Man of the Moment
Is it the ability to empathise with women or being able to change spark plugs? Is it playing with your children in soft-focus joy or beating seven shades of shit out of rival football fans? We go in search of the 21st century ‘real man’
Ask a woman to give you a list of who she considers are the sexiest men on the planet and the same names will invariably come to the fore: George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Lenny Kravitz. Real men. Testosterone-drenched ‘grrrr’ men. Yet bafflingly, British males seem to be adopting more feminine traits, presumably to keep our women sweet. Why is this happening? Is it doing either of the sexes any good? And just what’s a real man supposed to be anyway…?
“It’s hard you know. I have to be a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a mate, a breadwinner, a homemaker and a handyman. There’s so much pressure coming at me from all sides that even I don’t know who I am anymore.” That pitiful statement is typical of what the Men’s Fitness collective overhear (or indeed, even spout) when we make it to the pub of a night. Whereas our generation’s dads can quite happily spend a night in the boozer talking about sport and spark plugs, and teenagers are content with planning their next happy slap, there’s a generation or two in the middle who are seemingly in turmoil over the role they play in today’s society.
Serena Momberg of the Samaritans agrees: “We’re definitely seeing a surge in calls from men. It’s fairly well known that young men up to the age of 24 are most at risk [from suicide], but all ages are picking up the phone to us more.” The reasons behind these desperate phone calls are varied: pressure to succeed, relationships issues, major life changes, sexual identity, work concerns – which are all worthy and troubling problems, but they’re no different to the challenges previous generations of chaps have faced. And hang about, the last time we looked, us men were supposed to be a nation of unashamed New Lads, able to take on the world fuelled by continental lager and spurred on by images of scantily clad ladies. Or ‘birds’, as we’re supposed to call them.
Actually no, that’s not right, weren’t we supposed to be New Men, able to take on the world fuelled by Chilean Merlot and spurred on by framed images of our kids playing gleefully in the park? Or, if the papers are to be believed, aren’t we all man-bag clutching Metrosexuals who are in touch with our feminine sides now? And there was a time when we were Yuppies (Young and Upwardly Mobile) or Dinkies (Dual Income, No Kids) – don’t we all still come under those social banners?
“Well, to be honest, I think the current term is New Wimps,” says Kate Fox, a social anthropologist and author of Watching the English. “The fundamental masculine virtues of courage, bravery and honour have been devalued and men have embraced more touchy feely feminine traits; traits that are much more highly valued by society – and crucially – by our female partners. This is where the problems start; if you devalue the roles of men, you make them feel redundant. If men are stripped of their identity, they feel as if they’re not important.”
Certainly in the States, boys are having their maleness drilled out of them from an early age and it’s starting to happen over here, says Fox. “There are countless cases of boys being prescribed Ritalin because they’ve been diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder), when in fact they’re just being boys and doing what boys do. Boys don’t sit quietly; they don’t do cooperative play they do combative play; they run around and make a noise – we definitely shouldn’t be drugging that out of them.”
Francis Gilbert, who wrote I’m a Teacher Get Me Out Of Here, which exposed the state of anarchy in our schools, concurs. “Boys are more aggressive by nature and definitely they’re growing into young men who are essentially yobs. And – according to the magistrates, the police and the social workers that I’ve interviewed – there are more yobs than ever before.” That’s a bit hard to believe given that punks were terrorising the city centres in the 70s, the mods and the rockers were carving each other up on the beaches in the 60s and teddy boys were flashing their flick knives about in the 50s, but Gilbert’s insistent. “An experienced magistrate said to me that they didn’t used to worry as the young men would always grow out of it, have kids and settle down, but not so now. The future for society is worrying. These kids are amoral – they’ve not had people around them to instill the values of right and wrong into them.”
Hopefully Gilbert’s not right (the hysteria in the Daily Mail alone would be enough to send the country spiraling into anarchy), but what of us slightly older chaps, surely we’re not going off the rails? “Well, that’s the thing,” says Gilbert. “We kind of are. I’ve been doing some further research and I’ve found that perfectly respectable white collar men – real men, if you like – are getting into football hooliganism in a big way. There is a growing trend of 40 somethings going and smashing someone’s face in just for the thrill of it. The odd thing is, they’ll sometimes have a beer with the person they’ve just whacked after – it’s nothing personal, as I say, it’s just for the buzz.”
So, thus far, us real men are a bunch of stressed, violently inclined yobs with touchy feely feminine traits who can’t bring up our kids properly and sob into our pints. Things are looking grim – we may as well take up an even more dangerous pursuit that offers a decent chance of death or permanent paralysis just to keep us feeling ‘alive’. Such as motorcycling like lunatics around lethal country lanes.
In 2003, 18 so-called ‘born again bikers’ died in North Wales alone, lured by the challenging roads and soul-cleansing countryside. And the dangerous pastime is gaining in popularity. Typically, the riders are 30 something males who are now affluent enough to be able to afford that 200 mph two-wheeled banshee that they coveted as a teenager. But though they might be able to afford the bikes, they haven’t got the experience to handle them. As Chief Superintendent Geraint Annwyl explained at the time: "Some seek the thrill of speed and the challenge of negotiating corners as quickly as possible and are gripped by the excitement and sense of achievement if they overcome hazards. I think aggression is linked to it and in terms of these born again bikers, it is a last ditch attempt to hang on to their youth."
The Chief Super may have a point about the 30 somethings trying to recapture their youth, but the mid-life crisis is not exactly a new phenomenon – generations of men before us have run off with dolly birds and wedged their portly frames into high-powered motors. It seems that, taking into account all of the aforementioned personality traits that we either embrace or try to mask, the real men of today are no different to the men of previous generations.
“That’s exactly right,” says Kate Fox. “Fundamentally, men are the same people they’ve always been. We try and live different lifestyles, but there’s no way that thousands of years of evolution can be negated in a decade or two. Society may label men New Wimps or Metrosexuals or whatever, but there’s always always a pendulum swing back that negates it.”
Renowned anthropologist, Desmond Morris, agrees that us modern ‘real men’ – and indeed our womenfolk – retain the traits of our ancestors. And that we always will. “Both sexes are capable of showing qualities of the opposite gender and of increasing these aspects of their behaviour if encouraged to do so, but the basic, primeval 'division of labour' between the sexes still exists genetically and will reassert itself whenever it gets the chance.”
Morris continues: “Men are programmed to take more risks than women;
this was part of their specialisation for the hunt. Conversely, women are more
caring and more careful, which is part of their specialisation in child-rearing.
Furthermore, men are programmed to be more single-minded than women (an aptitude
suited to prolonged hunting), whereas women are simply better at multi-tasking.
These differing qualities are still apparent in modern life and are pretty
much ‘set in stone’ – men are still 15 times more accident-prone
than women; they’re more excited by sporting activities and new inventions
are nearly always by men (introducing new ideas involves taking risks).”
Real men aren’t a product of their times, but we react against being pigeonholed where we don’t belong. If we can shrug off the more feminine traits that we’ve acquired recently, then we won’t have to rail against the system (often self-destructively or violently) in order to retain our sense of manliness. By and large we’re hunter-gatherers, not househusbands. Redress the balance quickly and we can move on from indulging in beery navel gazing and enjoy a night in the boozer chatting about sport and spark plugs.
END
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