When I Was Growing Up

I can distinctly remember one of the most common playground argument between boys was who's Dad could beat up Who's. Of course every single boy on the playground insisted, "My Dad could beat up your Dad. My Dad is so strong!". I can also remember distinctly, as many of you probably can as well, that being accused of crying was a high insult, liking anything that was marketed towards or related to girls was taboo, and an enormous amount of time and energy was spent proving to yourself and to your peers that you were tough.

I was reminded of this recently when a post by a professional clown went viral, you may have seen it. In the post this clown, working the face painting booth at a county faire, was approached by a little boy who wanted a butterfly painted on his face. The parents intervened and said that the boy could not get a butterfly on his face, that a butterfly was for girls, that no reasonable parent would want their little boy to get a butterfly on his face, and instead asked the clown to pain a skull and crossbones.

That posts struck me because it rang exactly 100% true, and not at all aberrant. It struck me as exactly typical of the kind of upbringing I had, and that honestly most boys did who grew up in the same time and culture as myself.

And anyone who has spent any time on the internet must be painfully aware of the massive population of lost and directionless 30 something men who were perhaps the last generation raised on this kind of bristling aggressive masculinity, who find themselves in a world that has very little use or patience for that model of manhood and is rapidly moving past it. A whole generation of men raised to value who is toughest entering a world where your physical ability to fight or endure manual labor is almost irrelevant. A generation of men raised with being accused of crying being the harshest of all playground insults finding themselves in a world where being emotionally stoic is for likely to elicit eye rolls than admiration. A world where who's Dad could win in a fight is a stupid argument to even have, as any Dad with dignity would simply call the police on the aggressor who would be arrested and viewed as a violent thug, hardly an admirable figure.

So we have millions of men my age who grew up in admiration of the last vestige of the institutional patriarch, the blue collar stoic who worked hard all day at a factory, never showed weakness, was the feared authority figure the mother would defer to if she wanted to make a real threat, and who would throw hands with anyone who messed with his family.

And that's a problem, because that man can't exist anymore. The ideal man we were all raised to admire and emulate, we can't become him, and even for those who can, that man is no longer admired or respected. It is easy to understand how that may cause directionlessness, how that may cause a lost generation who don't really know what to make of themselves. And angry, bitter, and resentful group that cannot grow up to be their fathers and need someone to blame.

And that all comes out online in the worst ways possible.

Now I consider myself lucky. I was raised with that same masculine ideal as my peers, but it never really appealed to me and so I was happy to leave it behind early on. I think that model of masculinity was, as the title suggest, toxic, harmful, cancerous, and that our culture as a whole and men in particular are better off to see it's decline.

But it's still a period of change, even if it's good change, and change is never easy. Some are at the forefront and cause the change. Some adapt easily to the change. Some are drug along begrudgingly by the change. And others still will be left behind by it. This is always the way of things.

If I had any words of advice to my fellow melinnial men, those who are disaffected and feel that the world is out to erode and displace them and their influence, then my words would be, It's ok. Really, it is. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be.

I've dated women who made more money than me. It didn't degrade or diminish my work, it just meant we had more money for trips and goodies. How is that bad? On the rare occasional someone threatens to kick my ass, I am not impressed by them, it strikes me as low class and stupid. I'll just file assault charges and hurt them way more than black eye would ever hurt me. They are just burying themselves. Serves them right. I don't need to be some kind of stoic rock in the storm for my loved ones, because they don't view emoting as weakness. I can both emote AND reliably do what needs to be done in hard times. How is that anything but the best of both worlds?

And anytime that you feel like the world is leaving you behind or screwing you over, stop and ask yourself if it is the changing world that is holding you back, or if what is truly holding you back is being tethered to your own outmoded model of masculinity? I think you'll find more often than not it's the later.