Have at it. And if you need a topic: how the hell did nobody in the 80s pick up on the fact that Tom Cruise had way better chemistry with Val Kilmer than Kelly McGillis in Top Gun? I mean, it’s not like it was subtle…
Thanksgiving Gender Enforcement Jumble Sale
Thanksgiving: a time to gather with people you love, and try to remember why. As we gather with our families around tables groaning with food, we’re going to hear things that would have sounded retrograde in the 50s, and as we enact cultural rituals, we’re going to see roles played out that would make Victorians…
Twilight, Bieber, and Valentino
Trigger warning for a Photoshopped picture of a rape. There is a subset of the female gaze that causes much kerfluffle amongst a lot of guys, and it tends to occur in an incredibly predictable pattern. Now, for purposes of this post, we will be assuming that female desire for men is not a myth…
Advertising Sins: HopeItsAGirl.com
Courtesy of monkey in the open thread, we got a heads-up to this appalling site about how much little boys suck. I’d like to say it’s about something else, but it really isn’t. It’s got child-focused misandry and no other fucking ingredients. It really says something that this entire fake site is an ad intended…
Big Fellas And Fashion
Courtesy of ocelot in the open thread, check out this article in New York Magazine about the nonexistence of plus-size male models in fashion. Note phrasing: not dearth, not paucity, not lack of exposure, nonexistence. (As with so much else in life, don’t read the comments on that article. They are dismaying.) I think we…
Masculine Lore
On a recent open thread, Ozy posted a picture of her “steampunk rakish dandy” costume as an example of “what sluts wear on Halloween”. I was deeply offended. Speaking as a rakish dandy, I feel that this costume misrepresents my people, because the bottom two buttons of Ozy’s waistcoat are undone. You’re meant to have…
Somebody Please Think For The Children
One argument one hears a lot, especially when it comes to bullshit gender enforcement, is “But it will confuse the children!” We heard it about gay marriage (“Children won’t understand how someone can have two daddies or two mommies!”) and we hear it about circumcision (“Our son will be confused if his dick looks different…
A Fairy Tale Hero Is Something To Be
The damage of the “success object” imagery around men is pervasive and complex, so bear with me. It’s going to look like I’m just talking about fiction for the first while. There’s a jillion movies about Robin Hood out there, and some of them are decent, but there’s only one that I don’t consider bullshit.…
Halloween: Dan Savage Has Points, Misses Points
So I read Dan Savage’s article on Halloween, and I’ve been ruminating on it, particularly in light of my previous criticism of “sexy” Halloween costumes. The short version of Dan’s piece is that we should embrace sexy costumes, because Halloween is a great holiday for people to celebrate and have fun with their sexuality, and…
Ideal Vs. Real In Attraction
So I’m reading this post on Jezebel about increasing cultural acceptance of the female gaze, and it’s got an interesting line in it: For example, many men don’t realize that their girlfriends might lust after Lautner or Gosling — and still be attracted to their own less-than-perfect male partners. Y’know, there’s a damn good point…
The Kipling Effect
We all have art that we enjoy as art, but deplore as ideology. This sometimes creates a serious cognitive dissonance that I refer to as the Kipling Effect. I cite Kipling because he’s such a clear example. He was, legitimately, a brilliant writer. He was also, observably, extra-super militarist, imperialist, and racist, by the standards…
Halloween Costumes
My Halloween costume this year is simple and inexpensive: Lex Luthor. The key components of this costume are a red silk tie in a full Windsor knot, because Luthor is the kind of asshole who always has to win every human interaction, and a Kryptonite signet ring on my right hand, because Luthor is also…
Suits, Part Two: Suit As Uniform
There’s an old joke about why African-American men (supposedly) dress more flamboyantly than white men, goes something like this: A white guy thinks “If I wear something colorful or interesting, I’ll look different from everyone else. I might not be listened to when I speak, I might be stared at or avoided on the street.…
Alan Grayson Gets It
Speaking, as we were in the suit thread, of men in sharp ties: Alan Grayson is rocking a very bold tie choice, and more importantly, rocking the Getting It on the economy and the 99% movement. If I were his campaign manager for the next office he runs for, I would just run the last…
Suits, Part One: Suit As Costume
In Western culture, the men’s suit is tied in with masculinity in a variety of ways. This is the first part of a planned three-part series teasing out some of the weird issues around suits and the wearing thereof.
Question For My Fellow Men
Well, if we’re going to talk about men’s issues, let’s talk about men’s issues. What is the appeal of boxer shorts? I’ve never fully gotten this. I understand that they come in a variety of amusing and aesthetically interesting colors and patterns, and you can get them with cartoon characters on them, but nowadays that’s…