emotional ennui, string tears and the conflict of being- are such displays of one’s being to be tolerated or best relegated in the dustbin lest we offend other men and foil ones chance of re producing healthy offspring?
There’s a nostalgic rhapsody for the decisive, courageous, self-reliant image of manhood embodied by Hemingway and his characters and the repudiation of the alcoholic, misogynistic, belligerent image of manhood embodied by Papa Hemingway and his male protagonists.
“The masculinity of the past had a lot of problems,” said Beckerman, 28, originally from Alaska, “but what Hemingway symbolized as a cartoon character is something that American men have lost.”
And in a way it’s true: At one stage of America’s history what defined masculinity included stoic dispositions, street brawls, broken noses, fast cars, drunken fits and lets never forget the ability to bring home the bacon. It was a mans world that was typified by billboards full of cowboys looking into the vast distance of an America that he had yet to conquer but was bound to conquer. He was Clark Gable, smooth, manly, with a way of the world and forever a reassuring presence no matter what demons lay ahead.
Today’s male has been robbed of his guns and hunting toys, instead replaced with mathematical algorithms that he is supposed to exploit to make vast sums of money (which hiretho helps him loudly exclaim his virility and by extension his masculinity), replaced with waxed chests that he now models on billboards with carefully crafted effeminate gestures which are supposed to remind us that he is still a man (barely) but a wanton creature because of the suggestive feminine guise he portrays.
This ironically may be the modern man’s strength: to approximate his femininity. Where being masculine once meant flaunting and flexing your muscles, strength, fast car, large home, vast estates, the hos you mounted- (and it still does in many quarters)- today one can boast some degree of masculinity and by extension the validation of his peers and the opposite sex (and let’s not forget the homoerotic same sex quota) by extolling his femininity.
He looks and smells like a polished female, is pristine, enjoys a position as a literary figure or tortured actor/artist/musician and is emulated the world over. Of course his adulation is contingent on his ability to bring home the bacon- the Emmy awards, the literary prizes, the hot bitches, and the star fucked gazes that let him and the rest of the world that he has arrived. After all being a man has always being a conditional conduit- all we’ve done is swap a gun for a computer, a horse for a Ferrari and hopefully gone on and conquered the world, all a woman on the other hand has to do to declare her evolution in femininity is just look damn pretty. How despicable and corrupt. But then again you do want to get laid- right fellas?
The Emasculation of the American Male.
While it is true that men’s roles are changing, I believe though that women still desire men who are, in fact men- just modernized so they are no longer homophobic, racist or sexist. I don’ think that this model is used to appeal to women but rather to shock, to horrify, to disgust. This is not dissimilar to the Benetton ads in the 80’s. While I do believe that the author is correct in stating that men have lost some their classic male iconography and some may have picked up some girlie habits, I don’t believe that men define their masculinity in terms of how feminine they can be. Perhaps this is just a time when men are figuring out where they stand in this great, big new world and some of that is tipping their toe into the sea of androgyny and testing out their sexual boundaries. I trust that the pendulum will swing back only with a more enlightened, more conscious view of masculinity. Let’s leave the arrogant, misogynistic, abusive man in the past and create something new.
don’t end up an emo fag like most men in america today: http://goo.gl/obiC