Guy stuff
Marginalia 02
When it comes to the state of men these days, I’d like to think we’ve reached peak incomprehensible discourse. I’m sure most of you have seen the think pieces flying around about how “straight men don’t read,” “performative males,” “mankeeping,” and how “having a boyfriend is embarrassing.”
One of the best movies I’ve seen in recent memory about the masculinity crisis is Ruben Östlund’s black comedy, Force Majeure (2014), about a Swedish family on holiday in the French Alps. After a controlled avalanche, Tomas, the father, appears to run away, leaving his wife and two children behind to fend for themselves. It’s a great movie, full of painful, funny scenes, miscommunication, and gendered expectations.
A personal favorite (Kristofer Hivju’s handshake at the end gets me every time, just perfect):
About a year ago, I wrote an essay about what makes Tony Soprano attractive to women. If you went off the messages I received from men after it was published, the title, “The male mind cannot comprehend the allure of Tony Soprano,” proved to be true. Most of these men missed the point of the essay entirely: the central argument being that the bar is actually lower than they think, and the image Tony projects in Season 1 of The Sopranos kind of covers the basics (competence, affection, charm, courage).
But that was a long time ago. I have more specifics to cover, and much more to say. This is my second post in a series I’m calling Marginalia, where I write about various topics on my IBM Wheelwriter 5 typewriter, mark them up a bit with a pen, scan them, and send them directly to you, basically unedited.
This one is for the boys.
Marginalia 02. On “boyfriends being embarrassing,” men’s fashion and grooming, what men should do, pickup lines, pick mes, performative males, men “not reading,” what all men should avoid, meatheads, and rolling our eyes at male longing.
Note on formatting: Because these are scans of actual, type-written pages, the formatting looks best on desktop (where I can set the images extra wide). You can rotate your phone to view more easily on mobile.