Recommendations #14: Redefining masculinity, Instagram face, and digital etiquette
READING
Book excerpt: The miseducation of the American boy (The Atlantic)
What is it: An extract from Peggy Orenstein’s upcoming book, Boys & Sex, about ‘why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity.’ It’s a book about the persistent cultural machinery shaping adolescent boys today, and what can be done to dismantle it.
Orenstein is a New York Times bestselling author who typically writes about issues affecting girls and women.
Thoughts: This book is the culmination of more than 100 comprehensive interviews Orenstein conducted with young men – a handful of which are included in this excerpt.
Interestingly, while nearly all the young men Orenstein spoke to say they respect women and hold relatively egalitarian views, they simultaneously retain very traditional ideals of manhood. Orenstein notes how these conventions are detrimental to men and society as a whole, as they rob men of being able to express their real emotions, and place an added burden on women to act as their sole support network.
It might sound kind of dry, but the way Orenstein threads real life anecdotes from interviewees into her writing makes this an instantly gripping piece. I haven’t included this section in the excerpt below, but there’s an awkward sexual encounter and its aftermath told from the perspective one young man that I found particularly moving.
I highly recommend reading the full piece. (Thanks to my friend Effie for sending it to me!)
Edited excerpt:
Feminism may have provided girls with a powerful alternative to conventional femininity, and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but there have been no credible equivalents for boys. Quite the contrary: The definition of masculinity seems to be in some respects contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male respondents in the PerryUndem survey said honesty and morality, and only 8 percent said leadership skills—traits that are, of course, admirable in anyone but have traditionally been considered masculine. When I asked my subjects, as I always did, what they liked about being a boy, most of them drew a blank. “Huh,” mused Josh, a college sophomore at Washington State. (All the teenagers I spoke with are identified by pseudonyms.) “That’s interesting. I never really thought about that. You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.”
While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide…
…The #MeToo movement has created an opportunity, a mandate not only to discuss sexual violence but to engage young men in authentic, long-overdue conversations about gender and intimacy. I don’t want to suggest that this is easy. Back in the early 1990s, when I began writing about how girls’ confidence drops during adolescence, parents would privately tell me that they were afraid to raise outspoken daughters, girls who stood up for themselves and their rights, because they might be excluded by peers and called “bossy” (or worse). Although there is still much work to be done, things are different for young women today. Now it’s time to rethink assumptions about how we raise boys. That will require models of manhood that are neither ashamed nor regressive, and that emphasize emotional flexibility—a hallmark of mental health. Stoicism is valuable sometimes, as is free expression; toughness and tenderness can coexist in one human. In the right context, physical aggression is fun, satisfying, even thrilling. If your response to all of this is Obviously, I’d say: Sure, but it’s a mistake to underestimate the strength and durability of the cultural machinery at work on adolescent boys. Real change will require a sustained, collective effort on the part of fathers, mothers, teachers, coaches. (A study of 2,000 male high-school athletes found significantly reduced rates of dating violence and a greater likelihood of intervening to stop other boys’ abusive conduct among those who participated in weekly coach-led discussions about consent, personal responsibility, and respectful behavior.)
We have to purposefully and repeatedly broaden the masculine repertoire for dealing with disappointment, anger, desire. We have to say not just what we don’t want from boys but what we do want from them. Instructing them to “respect women” and to “not get anyone pregnant” isn’t enough. As one college sophomore told me, “That’s kind of like telling someone who’s learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies and then handing him the car keys. Well, of course you think you’re not going to run over an old lady. But you still don’t know how to drive.” By staying quiet, we leave many boys in a state of confusion—or worse, push them into a defensive crouch, primed to display their manhood in the one way that is definitely on offer: by being a dick.
Article: The age of Instagram face: how social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look (The New Yorker)
What is it: Writer Jia Tolentino poses as a would-be patient at celebrity plastic surgeons offices to learn about the arms race between digital and physical improvement that is ‘Instagram face’.
Thoughts: Tolentino has a knack for choosing seemingly niche but actually completely pertinent topics to write about.
This piece highlights how cosmetic enhancements (which have become made far more accessible to the average person this decade) are being sold to women under the guise of ‘empowerment’ and even as an extension of ‘health.’ As plastic surgeon Jason Diamond notes in the article, cosmetic work has, apparently, come to seem more like fitness. He says “I think it’s become much more mainstream to think about taking care of your face and your body as part of your general well-being. It’s kind of understood now: it’s O.K. to try to look your best.”
The fact that women are buying into this is unsurprising (as Tolentino notes, “In a world where women are rewarded for youth and beauty in a way that they are rewarded for nothing else—and where a strain of mainstream feminism teaches women that self-objectification is progressive, because it’s profitable—cosmetic work might seem like one of the few guaranteed high-yield projects that a woman could undertake), but it’s a practice that’s ultimately damaging. Isabelle Truman and Grace O’Neill who host the After Work Drinks podcast spoke about this well in their recent episode. I believe it was O’Neill who says, “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with an individual going and getting botox in her frown lines – she’s not doing something immoral – but you’re contributing to a system that makes everyone feel shit about how they look all the time…By buying into this system, you’re perpetuating that society.”
The first paragraph is my favourite part of Tolentino’s piece:
This past summer, I booked a plane ticket to Los Angeles with the hope of investigating what seems likely to be one of the oddest legacies of our rapidly expiring decade: the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face. It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private-jet ride to Coachella. The face is distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic—it suggests a National Geographic composite illustrating what Americans will look like in 2050, if every American of the future were to be a direct descendant of Kim Kardashian West, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, and Kendall Jenner (who looks exactly like Emily Ratajkowski). “It’s like a sexy . . . baby . . . tiger,” Cara Craig, a high-end New York colorist, observed to me recently. The celebrity makeup artist Colby Smith told me, “It’s Instagram Face, duh. It’s like an unrealistic sculpture. Volume on volume. A face that looks like it’s made out of clay.
Opinion: Marriage Story made me feel nothing (The Cut)
What is it: Writer Hannah Gold’s response to watching Marriage Story – the recently released and critically acclaimed Netflix film starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. The film is a fictionalised account of director Noah Baumbach’s divorce from actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, including their expensive custody battle.
Thoughts: I was so excited to sit down after work, watch Marriage Story, and have a good cry, but like this writer, I was completely unmoved. As a child of divorce who’s fascinated by the concept of love and all its complexities, the premise seemed right up my alley, but for the most part, I was bored.
I also tend to agree with this piece, who argues Marriage Story and the other films leading this year’s Golden Globes nominations reveal an industry that only acknowledges serious films by white men, who tell stories we’ve already heard.
Article: The digital faux pas we’re all making (The New York Times – Smarter Living)
What is it: A discussion about common digital-related workplace conundrums.
Thoughts: I spend a lot of time overthinking emails and what’s expected from a reply, so I appreciate any guidelines that can take out some of that guesswork.
The CC rule that’s explained in this piece is one of those things like how to do your taxes that should be taught in every school. The rule is: the main recipients of an email, who are expected to reply, go in the ‘to’ field. People who are not expected to reply go in the “CC” field. So simple, and yet this had never occurred to me until this article.
Article: Instagram is broken. It also broke us. (Vox)
What is it: An article arguing the recent changes implemented by Instagram to make the platform more authentic are futile. As the writer, Rebecca Jennings, puts it: “These overdue measures ignore the fact that no matter how much Instagram would like to be viewed as a place users feel good about visiting, its entire existence is predicated on reminding people that other people are having more fun than they are.”
Thoughts: There’s several great paragraphs in this piece about the very nature of Instagram being at odds with what’s being promoted by the algorithm and many users in recent months. Some of my favourite lines:
· …What’s more authentic than the desire to make your life seem wonderful? Instagram succeeded because it exploited the basest aspects of human behavior until concepts like “authenticity” and “honesty” barely meant anything at all, to the point where even when we do see something vulnerable or “real,” we inherently distrust it.
· Nobody ever thought Instagram was authentic. The first “Instagram vs. reality” meme was uploaded to the internet in 2012, just two years after the app launched.
· [Instagram] has also become profoundly boring. In our endless quest to chase the Instagram algorithm, now that we know what it wants from us — authenticity, supposedly, but mostly just the aesthetics of it — we resort to only the safest content, the things we know will convince people to double tap. We stay in our lanes; we adhere to the personal brands that have become happy little avatars for a life that everyone else thinks we’re living.
More to read…
· 100 memes that defined the 2010s (Buzzfeed)
· ‘I made a thing’ and other trendy slang of the decade (Man Repeller)
· Every movie (all 5279 of them) of the 2010s, ranked (Vulture)
· What happens when a weddings influencer gets divorced? (The New York Times)
· An interactive guide on how to recycle in Victoria (The Age)
LISTENING
Podcast episode: Mirror Mirror: Beauty, Body Image and the Self (The Wheeler Centre)
This is a thought-provoking recorded discussion about body image and how this relates to health between writer Bri Lee, artist Frances Cannon, plus-size model and advocate Abbey Mag, and doctor and author Nikki Stamp.
The discussion follows the release of Lee’s personal essay, Beauty, in which she writes about the immense pressure she has always felt to be thin, culminating in an eating disorder. (You can read an extract from the book here.)
I read Beauty recently, and while Lee is without a doubt a wonderful writer, (I’ve mentioned her debut book Eggshell Skull before that was one of my favourites of 2018), the essay does have some pretty significant blind spots. Lee doesn’t acknowledge her privilege as a white, slim and able-bodied woman in the essay, and while this is most likely due to her eating disorder, it’s a difficult thing to reconcile in a book titled ‘Beauty’ rather than ‘Thin’.
What’s interesting about this podcast is that Lee directly asks panellists to talk their own experiences and perspectives they felt weren’t represented in the book. This can’t have been an easy question to ask or answer, especially given how incredibly personal Lee’s essay is, but it makes for a more well-rounded and inclusive discussion about body image.
I normally despise audience questions (they’re usually just rambling statements), but the ones posed at the end of this discussion do yield some profound responses worth listening to also.
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