractor supply stores and steakhouses can push cities up the rankings, while “girly” things like nail salons and upscale outlet malls can move them down.
“The results don’t lie: the manliest place to be is the city they call ‘OKC,'” Craig Hall, General Manager of Combos’ manufacturer, Mars Chocolate North America, said in a press release.
“From its stellar hoops team to its love of pick-up trucks, Oklahoma City exemplifies the best of being a man.”
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The south dominated much of the list with Columbia, S.C.; Memphis, Nashville, and Birmingham, Ala. rounding out the top five.
Not so manly is the West Coast: Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Oakland, and San Diego were all in what Combos likes to call the five “least manly” cities in America. (Among other major cities, New York ranked in at 39th and Washington D.C. came in at 43rd.)
Most of the cities either lost or gained some ounce of manhood. The only two that stayed the same? Richmond, Virginia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Keep doing what you’re doing, you averagely male men, you.
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