by Liz Plank
1 You’re Not Born a Man
After trying to interview several men, I realized that masculinity was something you did, not something you talked about. Although most men would eventually come around and answer my questions truthfully, for many it was the first time they had ever talked about masculinity out loud. They had spent years performing it, but talking about it? Not so much. I noticed that men’s voices would often get quieter and they would look around as if they were assessing if it was safe to speak. Although I don’t have direct experience to corroborate this, the process of talking about masculinity with a man is what I imagine it would feel like to rob a bank. The prospect of the reward might be exciting, but the entire process sounds way too stressful.
But from my research I knew it was harder for men to share their feelings with other men (data shows men are at least slightly more likely to prefer a female therapist), so I wanted to see if they would confide their thoughts about masculinity to someone who isn’t part of the club: a woman. Or two, for that matter. So on a scorching-hot Sunday afternoon I put this theory to the test and designed my own social experiment in Washington Square Park. I armed myself with a table and a sign that read: “Free Advice for Men from a Woman.” I brought along my dear friend and renowned relationship expert Esther Perel to offer men some free, useful and what would otherwise be very expensive advice. We sat there for three hours and at no point were there not men at our table seeking advice on a wide variety of topics and issues. As I expected, a majority of the questions were about women. One man pointed to his nearby girlfriend and simply whispered, “How do I make her happy?”
More than one man inquired about the ways to “impress” a woman (Esther’s lightning-round advice: if you’re just trying to impress her, then you’re more into “look at me” rather than “I see you”). Other men asked why men engaged in so much posturing. One asked about how straight white men could talk about their worries and concerns without seeming like they are taking away from the microphone of marginalized previously silenced voices. Interestingly, though, Esther and I remarked after the experiment that very few men actually really asked questions. Most of them just showed up at the table waiting for us to ask them questions. It’s like they aren’t used to admitting they have any. But once the men started talking, they didn’t stop. It wasn’t until we started offering men some direction that it was clear how much they longed for it. It’s when I did this social experiment that I realized masculinity is a lot like Fight Club; the first rule is that you don’t talk about it.
But when I eventually forced it out of them, I kept hearing two things over and over again.
The first one was that nearly all the men didn’t feel like they were really men yet, despite all being, in every sense of the definition, undeniably full-grown adult men. Being a man felt less like an identity and more like a job or a reward you received only after going through excruciating circumstances. The men we spoke to felt an unforgiving pressure to perform their masculinity constantly. Being a man was something you earned. But curiously, although all of them had deliberately or inadvertently engaged in tactics to achieve ideal masculinity, none of them really felt like “real men.” And this wasn’t just the men I spoke to. This phenomenon is supported by what sociologists call “precarious manhood.” What this theory boils down to is that masculinity needs to be constantly proved, while womanhood is more static, or fixed. Women have more permission to drift away from traditional feminine norms; men can’t do that with as much flexibility. Women can wear pants, have boy names like Charlie or Riley; they can even wear ties and a tuxedo at a wedding. As long as they adhere to a baseline of traditionally feminine characteristics, they can adopt certain masculine traits and it’s perceived as edgy, sexy—it can even give them cachet. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all women equally; more on that later.
But masculinity is much more rigid and requires constant self-regulation. Just think about the common expression a “real man.” A “real man” doesn’t cry. A “real man” doesn’t wear makeup. A “real man” doesn’t wear skirts. No such expression exists for women. Even if a man squats three hundred pounds, biting into beef jerky with one hand and fighting a hungry bear with the other, his masculinity would still be put into question for ordering a drink that comes in a cosmo glass with a cherry at happy hour. Gender may be a social construct for both men and women, but womanhood isn’t lost through social acts; it’s acquired or lost through mostly private biology changes with normal shifts in bodily features such as puberty or menopause. There aren’t femininity-restoring activities for women because femininity is not something that needs to be earned. For men, it’s the opposite. Masculinity is procured through ritualized and often-public social behaviors. This is fairly consistent throughout history and across most cultures all around the world. For instance, in Bronze Age Russia the passage into manhood involved boys killing animals, often their own pet dogs. Currently, boys in the Karo tribe found in parts of Sudan, Urganda and Ethiopia have to jump over bulls completely naked to prove they are men. In Papua New Guinea, boys from the Sambia tribe are separated from their mothers and subjected to a series of rituals, like having sharp grass pressed into their nose until it bleeds.
As Esther Perel put it during our social experiment, “We are born women; we become men.” She explained, “There is no word for ‘emasculating’ for women, or ‘sissy’ for women. Men’s masculinity is predicated on the rejection of the feminine in all societies.” In Esther’s research, she has found that almost every traditional society around the world “squeezes the fear and the vulnerability out of him to turn him into a man” and “feminine attributes are squeezed out of him so he can be fearless, competitive, powerful and strong.”
The second thing I noticed was that hardly any of the men had discussed this with anyone before. All of the men who came to our table, with the exception of those who identified as gay, admitted they hadn’t had this conversation with another man. The men I spoke to were doing exactly what they were taught to do: not ask for directions, even when it came to their emotional well-being and happiness. Shockingly, some were more comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities with two random women than with the closest men in their lives. What does that say about how transgressive it is to question or talk about masculinity for men? What started off as a random social experiment quickly became a safe space for men to share what scared and confused them, some for the very first time.
Because I’m part of the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus generation, a book that attributed most of men and women’s problems to innate biological differences between each other, I expected the biggest problem for men to be women. Given how much emphasis we put on so-called innate differences between the sexes as a barrier to healthy romantic or platonic relationships, I expected men to make a laundry list of all the ways that women drove them nuts. But within a few minutes of our social experiment, I quickly realized that for many of the men we talked to, the hardest thing about being a man was not necessarily dealing with women; it was dealing with other men. This came up with one of the first men we spoke to. He was British, in his midfifties, and seemed a bit taken aback when I asked him bluntly what was hard about being a man. But he didn’t pause for very long before he earnestly responded: “Other men.” When Esther pressed him to finish his sentence, he responded: “Expectations about men by other men.” He explained that he felt the pressure of “being a leader” and to “have a point of view rather than not know.” He also talked about feeling a pressure to speak rather than listen. The gay men we spoke to were even more explicit about the way they felt uneasy in environments where there were a lot of men. For them, the rules imposed by traditional masculinity didn’t only make them feel personally uncomfortable; it made them feel unsafe around members of their own gender. One gay couple who came over to us explained that they found themselves constantly and subconsciously sweeping environments for men who could be a threat. “I’m scanning for other guys like
me, so other gay guys, and women, and the other thing that I’m trying to look for is hypermasculinity, because those are the guys I want to avoid.” They explained that this was the reason they primarily hung out with women. Although we were in the middle of the West Village in New York City, one of the most progressive cities in the world, the rules around what being a “real man” were a significant barrier to gay men freely existing in both private and public spaces.
No wonder men weren’t able to be vulnerable about their fears—they’re too busy pretending like they didn’t have any. When I asked two young men who had recently moved from India to study at NYU, “Do you think masculinity is fragile?” one of them said, “Of course. There’s so many expectations, and so many threads holding it together that could go wrong, if one thing [is] different, the whole thing collapses.” In that moment it became clear to me that men are so busy maintaining the illusion that “ideal” masculinity is achievable that they have no real language to talk about the ways they were constrained by it. Idealized masculinity is the elephant in the room men have to simultaneously tame and yet pretend doesn’t exist. Maintaining that balance between fighting feelings internally and hiding them externally seemed truly exhausting.
This social experiment changed everything for me. As I walked home from the park in the blistering heat I started looking at every man on the street differently, imagining him carrying an invisible shield or armor that most people, perhaps even himself, knew nothing about. I began to call it the man shield. I started trying to guess the shape, material and size of the invisible armor of men I would meet. I would try to show it to the men I would meet. Help them realize it wasn’t serving them. The more they tried to hide their weaknesses, the heavier the armor was and the tougher it would be to let go of it.
One guy I was in a relationship with thought I was breaking up with him every time I would ask him to share his insecurities with me. Talking about what made him vulnerable or imperfect felt like an admission of guilt rather than an admission of growth. “I feel like you’re looking for problems,” he said, interrupting me one day after I asked him about his thorny relationship with his dad. “I know you’re a journalist, but I feel like I’m on 60 Minutes.” He eventually came around to realizing that sharing what made him weak wouldn’t make me run away; it would make us closer. But this made me realize that the bigger the armor, the less men were aware that it was even there and the harder it would be to help them notice it. This armor allowed men short-term relief from the pressures of masculinity, but the long-term consequences were catastrophic. I was determined to uncover this invisible shield not just with the men I dated but with every man I could reach. I became convinced that this was how we could fundamentally change the world.
2 Manhood Is Never Fully Earned and Needs to Be Renewed Over and Over Again
Once I started paying attention, I could see the pressure for men to prove their masculinity every place I looked. I noticed it everywhere: even in pizza. I became obsessed with a study that found that when male subjects were in the presence of women, they ate 93 percent more pizza. That’s almost twice as much pizza eaten to (most likely unconsciously) impress women—because nothing turns women on more than a guy who is bloated and burpy and has pepperoni breath. Don’t get me wrong; I love a man who can handle his carbs. Eating carbs together is one of my favorite bonding activities. But why do men feel the pressure to overeat—or, worse, unconsciously do so—to prove something?
Researchers from Cornell University explain these results by arguing that “men will engage in behavior that permits them to ‘show off’ that they possess extraordinary skills, advantages, and/or surplus energy in degrees that are superior to other men.”
In fact, the researchers concluded that “conspicuous eating or overeating as yet another of the myriad activities through which men attempt to establish dominance hierarchies.” If you’re wondering, the female subjects in the study ate no differently whether they were in the presence of men or women. The pizza study illustrated the way men had adopted behaviors they might not even be aware of just to prove their masculinity. But what happens when, in the expected event that they try, they aren’t successful? Bad things.
There are slightly innocuous ways that men will reaffirm their masculinity when it’s threatened. One way is to lie. One study from the University of Washington showed that when men were told they scored lower than their actual strength on a handgrip strength test, they were more likely to distort a completely verifiable fact: their height. This baffled even the researchers of the study. In probably the most amazing subdued academic burn, lead author Dr. Sapna Cheryan said, “height is something you think would be fixed, but how tall you say you are is malleable, at least for men.” In addition to inflating an observable visible characteristic, having their masculinity threatened made them more likely to report a higher amount of past romantic conquests, identify as more aggressive and athletic as well as stay clear of typically feminine consumer products, because nothing says real man like staying away from a pink razor.1
Another study by researchers at the University of South Florida made one group of men braid hair while a control group braided rope. The group that was given the traumatizing task of braiding human hair were more likely to want to hit a punching bag over making a puzzle and were more likely to punch the bag harder. “The most liberal, non-homophobic men in our studies were just as uncomfortable braiding hair as those who hold very traditional beliefs about gender roles,” researchers said. “Men’s anxiety about violating the male gender role is almost like a classically conditioned response. People have no control over it.” The authors explained that being aggressive is a “manhood-restoring tactic” and that “women are not the main punishers of gender role violations.” In other words, when men feel less strong, they have all kinds of ways to compensate for it. And most of this isn’t conscious or intentional. Given that men are perpetually being told they are not tough enough, they find themselves in a vicious (and apparently carb-driven) cycle.
The studies I’ve just laid out may seem ridiculous, maybe even frivolous. But they’re only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the strategies men use to compensate for this feeling of insatiable masculinity. When the handgrip study was published, the authors gave a stern warning in their press release to contextualize what their data revealed, because the consequences can go above men lying about how tall they are. For instance, the researchers pointed to data that shows that men with baby faces are more likely to display hostile behavior and commit crimes and that when men are told they score lower on masculinity tests, they are more willing to “act aggressively, harass women and belittle other men.”
(No word yet on what kind of masculinity-restoring activities occur with men who are told they have small hands, but an interesting case study is currently unfolding in the White House.)
In all seriousness, “the pressure men have to broadcast their manhood at any cost” can have devastating effects. The authors even point to research showing that men who are unemployed are more likely to be violent inside the home. Another alarming study shows that when men are told they score lower on a masculinity scale, they are more likely to blame women for sexual assault.
“Men have a lot of power in our society, and what this study shows is that some decisions can be influenced by how they’re feeling about their masculinity in the moment,” Dr. Cheryan explained. This means the messages they receive about how much of a man they are, compared to what is expected, impact more than just their mood—it has wide-ranging implications that most men may not have even begun to scratch the surface of. It’s hard not to see America’s forty-fifth president in those statistics. It’s no coincidence that a man who demands a folder of adoring headlines and tweets about himself is also responsible for some of the most overtly violent rhetoric in modern political history. It’s hard not to see the link between Trump’s deep insecurities about his masculinity and his propensity to lash out to reclaim it.
/> While women’s femininity can’t be taken away so swiftly and they are largely given permission to transgress those expectations (we can wear pants; we can wear shorts; we can be tomboys), men don’t have that luxury. But of course, the latitude to transgress applies to different groups of women unevenly. Straight, thin, white, cisgender, able-bodied women have more flexibility than women whose identities don’t fit into those boxes. The less marginalized you are, the more accepting society is of you breaking norms, because it doesn’t threaten an existing ruling system. Having an identity that fits into the dominant culture protects you. That’s why a thin woman proclaiming her love for pizza on Instagram gets her attention and adoration, while an overweight woman doing the same thing invites concern. It also explains why it’s fine when straight women kiss each other at clubs, but when queer women show affection in public spaces they risk harassment, discrimination or even death. Women’s actions are accepted when the bending of expectations doesn’t threaten the existing moral order: it exists within it. The thin woman can stuff her face all she wants as long as she stays tiny. The same concept applies with men bending gendered norms. If a man wears high heels at a Halloween party, it’s fun, but if he wears them to work, it’s “inappropriate.” It’s especially preposterous, given that high heels were originally invented and worn by men!
If you stop to really think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we’ve decided here in the United States and many other industrialized countries that women can wear a skirt to a meeting, but men can’t. Who decided that women and men can wear the same colors, the same materials, but that if there are a few little stitches in the middle separating the legs, it’s unacceptable for men? What if we assigned similarly arbitrary rules to what women and men can eat instead of how they can dress? Saying men can wear pants but not skirts is like saying men can only eat square pizza because the round shape, well, that’s just for girls. It would be absurd! Yet we accept gendered norms about clothing as truth. We don’t ask questions because we assume it’s just the way things are, but perhaps it’s time to leave some of the rules about gender that regulate the lives of men that no longer serve us behind.