Bidding for the old masculinity

EXPIRED MASCULINITY

I had to scrape racist shit off a bike rack.

As I rode home, the full sense of what happened didn’t really hit me — to the point that I questioned whether it even really bothered me at all. “This is just what happens,” I thought. “No biggie.” But there was another brain bubble, that I should share this upsetting thing with the people who loved me.

That idea alerted another part of me, the convincing and practiced part. He’s the same one that tells me not to cry, thumps my chest, and warns against sharing my feelings. He told me I would just be bothering people and they had their own things going on. I’m inclined to believe him as he got me through a good slab of the past. But because I run a mental health newsletter for men of color, I have read enough on men and mental health to know we need to lean away from stiffness and towards sharing, for our own safety and wellbeing. So I shared.

And everyone, even the busiest person in my circle, had time to respond carefully and compassionately.

All that was tense within me began to loosen, and once I finally decided to sit down, I was able to breathe out fully and let my body go for a moment. Looking back over the last several minutes, I wondered what would have happened inside of me had I not reached out for help.

I imagined my muscles slowly tensing up and the world becoming darker and meaner in my sight with each subsequent intrusion. That sort of repression never stays inside, though we might pray it would, no, we let it out in some WTF way. I once saw a person mid-pandemic grow so frustrated at a sign inside of a Target, they ripped it off the wall and tore it into shreds. The sign hadn’t started any shit. That’s the sort of shit you do when you refuse to handle your own.

But that is what we were taught as men coming up, a voluntary emotional constipation. This edition of the newsletter is about moving past archaic expectations and random explosions to something more emollient.

Here’s to your health and healing.

UNDER PRESSURE
What’s Wrong With Men?

The pressures of being real men, i.e., the right type of men, has historically meant wrestling with a lifetime of self-doubt and guilt. What could go wrong when your role models are Rocky Balboa and Vic from the Fast and the Furious movies 😅? A lot It turns out. Movies and media were never meant to serve as road maps — just distractions on the way to someplace meaningful. Trying to achieve the perfect body or the perfect life is the ultimate distraction, like playing an infinite game of whack-a-mole. Genuine fulfillment comes from self-acceptance and recognizing our own unfolding, revealing worth predating any unsustainable striving. Life isn’t a straight path to perfection; it’s more like trying to find a parking spot in downtown during rush hour, often unpredictable. You’re not wrong, just wonderfully human.

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COCKY CARICATURES
The Rise And Fall of Axe

If you ever wanted the experience of an early 2000s high school locker room, all you’d need is the smell of sweat, stink, and the scent of Axe body spray. One of the few brands to absolutely hit its target market in that center dart board ring, Axe was the smell one loved to hate, since it was often dispatched in lieu of proper showering. If advertisers were telling guys the truth, it made sense, since the only thing any nerd needed to do was spray a thick coat on and hypnotized women would tackle them into bed.

The mass of millenial marketing

While easy to dismiss now with scaffolding of the current culture in place — and an operational prefrontal cortex — reviewing some earlier Axe ads signaled to my inner teenager. They reminded me of the juggernaut past mass marketing was and how we all kowtowed to it. The brand was blatantly sexist and unapologetically white, yet all the black and brown dudes I grew up with walked in clouds of the stuff. It totally ignored us and subtly taught us, like much mass media of the time, to ignore our own humanity and that of women. The brand made a killing, quickly rising to be the number 1 deodorant brand.

Axe got axed

Then, like the gym rooms it infiltrated, it realized it stank — well not really — it had becoming irrelevant. Our thoughts expanded by learning, experience, and growth were turning out to be inconvenient for its parent multinational.

So, the Axe that began sexist, turned to challenge toxic masculinity, thinking it could it launch making guys insecure about their manhoods and then do an about face, saying, hey, it turns out you were great the way you were. The male consumer, IT turned out, was simply insecure not stupid — as the saying goes, “fool me twice…” Sales faltered and now the brand is seeking to no longer smell like itself, in effect disappear, as all tropes of the distant past are wont to do.

IT WAS THE WAY
Belichick Can’t Find a Job in a World of Cooperation

When I learned legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick had separated from the Patriots, I swore to anyone who would listen that the Dallas Cowboys, a team arguably on the verge of great things, plus the famed coach that brought the New England Patriots a record-winning six Super Bowl wins was the match American Football had been waiting for. But then it never happened — with Dallas nor any of the NFL’s 32 teams to date — and not for lack of trying.

Recent lackluster performance since Tom Brady's departure, notwithstanding, Belichick, it turned out, was one of the last “traditional” coaches, practicing an authoritative and hard-charging style of leadership observants called “obstinate,” “stubborn,” and “arrogant,” anathema to modern team owners who prioritize collaboration. So, despite impressing Falcons owner Arthur Blank during an initial meeting on Blank's superyacht, neither Falcons CEO Rich McKay nor GM Terry Fontenot wanted to work with him, fearing that hiring Belichick would inevitably lead to him running the team, even without explicit demands for total control. They opted for the energetic and innovative Raheem Morris instead, someone who could become like “family.” In the end, the creator of the “Patriot Way” is having to find his way in a world and league that has evolved beyond it.

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PAST BLAST
Is There an Embrace-able Male Tradition?

“I have critiqued traditional masculinity because masculinity has been taken to the extreme,” writes Warren Farrell in his essay on what we might embrace from old-timey masculine qualities.

“Praise of men is an endangered species. But the good about men is not,” he continues. “And so fo a rare moment in recent history, here is special attention to what’s good about male socialization”

Taken from an actual print book “To Be A Man: In Search of the Deep Masculine.”

Download an excerpt below

MOVING ON
It Ain’t What It Was

Once upon a time, the blueprint for "being a man" was carved in stone: physical strength, stoic demeanor, and a dash of emotional constipation. This archaic script, passed down from grandpa to dad, from caveman to modern man, seemed unshakable. But this ancient invisible manual has been wanting a rewrite. Asserting dominance while flexing biceps isn’t the good look it was. Emotional maturity, accountability, and nourishing one’s mind are now the benchmarks of masculinity — along with opening that stubborn bottle of kombucha now and then.

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JUST CUZ
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