Kay Hymowitz has a new book — Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys — and Dr. Helen is questioning some of its premises at her blog, where she asks a question that made me chuckle:
When someone tells you to “man-up,” what do you think they are trying to tell you?
I’d rather not answer that right now, because this is Sunday and I am trying to keep this post “family friendly.”
But I will go on the record as saying (for now, at least) that I am not inclined to order a pair of the new Levi’s “Ex girlfriend’s jeans” that Glenn utterly failed to recommend when he had the opportunity earlier.
No seriously. The pants are far too queeny for me, and I am just not into that look — no matter how hip they’re supposed to be. I’m not saying that they might not look attractive on some people, but a man my age just shouldn’t run around in public wearing what look for the world like ballet tights.
But for those who are interested, here’s the new look!
Not that new, really. I’m old enough to remember the skin-tight pants from the 1960s, although they weren’t quite that severe. Whether they are “better” than the baggy pants that couldn’t possibly have gotten any baggier, who knows? I do see some young men at the University of Michigan running around who have that look, and it is my carefully considered opinion that a lecture from Kay Hymowitz about how they need to “man up” would not sway them to ditch the tights and opt for conventional manly slacks.
Scoldings tend to not work that way. (It goes without saying that a “manliness backlash” might work in either direction, and unmanly fashions worn by some could very well encourage manlier fashions in others.)
But I digress. This post is not about the merits of manly versus unmanly fashion, but the premise of the “man up and get married!” argument.
In Dr. Helen’s latest PJM column from 2008, she argues that Hymowitz is missing a central point:
Hymowitz is the author of Marriage and Caste in America
whose main thesis seems to be that marriage is important to society. I read over her article and was rather appalled at the lack of understanding on the part of Hymowitz as to why men don’t marry. We interviewed her for a podcast on the Glenn and Helen Show and she seemed to be level-headed and understanding-but I guess everyone has their blind spot when it comes to why men don’t toe the line and provide society with what it needs or wants despite little reward and plenty of headache for being a modern day husband and father. Instead, Hymowitz, like so many other writers and naysayers blames men for not marrying because their “default state” is perpetual adolescence…
As to what Hymowitz deems “unmanly,” it ain’t the ex-girlfriend’s ballet tights jeans:
there’s no denying the lesson of today’s media marketplace: give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria’s Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets, and the NFL on the other, and it’s the models, cyborgs, toilets, and football by a mile.
Funny thing, but I don’t consider the above to be unmanly or even especially adolescent. But her premise seems to be that things adolescent men like are unmanly.
Why? What is unmanly about liking sexy lingerie or football, or blowing stuff up?
Dr. Helen thinks that what’s happening is that men are on strike:
What Hymowitz misses is that men are on a marriage strike, not necessarily because they are perpetual adolescents or avoiding deep attachments to others but because the reward for being an adult in our society is so low, especially for men.
It’s really simple Psychology 101 (or Economics 101) — make something negative enough and people will avoid it, make it positive, and more people will engage in that particular behavior.
I couldn’t agree more.
And at Dr. Helen’s blog, I left this comment:
One of the ironies is that scolding men for not marrying makes the whole idea of marriage look like that much more of a drag.
As to whether men can be scolded into being more manly, I think that may be a hall of mirrors.
It should be borne in mind that many men resent being told what to do.
Reading the other comments, I saw similar sentiments repeated over and over, which made my comment superfluous. But what the hell — a superfluous comment left at another blog can certainly be the subject of a blog post here.
When you tell people what to do, you are simply adding to the list of disincentives. I like what Barry Goldwater said years ago about Americans being a people who naturally resent being told what to do, and if you tell them not to do something, their impulse is to figure out a way to do it.
I would say that real men don’t like being told what to do, and it goes to the essence of manliness. Which is what I meant by the “hall of mirrors.” If you tell men to “man up” and be “manly,” some of them might just decide to do the opposite out of spite. Perhaps in extreme cases, wearing ridiculously tight pants as a symbol of manhood! That’s the way it worked back in the 60s. Tight pants were one of the symbols of rebellion, and schools used to struggle with dress codes accordingly. (More recently, schools have had to fight super baggy pants, which may by now be a vintage retro look.)
Kay Hymowitz’s insistence on manning up reminded me of an excellent YouTube video series which caused me to laugh myself sick on several occasions. I don’t have time to watch them all, but they take the form of a show called “Is It A Good Idea to Microwave This?” There are countless episodes, but the theme is the same — host Jory Caron (who looks for the world like an engineering student) and his sidekick will put a new thing into a microwave oven as an “experiment” and then cook it to see what happens. Naturally, they have exploded countless microwave ovens, and have probably violated more nanny state bureaucrat consumer product safety and environmental protection laws than almost anyone in the country, but they do it in a hilariously, deliberately irresponsible “scientific” manner, and I think it’s great.
“Is It A Good Idea To Microwave A Bottle Of Beer?” is as good an example as any.
After the bottle bursts, they comment:
“It’s the manliest smell! It’s swagger and beer!”
That the whole thing is adolescent is not merely beside the point, it is the point. The argument could be made that what the glum sourpusses who deem it their duty to scold the world call adolescence in fact lies at the heart of manliness.
Who knows? The Dangerous Book for Boys (reviewed by Glenn ages ago) might even be a manhood manual.
It strikes me that there is a fine line between an indictment of adolescence and an indictment of manhood, and that Kay Hymowitz just isn’t quite getting it.
Scolding men into being manly is self canceling.
Manhood has been in the microwave long enough.
UPDATE: When I wrote this post, the PJM column Dr. Helen referred to as upcoming had not yet been written, and I mistakenly called her previous PJM piece “current,” which it is not. My mistake has been corrected above.
Comments
10 responses to “Destroying manhood in order to save it?”
Jeans began as work pants. Therefore, my yardstick is the further they get from being practical workwear, the further they get from manliness.
When I briefly worked in the US District Court in Seattle, I noted many of the clerks came to work wearing Carharts. I pissed some of them off by asking how many loggers and commercial fishermen went to work in suits.
Good thing I didn’t advise them “man up.” Probably would have been a hate crime.
The skin tight pants of the 60s were tight in the crotch and thighs and loose around the ankles.
We called them bell bottoms.
If you tell some one what to do they will do the opposite. If you leave them alone they will do as they damn well please.
Steve, the loggers I’ve seen in Western Washington wear jeans hacked off about 6 or 8 inches up from the bottom. They’re frayed and loose to go over the logging boots, and cut up high because of the swamp they wade through – it’s so damn wet there.
Maybe a few “timber fallers” fresh out of college that have hired on because they saw a Discovery Channel make-believe program, would wear heavy Carharts, but I bet they ditch them as soon as they get soaked and double in weight.
Keep in mind a whole bunch of these current and future man-children are being raised essentially with only female influence. Women are largely clueless that there are profound psychological differences between men and women or boys and girls. Women’s denial of the fundamental differences between male/female often leads to them raising boys as girls, hence the drugging of boys at alarming rates. If you don’t drug them early and often they may not sit passively for hours and hours and hours, day after day after day for many years on end.
Eric,
You write: “Funny thing, but I don’t consider the above to be unmanly or even especially adolescent. . . .”
Here you hint at the greater point. It’s not that a given activity or interest is adolescent, per se, it’s that if men are interested in it, it is deemed adolescent or puerile in the national dialogue because it’s a male activity.
It’s adolescent to enjoy seeing women in lingerie? No, it’s Darwinian (continuation of the species and all that).
Like to hunt? How barbaric (forget primordial hunter-gatherers).
It’s adolescent for men to fight,or want to fight? Just remember Code Pink’s protest at the Marine Recruiting station In Berkely and then how Code Pink appealed to those very Marines for protection.
One observation raised about the educational system is that it teaches in a way that ignores male learning styles and then questions why enrollment in higher ed is greater for women than men. I believe Dr. Helen, herself, has raised this point on several occasions.
Much of this has to do with the feminizing of our national dialogue; I don’t know many women who see men as perpetually adolescnet, but it surely appears in all phases of the national discussion (universities, the media, the courts, etc.). Don’t forget, even the old aphorism “boys will be boys” was never seen as a compliment.
Nor was “girls will be girls.”
Just saying. I agree with most of what you said. But… Balance is needed. And neither side seems to really have it.
Kathy Kinsley,
Re: Balance is needed.
That’s why I make the distinction between women I know, have associated with and have worked with vs. the national dialogue. It’s my experience that most men and women treat each other on a equal footing as long as there are no personal barriers (e.g., an acrimonious divorce). In the national dialogue, however, there seems to be this overriding sense that female characteristics are good and male characteristics are not.
I think T’s last point is manifested in the culture at large in the huge number of TV commercials (and even TV programs) that portray men as bumbling idiots, and women as the super-competent saviors of the household. Now I’m sure there are men that indeed are bumbling idiots and couldn’t feed a baby with an instruction book, and women who indeed can do everything from getting a blood stain out of a shirt to changing their own spark plugs. Still, reality is probably somewhere in the middle (most men and women are pretty competent at some things, and not so much at others), but you’d never know it by looking at TV advertising trends.
Hello. And Bye.