A Real Man… Doesn’t Mooch off His Woman

On the 20 November edition of the talk show “The View,” I noted with interest the comments being made about the recent divorce between pop queen Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie.  The two, having avoided a prenuptial agreement when they married, sped through the divorce process, Ritchie (ostensibly) giving up far more than half of their joint estate.  Madonna’s earnings are estimated at perhaps ten times that of Ritchie, and while he could have been entitled to around half of the sum of their accounts, he voluntarily forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Whoopi Goldberg’s response to Ritchie was one of great admiration, going so far as to say that his actions showed he was “a real man.”  What she intimated by that, she explained, was that he wasn’t willing to act as a financial parasite upon his (ex-)wife, and was willing to respect her by not being dependent on her.

Granted, the whole settlement hardly represents anything of ethical significance; Ritchie could wind up a millionaire fifty times over or more, even with a most inequitable settlement. 

What strikes me as significant is that this case would be used as an opportunity to equate manliness with independence.  This, of course, is no new claim.  Independence lay at the heart of colonial and republican conceptions of manhood in America, and was defined in financial tones after the Industrial Revolution.  But since the emergence of feminism in the 1960s and 70s society has tried to counterbalance this expectation with talk of the need for male “collaboration,” “equality,” “cooperation” and dependence on others, even financially.  The breadwinning male too often came home from the office suffused with a sense of entitlement and unlimited power over his non-breadwinning family members.  The last few decades have been a trimming of that model, making room for women in the work force and reinventing modes of (non-business) male sociality.

What Goldberg espouses represents a gentle swing (and wobble) of the pendulum.   In some sense she probably means only a kind of boundary-setting.  Dependence must not mean economic childishness.  Boys must be men, they must not place a burden on their women.  Women rightly refuse to empower this pedantic neediness.  But the context of Goldberg’s comments suggests a double power play: the use of gender-norming language to shame men into a kind of provider role, combining it with legal claim: “See, what’s mine is mine.  Now be a man and support yourself.”

Men’s Studies Lacking in the UK

Gender studies, particularly women’s studies, has spread in a diffused manner throughout the world.  Aside from political groups and action teams, conferences have been sponsored in India, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden – and the list goes on. 

In the English speaking academy, the United States and the United Kingdom have each done considerable work.  Yet, if you thought the American output of men’s studies has struggled in recent years, consider the UK, which has failed to produce much in the field. 

An upcoming conference in Scotland illustrates the point: a notable lack of awareness and interest in British masculinities.  Take away gay studies and little is being said about men at all!  Having lived in the United Kingdom, I can tell you with all certainty that British men have their own hegemonic standards, and a fascinating history to go with it.  Does the climate of the university system account primarily for this lacuna?  Or are there broader cultural forces establishing this trend? 

 

Presidential Manliness, part 2

Needless to say, Americans have usually felt most comfortable with a male figurehead in politics. The president especially seems to need to strike the pose of the national pater familias – and never is this more true than with his capacity as commander-in-chief.

I point out the 1988 presidential election, in which Michael Dukakis (D) faced off against George Bush (R). Each were competing to follow the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who, for all of his controversial policies, had established himself as a masculine icon. Reagan had opposed communism unflinchingly, and had expanded the American military considerably. Bush, while not the same imposing figure, had the advantage of association with the Hollywood (Holly-war?) president.

Bush was pressing for further military development, especially with regard to new space technologies. Dukakis urged for cutbacks in these areas, a stance which risked making him look effete in comparison with his opponent. The Democratic candidate attempted to shore up this loss of masculine image by staging some photos in an M1 Abrams tank at a Michigan military productions plant. UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher had utilized similar pictures not long before that, and had seen a boost in her popularity. For Dukakis, however, it backfired. Even though he had spent time in the army, the Bush campaign used the tank footage as ammo against Dukakis, portraying him as an insecure poseur.

There are rules to masculine posturing in America, be it in the schoolyard or on the presidential platform. Stand tall – but never try too hard.

Presidential Manliness, part 1

The 2008 presidential race presents all sorts of opportunities for examining masculinities in America. This has been the case in every election, viz., that the public judges the criteria for being “the man.” Does the candidate have a confidence and charisma, perhaps a little swagger? Is he a warrior, someone who can strike fear into America’s enemies? Does he have a professionalness to him? Does he look manly? Is he strong and assertive, sensitive and affective in the right combination?

Of course, this election year has some especially notable elements.
– A black man is running for president.
– A woman is running for vice-president.
– The candidates seek to replace a wildly unpopular president, a man despised largely on account of his public image.

Media news groups are churning out all sorts of highly gendered images. Here are a couple banner ads from Newsmax.com I feel are comment-worthy.

Here I want to point out how McCain, for all his professional demeanor and military identity, is portrayed as jovial. He is serious, but not so much as to lose his sense of humor. Grandfatherly, perhaps. Maybe (if we read the picture negatively) too happy, almost saccharine. Palin seems like a strange complement to the would-be president. Placed in McCain’s background, she looks nervous, even scared. She holds out her hand in a defensive, sort of explanatory posture. Is she leading a meeting – or does she have some explaining to do? Or are we to read the two portraits together: the president keeps on smiling no matter what, and the exculpating, codependent woman tries to cover up the family dysfunctions?

Obama and (especially) Biden strike more traditional, manly poses. Both are stalwart and serious, though Obama in particular has a look of ease on his face. Though dressed formally and clean shaven, they exude a sense of disarming self-confidence. Biden’s hand gesture is remarkable: he points out to the future, to the frontier. He is purposeful and, in contrast to Palin, right beside the presidential nominee.

In this case at least, the banner ads clearly favor the Democratic team, if only because their picture matches up with the tried-and-true archetypes for manliness in election years: they are the cowboys, the pioneers, the businessmen, the generals, “the man.” More to come on this.

Open Forum: Why Is Jim Halpert the New Male?

I hereby crown Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) the New Male.   As the superprotagonist of NBC’s “The Office,” Jim is liked by the guys and loved by the women.  A lot.  And I haven’t run into one exception so far.

How?  How did an unassuming, skinny, paper-pushing dude in middle management become the next über-male?  You tell me. 

Wild… er… Responsible at Heart

When John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart came out in 2001, Evangelical men latched on to the existentialist bad-boy path to Christian manhood.  According to the book, the problem was that men in the churches had become sissified by a sentimental, moralistic, inauthentic environment.  The solution could be found in pursuing the “wild” road of authentic, manly living.  Eldredge’s indebtedness to the mythopoetic men’s movement shows through, albeit in a superficial way: William Wallace and Luke Skywalker replace the ancient fairy tales, Jesus Christ replaces the “I” to some extent.  Wild at Heart struck that perfect marketability for Evangelical men: conservative family values + shame-healing + anti-Victorian backlash + self help group therapy + badass role models. 

Seven years later, men’s ministries are holding Wild at Heart retreats, the latest cropping up in Peoria, IL.  Such men eagerly report that they go on such weekends to buck the system, to get fierce, to prove to themselves that they can be, well, “wild.”  It’s interesting, then, that the primary way these men demonstrate their wildness is by (to quote them) “learning to communicate.”  They admit their failing as husbands and fathers.  They confess their well-hidden wimpiness.  They acquire new skills to speak honestly with God, themselves, and their loved ones.  

Nomenclature aside, let me applaud this wildness.  Truth be told, most men struggle with fear their whole lives, often fears of emotional vulnerability.  Moreover, it seems that in this age young American men struggle with a fear of responsibility (a.k.a. permanent adolescence syndrome).  Christian men are no exception: they don’t cultivate inner strength, they don’t take risks, and so in self-defense insulate themselves from any kind of shame or public accountability.   Let us grant that it takes courage – maybe not the courage of a broadsworded Scot, but courage nonetheless - to put oneself on the line and say, “Yes, I’ve run away from my God-given responsibilities.” 

Masculinities trade in fecund contradictions.  Evangelical men, for this reason and that, spend time being irresponsible to the world around them, if only for a Saturday, in order to recapture the strength to dive back into their world of responsibilities and responsiveness. 

[Keep an eye out for future posts on John Eldredge.]

Taking the False out of Falsetto

How, pray tell, did falsetto become cool again? 

Male vocalists have employed the vocal technique over the past hundred years in lots of interesting ways.  Think of barbershop quartets, doo-wap, surf music, soul, and glam rock.  And who can forget the Bee Gees’ relentless whinnying over interminable disco beats?  More recently bands like The White Stripes and MGMT have cranked up the volume knob on their garage-band amps, and cranked up the irony in their vocal register to match.  Some of these altitudinous notes sound like they are coming from well-trained lungs, others as if from a Monty Python sketch.  But it misses the point to scrutinize too carefully the quality of the voice.  Falsetto toys with social meanings in a way that the normal register doesn’t.

A first point to make here is that falsetto crosses over gender expectations.  A man otherwise deemed “manly” can cross over from his normal, deep vocal range to something reserved for women.  It comes as no surprise that bands like 80’s bands Stryper and Poison used to wear tight clothes and make-up in conjunction with their high-pitched singing and screaming.  They garnered attention by transcending the bounds of normalcy and civilized behavior.  Philip Auslander points out in Performing Glam Rock (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 2006) that falsetto suggests a kind of liberation from social constraints by exhibiting the power of both sexes.  Hence he dares to call Brian Ferry from Roxy Music “a male version of the Sapphonic voice” (p.167), meaning one, who like the lesbian poet Sappho, had become supra-sexed and who thus achieved something like angelic powers. 

In a similar vein, Auslander points out that falsetto intimates a kind of sexual deviancy, manifested especially from the 1970s on.  I find this interesting, because it means that male vocalists appropriated a feminine mode within a masculine expectation, namely, they made “singing like a girl” into an expression of sexual aggressiveness proper to a man.  Think about the MTV videos from the late 80s/early 90s depicting feminine-looking men luring (clean, dolled up) groupies into their back rooms for sexual escapades.  These men had become “dangerous” by their ability to traverse the gender divide and so could lead women into unknown realms of pleasure and power.

Maybe the most important thing to observe is that falsetto unites authenticity with play.  That is, for all its pomp it comes across as “spontaneous,” the broadly accepted criterion of good rock music.  Because it violates civic norms (especially when combined with other gender bending performance techniques), falsetto suggests that a vocalist doesn’t give a damn about the world, and therefore must simply have integrity, i.e., be at home with himself.  But singing glass-shattering notes obviously exudes a real playfulness.  As showboating, it would seem to be entirely the voice of an imposter were it not for the fact that it also has self-consciousness built into it.  No one actually thinks that this is the lead vocalist’s actual voice.  He very obviously employs it because he can, not because he is limited to it.  (This is the heart of all “popular” gender bending, is it not?)  He is utterly authentic because he knows how to play the game so well.  And so, mutatis mutandis, there is nothing false in falsetto.

What Is It about a Man in Uniform?

Especially in bygone days, but even now, it has been common to hear women say, “I love a man in uniform.”  They mean it romantically/sexually, but their attraction clearly stems in large part from the kinds of associations they gather from a uniform.  What women ostensibly mean when they refer to “uniform” are not refrigerator repairmen and Arby’s employees; they mean police officers, military, doctors, firemen.  Notice how each of these uniforms indicate key traits:

• Economic viability
• Physical strength and vigor
• Mental acuity
• Social status

That is, women can “safe-sexualize” a man in a uniform because he is a known entity.  Other types of uniforms may provide a stereotype for more daring sexual fantasies, such as the shirtless Harlequin romance beefcakes or Diet Coke’s “Lucky” commercials.  But for the most part women fall back on men whose occupations are indicated in safer, more professional garb, making transparent a whole other host of socio-economic qualities.  Uniforms signify a kind of homogeneity useful for identification of one’s rung on the social ladder.  Think about it: it’s indicated in the name itself, uni-formity. 

How interesting that men tend to like women in outfits, not uniforms.  Barring the nursing profession, occupational garb isn’t as important for men, who generally look for women who are able to accentuate their lives, not women who provide a financial or class-status cornerstone.  Thus men like changing appearances, whether that be the changing fashions from day to day or the erotic role-playing in the bedroom.  But these trends may be reversing in some part as women play a greater role in business outside the home and men identify less with their roles as breadwinners and defenders. 

Any further thoughts or observations?