Here’s an observation from the annals of the obvious: everywhere you go, strangers talk about the weather. And if you live in Toronto, where I do, they always talk about how absolutely crappy the weather is or recently has been or will be in the immediate future. The winters are long and slushy, with winds that rip through your clothing and through your skin and through your bones and feel like they are carrying pieces of your soul out the other side of your body and leaving a biting dead cold behind. The summers are like a sauna in which you’re trying to commute to and from work, choking on the soupy heat, while some moron with feathered hair keeps spraying more water on the rocks and asking if it’s hot enough for you. So in winter everyone you share an elevator with brushes sleet out of their hair while they whine about the cold and make a lame joke about global warming not being all it’s cracked up to be; in the summer they just sort of slump and ask if you’re lucky enough to have an air conditioner at home.

The summer has some clear advantages, though. In winter,^{1Which has hockey, which would in other circumstances be an insurmountable advantage.} when you’re slopping down the street with wet socks trying to see if you can still feel your nose — yup, it’s still there, and it hurts like a bitch — all the members of the opposite sex, as well as members of other sexes, are wearing scarves and hats and puffy sweaters under even puffier coats and heavy pants and boots and basically unless you have some kind of wool fetish^{2Which, if you do, good for you, weirdo.} means it is the least sexy time to be around strangers.^{3All the obvious crap about fireplaces and ski chalets you’re busy getting ready to fire off a comment about notwithstanding.} In summer, on the other hand, very attractive people wear very little clothing in very many of the places you go on a given day. This is a consolation for the doggier elements of these hot days that is hard to understate.^{4I know, that’s one from the annals of the obviouser. So?} (more…)

I just finished reading David Giffels’s All the Way Home, which I’ll soon be reviewing for a different publication. It’s a memoir of a man who, with his pregnant wife and infant child, buys a falling-down mansion and begins trying to make it a home, with minimal help from contractors and maximal stress on his relationship with his wife and son. The house is his white whale, as he notes — to the extent that at one point it actually tries to swallow his leg — and the book is very consciously about Giffels process of trying to sort out his place in the world as a man, among other things (other things: crazy old ladies and how they may have gotten that way, the sadness and anger and confusion of miscarriages, how to fail at getting squirrels out of the attic with a Stratocaster, ghosts). He becomes obsessed with the restoration — an inherited condition for him, apparently — partly out of a desire to fulfill his obligations to his family, partly out of a need to sometimes avoid being an active participant in his family, and figures out how the former somehow leads to the latter while the latter prevents the former from happening. And it’s funny, did I mention that?

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James Bond, shaken and stirring, from “Crying Men,” by photographer Sam Taylor-Wood. The whole series is really beautiful. From The Arab Acquarius:

Taylor-Wood explains, “Some of the men cried before I even finished loading the camera, but others found it really difficult. People can decide for themselves which they think are the authentic tears and which they think are fake. It’s about the idea of taking these big, masculine men and showing a different side.”

The whole subject of men and crying is complicated and interesting and, I think, one of the most frequently misinterpreted elements of the discussion of traditional masculinity.

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CBC Radio Ideas producer Richard Handler summarizes Dr. Leonard Sax’s book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men:

But then he bucks up and gives us five reasons for this epidemic. Many are familiar but Sax puts them all together like a brick thrown through your window:

• Video games. These addictive activities disengage boys from the world. Some young men even seem to prefer online porno to the prospect of sex with another human being.
• Teaching methods. Girls develop intellectually up to two years ahead of boys. Boys in grade school are naturally rambunctious. They need ways to express their native energy. They are being taught to read and write too early. Their mostly female teachers prefer compliant, dutiful girls.
• Prescription drugs. Hyperactive, frustrated boys are increasingly being medicated. This we all know. What Sax claims is that these drugs shrink the motivational centres of the brain and that the effect of this lasts years, well after these kids stop taking their meds. I hadn’t heard this before but if it’s true, it is truly frightening.
• Endocrine disruptors. Chemicals from plastic bottles, canned food linings and some shampoos mimic natural estrogen, the female hormone. Boys’ testosterone levels are half of what they were in their grandfathers’ day. Also, their bones are significantly more brittle.
• The devaluation of masculinity. Boys don’t know how to become men. They no longer have appropriate rights of passage. Once Father Knows Best was the paternalistic model but now he has been replaced (and mocked) by a dopey Homer Simpson. Sax likes the old virtues of courage and temperance, with a good measure of intelligence.

Sounds familiar. Not sure whether I agree with all the elements of his diagnosis. Another book to add to the pile.

…is you don’t talk about acting like a man. The second rule of acting like a man is, well, you know.

Forgive me if this post descends into an exercise in free association but this is a truth of traditional masculinity so self-evident that it’s hard to understate, or to quickly get a big-picture handle on. You’ve got your strong silent type. Your actions speak louder than words. Your walk softly and carry a big stick. It permeates the archetypes of Hollywood heroes: the gunslinger may be wounded inside—he almost certainly is—but he ain’t talking about it, and while he can certainly draw down on you if you force his hand, he isn’t going to waste a lot of breath telling you about it. (more…)

Just to tie up some loose ends after my post about Kay Hymowitz’s “Man Child in the Promised Land.” (Earlier knotting took place here and here.)

Dave M declares his allegiance to the bong and says he hopes I really didn’t mean to give my agreement or approval to Hymowitz’s piece:

it assumes pretty much the worst of men under 30. for a start, Maxim culture — vile as it can be — is in some ways a welcome corrective to the outrageously classist idea that having the time and inclination to pursue Hef’s “jazz, Picasso, Nietzsche and sex” formulation is the best and only way to be a man.

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This is why:

Apparently now with added moral complexity.