Men Growing Up to be Boys

[seabeyond]

But where “lad lit” authors disguise the dumbing-down of adult masculinity with witty prose, advertising executives are less subtle. Commercials for cell phones, fast food, beer and deodorants offer up an infantilized version of masculinity that has become ubiquitous since the rise of “lad” culture in the ’90s. These grown men act like boys–and are richly rewarded for it. A recent cell phone ad, for example, features a guy who responds to being dumped by his girlfriend–because “you’re never going to grow up”–by playing, on his cell phone, an ’80s pop song that tells her to get lost. Of course, this immediately earns him the attention of a younger, prettier woman walking by. While these ads pretend to mirror a male fantasy–say, of walking down the wedding aisle armed with a six-pack of Bud Light–they in fact reflect a corporate executive’s dream customer: a man-boy who is more likely to remain faithful to their product than to his wife. This shift in the dominant image of manhood is most evident in the evolution of the so-called “Family Man.” The benevolent patriarch of the ’50s has been replaced by an adult teenager who spends his time sneaking off to hang out with the boys, eyeing the hot chick over his wife’s shoulder, or buying cool new toys. Like a fourteen-year-old, this guy can’t be trusted with the simplest of domestic tasks, be it cooking dinner for the kids or shopping for groceries.

These pop culture images are all the more striking because they directly contradict the experiences of men in the real world. Women may still bear the greater burden of domestic work, but American males today do more at home than their fathers, and are happy doing it. According to the Families and Work Institute, the percentage of college-educated men who said they wanted to move into jobs with more responsibility fell from 68 percent to 52 percent between 1992 and 2002. A Radcliffe Public Policy Center report released in 2000 found that 70 percent of men between the ages of 21 to 39 were willing to sacrifice pay and lose promotions in exchange for a work schedule that allowed them to spend more time with their families. Yet popular culture continues to fetishize the traditional, ’50s model of masculinity, but in a distilled form–kick-ass machismo stripped of the accompanying values of honor, duty and loyalty. We seem to have carried with us the unreconstructed sexism of the past–the objectification of women, inability to connect or communicate–but discarded its redeeming virtues. Where traditional masculinity embraced marriage, children and work as rites of passage into manhood, the 21st century version shuns them as emasculating, with the wife cast in the role of the castrating mother. The result resembles a childlike fantasy of manhood that is endowed with the perks of adulthood–money, sex, freedom–but none of its responsibilities.

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More significantly, however, this resistance to adulthood is closely associated with a market-driven consumerist culture that feeds and sustains a Peter Pan version of masculinity. “To be grown up is to be settled, comfortable, stable, responsible, and secure,” Kimmel says. “Those are bad conditions for advertising, which depends on our sense of insecurity, anxiety, and incompleteness.” The market also has little time for the old-fashioned male virtue of self-denial, the imperative to do the “right thing” at the expense of pleasure. A stoic John Wayne has been replaced by the “metrosexual,” a man who is all about self-indulgence and defined almost entirely by his wallet. At the beauty salon, designer boutique or exclusive health club, a metrosexual spends, therefore he is.


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Domesticity may have always been a feminine realm, but marriage and children were once defined as integral to the traditional gender roles of both men and women. Today, it’s the woman who is cast in the role of caveman, eager to club some unsuspecting, reluctant male on his head and drag him to the altar. While progressives and feminists have rightly championed a woman’s right to reject marriage and motherhood, they rarely address the consequences of living in a culture where pair-bonding and parenting–the basic processes that form the foundation of all societies–are constructed as the antithesis of masculinity.



http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2526/


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this is the article. it is all very good. i pulled out what is being created for our boys/men by consumerism and media, but please, read the whole article. it is supportive of men, too. i could not copy and paste the whole of it, though i want to.

edit... lets us never forget, we see the same consumerism and media doing the same to our girls/women in their own way to create a market. this is not only directed at men. but, we often talk about the issue with our girls and women.

[snot]

1. Excellent analysis.

Consistent with Adam Curtis's ideas re- how p.r. pros – including those advising our governmental representatives – try to manipulate us by appealing to our most primitive emotions and drives, bypassing our higher faculties and even encouraging us to let them atrophy.

[seabeyond]

2. well, see.... i think i am going to have to peruse what you are talking about

thank you for this.

[snot]

6. He's a BBC documentarian and is briliant.

The first I saw, which hooked me and talks about the rise of the p.r. industry (among other things) was Century of the Self; you can see it at http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=8339 or http://archive.org/details/AdaCurtisCenturyoftheSelf_0 , or buy the DVD on amazon.

His blog, also excellent, is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/ .

[seabeyond]

9. i cant watch it now. but.... thank you

i was hoping you would do this, lol.

i appreciate. i will respond later.

[arcane1]

3. This is a trmendous peeve of mine

and not limited to the West either.

[seabeyond]

5. oh ya. sounds interesting

really, lol, cause i love this stuff. but, i am not sure what you are saying, and what you are meaning by "not limited to the West". i would be thrilled with a little more info to better understand what you are saying. love insight

[arcane1]

8. For example: I attribute things like burkhas to this perpetual juvenilization of men

in the sense of making the women responsible for men's good behavior, instead of the men being responsible for their own. They can remain in a child-like state where they are not accountable for anything they do.

[seabeyond]

10. ha... that teddy bear movie advertisement came up last night

i grunted and said to hubby, another of those en being boys and the woman kicking his butt to grow up, movies.

he laughed and said, that is what that is?

yup.

agreed. thanks for the explaination.

[redqueen]

15. Excellent point. nt

[cwydro]

4. Every day at work

I hear 30 something men talking about their computer games...I don't get it.

[seabeyond]

7. sigh.... hubby likes his games too. and he s a totally grown up man. lol

he doesnt like much on tv so doesnt watch often. and he does read when wanting a non action activity. he also gardens and metal detects, plays golf (oooops, he just walked in and i told him what i was talking. he also wants me to say that ) when he gets old he will have much better hand/eye coordination per a study. lmfao. he is so cute.

i guess it is about moderation. he doesnt go out with buddies, but it allows them to connect in the evening. you know, bond,

[cwydro]

11. I guess it's the way they talk about them.

They seem in awe of the games.

More than that though, is the constant barrage on movies and TV which show men to be infantile.

Perhaps they are. Adam Sandler's movies come to mind...I despise his movies, and surely men are not the way he portrays them.

[seabeyond]

12. Adam Sandler's movies come to mind...I despise his movies,

oh, so true. and i have noticed, the older he gets, the worse his movies are about this, and the more pathetic he looks, being so old and all.

honestly, there are a lot of men, i have learned, that just want their game without the crap. or the football. because they have grown up. those are the men we want to speak out with us. and i am seeing it more and more.

[felix_numinous]

13. I remember Robert Bly and the Men's movement

that was inspired by his work Iron John: A book about men. It was so moving to see men expressing themselves and being given the chance to share real experiences in an adult, respectful and real way together (I saw a video about this, perhaps it was on PBS).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_John:_A_Book_About_Men

Another profound work during the late 90s was John Bradshaw, who wrote about healing our inner child. These two men I thought provided a path toward evolution for men as well as women. Their work gave men the permission to express their side of this dysfunctional culture of being completely dominated and having to stuff their emotions away.

Yet there was this nasty counter-movement that called all of this 'male bonding' touchy feely crap, and so this movement sort of faded. It's too bad too because, along with the barbie doll ideal for women, the stoic macho culture seems to result in a sort of arrested development and denial of major parts of ourselves. And it is all totally manufactured, artificial crap that no one can really live up to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bradshaw_(author)

[seabeyond]

14. i remember that in the 90's and was jazzed and then saw the fizzle.

thanks for the info. gonna read later tonight, lol (i keep saying this with interesting stuff provided by posters) and then get back to a reply. thanks.

[redqueen]

16. "manufactured, artificial crap that no one can really live up to."

It's all manufactured and fake, but many do a decent job of living up to it. All you have to do is completely kill off your authentic self.

[felix_numinous]

17. Exactly

and is it life when we kill off our authentic self? This turns out to be a profound subject.

[redqueen]

18. It's a close approximation.

So close that you can go half your life before you realize something's wrong. You have all the things that should make you happy, you're doing everything "right", but you're still not happy.

It's so tragic that many parents help to convince their kids to act out a role rather than be who they are.