From Boys to Guys

Next time you’re out to dinner, take a good look at the young couples seated near you. In many cases, the woman has clearly given some thought to her appearance, with clothes, hair, and make-up all pulled together. But the guy she’s with is another story. More often than not, except for the irregular facial hair, he’s dressed like a toddler—backward baseball cap, t-shirt or sports jersey, shorts or sweat pants, sneakers with no socks, or worse, sandals with socks.

There is more going on here than grooming habits and fashion choices. At some point in the last 20 years or so, manhood has morphed into an extended adolescence.

This undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood gets stretch almost up to retirement. It is a perpetual High School where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, job, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life.

They can drift from job to job, live with parents or with a crew of buddies, and spend most of their time drinking, carousing, watching sports, playing video games, chasing women, hooking-up but avoiding serious relationships.

It’s been called the “Peter Pan Syndrome”—but at least Peter Pan had Tinker Bell—this growing phenomenon of young men who don’t want to grow up. 

They fixate a cartoon version of manhood that actually has all the trappings of boyhood,  and thinks becoming a man means getting to do whatever they want. So things like getting married, having a job, or wearing a shirt with a collar, means giving up their independence. 

When I was just a boy, and having a bad day, Dad would take me aside and encourage me to “act like a man.” Having pretty much reached his limits in the words of wisdom department, he would then head off to Costco for whatever free samples he could find, but the thing is that having him tell me to “Act like a man” gave me the confidence to go knock the stuffing out of that history exam. It implied a level of responsibility, self-control, and ability. Men were expected to know how to do stuff.

My Father was fairly typical of his generation, an ex-Marine who could cook, sew, mix drinks, maintain the family car, fix things around the house, fish, dress, and deport himself with a wide range of people, sometimes by pretending to be an NYC Detective. (It was a joke, it’s not like anybody got arrested).

In addition to dad, my heroes were:

Joe Namath, an athlete who wasn’t a muscle head. He not only won the most important Super Bowl in history but was also a cultural icon and man enough to be a panty hose model.

The Astronauts, who were all fighter pilots AND engineers—cool, tough, and smart

Jonas Salk- who not only developed the polio vaccine but who also refused to patent his discovery, making it available worldwide and saving millions of lives.

To illustrate how things have changed, today some would call Dr. Salk a jerk for forgoing those millions, if not billions of dollars.

Now, the definition of manhood has narrowed considerably. They fall into three categories (though I suppose saying “three camps” would be more “manly”).

Role Model #1: Real Men who are used to dealing with REAL LIFE in REAL ways, and REALLY know what’s going on, REALLY. Linebackers, navy seals, first responders, construction workers, and Hill Billys— muscular men who take orders instead of giving them. They are strong, physically strong, incredibly physically strong, and big, really, really big, they have muscles everywhere. There isn’t a jar they can’t open.

Role Model #2: Masters of the Universe— Just substitute money for muscles, add a more expensive haircut, a better wardrobe, and more expensive toys. Life is an exercise in collecting status symbols—cars, clothes, restaurants, apartments/houses, vacations, watches, Ho’s, bitches, and so on. If you’ve seen American Psycho you get the idea—I suppose it ends with a golden casket

Role Model #3—Guys who have given up. Basically, any stand-up comedian under the age of 40.

So what went wrong?

The Law of Unintended Consequences—Early feminist took delight in bashing men, all men, as neanderthal sex crazed brutes. The result was that women started to just accept the fact that all men were SCNB’s, giving birth to the “I Just Love the Bad Boys” movement. Since these jerks continued to get laid, there was no real benefit in men acting any other way.

Will Ferrel—Well not him personally, but the type of characters he represents: Oblivious white guys who skate through life, getting by on looks, attitude and on being a tall, good looking, white guy.

ESPN—The all-sports network was built on high light reels, featuring individual athletes over teams, fostering ….

Parents—I must admit that my generation, the baby boomers have a spotty record as parents. Whereas we may have seen our parents as distant and uninvolved, we treated our children as equals, we wanted to be their friends. As a result, many of our children saw no reason to leave home, take responsibility of own life, or bathe.

My parents made two things clear: They were not my friends, and I had to leave home —they were changing the locks.

What can be done to shake these man/boys back to reality?

We’ve spent the last 40 tears or so improving the self-esteem of girls, with “take your daughter to work day, and other initiatives to make them aware of the possibilities of life. Maybe it’s time we paid some attention to the boys, considering how narrow their choices may now seem. ( see role models above) don’t fit in, can’t find a way

Orson Welles famously explained what has always motivated men by saying, “If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”

It would go along way if brains were seen as sexy—not lip service sexy, but really sexy, like the “chess club is on an equal footing with the football team sexy”.

In other words, if “nice guys” got laid for being “nice guys,” things would change in a hurry