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Menaissance *LINK*

Is 'preening, sarong-sporting metrosexuality' really the only alternative to (white) male violence?

The Guardian
July 15, 2006

'I am a man first and foremost", Zinédine Zidane told French television on Wednesday, in an effort to explain how his head managed to make contact with an Italian footballer's chest in the closing minutes of the World Cup final. Coupled with David Beckham's lame exit from the tournament, the rise of anti-hero Zidane will surely be hailed as a departure in our attitudes to malehood. Preening, sarong-sporting metrosexuality is so over, the style gurus will say; long live the hard man.

Sure enough, something interesting has been going on. Yesterday saw the launch of Superman Returns, a knowing, post-September 11 gamble on whether we can still take the testosterone-powered superhero seriously. The latest genre in the books trade, according to the New York Times, is known as Fratire - a booze-and-birds literary riposte to chicklit, with titles like Real Men Don't Apologise, The Alphabet of Manliness and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. When even that moustachioed icon of the 1970s, Burt Reynolds, is enjoying a revival, you know something is up.

In North America, where the resurrection of interest in traditional masculinity is gathering pace, cultural commentators suspect we might be on the brink of a "menaissance" - an era in which we will learn again to glorify "real men". A dollop of intellectual respectability has been added to the mix by a Harvard professor of government, Harvey Mansfield. Earlier this year, Professor Mansfield took a breather from writing tomes on representative government in order to publish a book titled Manliness, in an attempt to reclaim traditional masculinity from what he considers to be quaintness and obsolescence.

Our attempts to create a gender-neutral society, according to Prof Mansfield, have had the unfortunate effect of stripping men of their boldness; the values and pursuits we traditionally associated with masculinity are increasingly ridiculed or pathologised. Women, he argues, want real men, but they are just as confused about what they want them to be as men are confused about who they are. He believes that essential differences between the sexes should be accepted and celebrated. Manliness, he assures us, is rooted in values like stoicism, strength of character, assertiveness and decisiveness, the confidence to take risks and to be a gentleman whenever necessary. "A manly male isn't sensitive," says Prof Mansfield. "He doesn't care what you're thinking, but he'll be faithful."

There is more than a whiff of pathos in his elegy for the lost values of manliness, because the real world can only let him down. It is not as if most men, enraged by a diet of low-fat yoghurt and Men's Health magazine, have decided to take to the hills in an attempt to rediscover the masculine virtues. What passes for manhood in popular culture - the guy who cracks open a can of beer and puts his feet up - is less about what men do than what they eat, drink and wear. The burst of enthusiasm for manliness is a naked ploy by advertisers and marketers to reacquaint themselves with their male audience; it is as cosmetic a phenomenon as those woman-friendly ads that portray men as Neanderthals who don't know how to fill a washing machine.

Like the new Superman film, the new manliness is a pastiche of masculinity as much as anything else. Just as Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same, the metrosexual and his leery, backsliding alter ego are only two sides of the same tortured psyche. Don't tell Zidane - he might take it badly - but the hellraisers of the menaissance probably still live with their mums.

Messages In This Thread

Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey *LINK*
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
typo: "aren't all sports violent ?" *NM*
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Violent people have to learn to cool it
Death to Black & White Downpressors!!!! *NM*
Re: Violent people have to learn to cool it
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Those with a history of unjustifiable violence
Re: Those with a history of unjustifiable violence
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Re: Why Today I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Menaissance *LINK*
Re: Menaissance
Re: Menaissance
Re: Menaissance
For a slightly more.... *LINK*


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