The 6′ rule

Actor and wrestler, Andre the Giant, stood at 7'4.

Last week, Davy Jones’ sudden death prompted a post about his life as an entertainer, and his life as a short man. Today, the focus is on tall men – their cultural psychology, how women feel about them, and medical problems they can face.

I know a lot of women like tall men. Our society has a thing about tall men being somehow better than shorter men but it is completely unproven. We have attachments to the notion that bigger is better but there is no correlation between a person’s height and their abilities or IQ.

Social anthropologists say women want mates who can provide and protect, and I’ve watched interviews with women who like tall men because they say, tall men give a feeling of protection (though I’m not sure why they would need protection in our relatively safe modern-day western world).

As I said last week, I am a small woman and I prefer short men because among other things, I’m concerned with proportion. Why would I want to cart around a step-ladder for the times that I want to kiss my tall boyfriend, and similarly, how could a tall guy feel on equal footing to his tiny girlfriend when she only comes up to his armpit? I’ve heard some men say “the height difference doesn’t matter when you’re horizontal”. Perhaps not, but how much of your relationship do you plan to spend lying down?

Once bitten, twice shy

I have been on a lot of dates in my life and I have learned a lot of things. Several years ago on a dating website, I was in contact with a handsome man who seemed interesting. I looked at his stats and saw his height. “Yeah right, no one is 6’11,” I said, assuming a typo, and decided to meet him.

To my absolute astonishment, he was 6’11. It was the most bizarre date I’ve ever been on, even outside of the 21″ height difference. He was odd, he was large, and he got aggressive. In the end, I had to use all the strength in my body to fight him off. Though he was almost 2 feet taller than me and double my weight, I managed to get away unscathed.

From that potentially harmful experience, I created a rule that prevents me from dating men over 6′, keeping me feeling safe from harm. Even if the giant is the most lovely, gentle creature, even if I’m accused of heightism, even if people tell me I’m being unfair, the size difference is just too imposing. I shock some tall men when I tell them they’re too tall for me – I know most of them haven’t heard such a remark before, but I hold my ground out of pure self-preservation. I don’t want to get into another compromising situation and I hope they understand my position.

Now, 6’11 is unusually tall, and the average height of Canadian men is 5’8, but men standing 6′ tall are rated the most attractive to women and are said to be the most reproductively successful. Social anthropologists say that in evolutionary terms, tall men and petite women are favoured and can afford to be more selective in their romantic partners.

Health problems

It’s no secret that taller men attract more women and earn more money, but shorter men live longer and enjoy better health. We don’t often think about height as a threat to our health, but taller people are susceptible to Marfan Syndrome – the stretching and consequent weakening of connective tissue in organs, bones, and ligaments, also associated with lung and eye problems. Being a tall man over 50 increases the risk for prostate cancer too.

Some teenage boys grow so long and lanky that they feel awkward and self-conscious and try to make themselves less noticeable by slouching. If this carries into adulthood, repetitive strain injuries can result, made worse by living in a world designed for smaller people – desks, beds, doorways, cars, planes, etc.

In 1983, John Gillis, psychology professor at Fredericton’s St. Thomas University, wrote Too Tall, Too Small, describing height extremes and associated behaviours – the Napoleonic Complex, plaguing short men who behave aggressively due to their lack of height, and the Friendly Giant Syndrome affecting some tall people with what Gillis calls an overcompensation for being physically dominant – tall people trying to be as nice as possible and sitting at every opportunity.

Some giants don’t want to dominate the situation with their stature and as Gillis says, many very tall people have gentle dispositions, but this can go too far in the opposite direction and the tall individual can lack assertiveness to the point of being a doormat. (Read the Ottawa Citizen article about Gillis’ book.)

Our culture still sees the world from a masculine perspective – through testosterone goggles where everything is larger, but bigger is not necessarily better. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the height issue by asking, “Have you ever wondered why so many mediocre people find their way into positions of authority? It’s because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think. We see a tall person and we swoon.”

I think as a culture, we are taught to see taller men as somehow better than short but being too small or too tall can have serious effects on a man’s confidence. I’m not sure that I would say tall men are any more confident than short men; I think it’s up to the individual. I see smaller men shrinking in too-big clothes and tall men with terrible posture trying to blend in with the shorter majority as often as I see well-dressed men of all heights with their heads held high.

No matter what your size, gents, it’s all in the way you carry yourself which is a product of how you feel about yourself. You have the choice to walk tall or to shrivel, and the rest of us will respond to what we see.

Davy Jones

This week, we lost one of the good ones. Davy Jones, the former singer of The Monkees died at the age of 66 of a massive heart attack. He leaves behind a lifetime of talent, loads of laughs, and a million broken teenage hearts.

Davy was born in Manchester, England and began his career on the much-loved series, Coronation Street, then took the part of the Artful Dodger in the London West End production of Oliver! which brought him fully into the entertainment fold (he was nominated for a Tony award for his role in the New York production). He appeared on the same Ed Sullivan Show as the Beatles in 1964, you know, their first US television appearance where masses of hysterical teenaged girls drowned them out.

“I watched the Beatles from the side of the stage, I saw the girls going crazy, and I said to myself, this is it, I want a piece of that,” Jones said of the evening.

In 1966, Jones auditioned for a new series that followed the adventures of The Monkees, a music group trying to break into the rock and roll world. The Monkees were really the first corporate pop group, a fabricated American version of The Beatles, made complete by Davy Jones, the clever, handsome Brit. The group had some very catchy music, often written by the best songwriters of the period: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, and the group’s own Michael Nesmith, and the series won two Emmy Awards in 1967 for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy (James Frawley).

I watched re-runs of The Monkees TV show when I was a kid and I inherited my one-time Davy Jones-crazed aunt Betsy’s Monkee records, so I have my own happy memories of Davy and his gang of wacky band mates. Betsy, like millions of pubescent girls worldwide, went mad for Davy, plastering his pin-up face on their bedroom walls and dreaming that she was actually the one he was singing about when he crooned, “I’ll be true to you, yes I will”.

I got hate letters from girls all over America because I wouldn’t go to the prom with them.
-Davy Jones

He sang heart-felt ballads and he could shake a mean maraca; he was the kind of fella any girl would fall for – deep brown saucer eyes, thick dark hair, a beautiful face, a sharp wit, and a charming British accent. Davy was just as sweet, just as cute, and caused just as much teenage hysteria as our modern adolescent heart-throb, Justin Bieber. These two share another commonality – their stature. Standing a compact 5’5, Justin is only 3″ taller than Davy was.

Davy was so small that he sometimes served as a prop on The Monkees series.

Short

“I’ve always thought if all the show business success hadn’t happened, I’d have been a world champion jockey. It’s in my blood,” Davy said in 1996.

In Davy’s case, his small stature helped him become an accomplished horseman, though most people might argue that taller is better. In a publication I used to do before I started this blog, I devoted one issue to men’s height. Through my research, I developed a theory about why the western world has a hate on for small men, and I think that Britain’s George III is responsible. When the French army, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, threatened England, caricatures of the French leader being small and weak in comparison to the larger, stronger British monarch began to appear in newspapers, colouring society’s view of short men. The truth is that Napoleon stood at a very average 5’6 for the time, while George stood somewhere around 5’11, and he saw this as a point of ridicule. Short men have been in the dog house ever since (source).

For the record, there is no correlation between height and intelligence; short men are just as able and just as intelligent as tall men, but because we have been socially conditioned perhaps by George III’s political posturing, things aren’t so great for short guys.

I learned  more about the short man’s plight in the survey I did for the height issue, finding that of the men surveyed, those under 5’7 reported height discrimination. Short men complained of problems buying clothes, feeling overlooked, and being socially perceived as being “less than” a taller man. It’s understood that shorter men suffer in life, work, and love, making less money than taller men and working extra hard to attract women. (Read this blog about dating short men by a short man.)

I had a conversation about height with a 5’7 foot male friend the other night who uses internet dating sites. He complained about the profiles on these sites being full of women who insist on meeting tall men only, making my shorter friend feel bad and “rejected”.

Seeing as though our culture neglects short men already, I can see why a short man might be hurt by a height exclusion, so, in support of my small brothers, I’m going to make an admission: I am 5’2, I prefer short men, and I have height restrictions when it comes to dating too. Nothing personal, but the closer a guy is to 6′, the less attractive he is to me as a romantic partner. When I used dating sites and saw an interesting face, I’d check his height and if he was too tall, I passed. It’s a proportion thing for me. I know that I am not alone when I say that I cannot think of anything more attractive than a compact, self-assured man. Believe me, fellas, contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of women who dig short guys. (Read this blog about dating short men by a woman who likes smaller men.)

Davy Jones was one of the first men who made being short sexy, passing the torch to short men like Tom Cruise, Prince, Jason Priestly, and Elijah Wood who have all been very successful in their careers and in their romantic lives. With three wives, four children, and an entertainment career spanning over 50 years, little Davy did pretty well for himself. He didn’t suffer from “short man’s syndrome”, walking around with a chip on his shoulder or shivering in insecurity over his small stature; Davy didn’t have anything to prove, he just enjoyed himself and believed in himself, and it’s that confidence that makes a short guy shine.

Thanks Davy.

Christie Blatchford: Born in the 50s

You may have heard about the sensation writer Christie Blatchford caused in her recent National Post piece, “Toronto, City of Sissies“ over the last week. It is a strong opinion piece that has drawn much ire from many people, especially – and obviously – those that live in Toronto.

Ms Blatchford writes that men and boys need to “toughen up” and take on an antiquated gender role, destined to die by the next generation. Her article seems to look at the world through the eyes of the controlling class that was in place during her youth – the days when uptight white men controlled everything from religious views to industry to social practices, and of course, women and women’s sexuality.

It was a time when women, who competently operated everything when men were away at war, were expected to settle into the gender role of the happy, obedient housewife and mother, when the men, returning from the war brave and stoic, got back into the driver’s seat and took over with military sharpness.

The post WWII period was a time of rebuilding countries and social systems, when men and women were segregated into gender roles in order to regenerate the population. Even clothing reflected this – Christian Dior’s “New Look” of the late 1940s sculpted women into hourglass figures, and according to my costume professor in university, symbolized the regeneration properties of women – the rounded puffy skirts of Dior’s line represented and exaggerated women’s hips, thus drawing men to them and thus begetting an increased population – hello baby boom generation.

It seems to me that Ms Blatchford chooses to remain living in an old school world where women were thought of as girls  and both sexes lived under strict gender expectations, and they were not allowed to cross the line. As the 50s mentality dictated, acting anything remotely feminine was a boy’s ultimate sin (for reasons that I still can’t put my finger on).

Ms Blatchford proclaims she is tired of men being in touch with their feminine sides because they have lost their handle on masculinity. She is “mortified and appalled” at the sight of school-aged boys greeting each other with hugs, instead of having a switchblade rumble, I guess.

Humans showing their humanity evidently makes Ms Blatchford uncomfortable, so please stop it, you’re causing the black and white gender lines to blur!

Behaviour expectation is about controlling the masses so the masses conform to the wishes of the ruling class. The most effective way to control people is to keep them in fear – fear of punishment, fear of ex-communication, fear of pain, fear of shame, and so on. Fear is a very potent behaviour modifier. We are controlled by threats of fear and consequences communicated to us in various ways, one of them being language.

“Toronto, City of Sissies”

Each generation has its own language that defines it and every generation has its own arsenal of derogatory language to keep people in line with the ways of the ruling class and generally keep them feeling bad about themselves. Queer, stupid, fag, lezbo, dork, geek, and fairy are the ones my Gen X friends and I remember, for example. None of them are cool; all of them hurt.

In keeping with her era, Ms Blatchford chooses “sissy” as her insulting term. “Sissy” (American, 1840-50) is one of those generational terms that we don’t hear much these days, but it has several meanings. It started out as a term of endearment towards one’s sister, or a diminutive of Cecelia, Frances, or Priscilla, but turned to something derogatory to describe an effeminate man, a man who does not conform to the traditional masculine role, a man who is interested in feminine pastimes or clothing, a man who is afraid, or a man who cries. “Sissy” is used in subversive sexual cultures involving erotic humiliation and bondage. Interestingly, the term sissyphobia is thought to be a combination of prejudice of women and homosexual males.

Knowing this, “Toronto, City of Sissies” seems rather an odd title because Ms Blatchford practically falls over herself  gushing about how much she loves gay men (…”as a downtowner, I live surrounded by gay men, who, like most women, I adore as a group”).

So if this is true, how is it that Ms Blatchford, a solid representative for the generation that demanded strong, silent men’s men, betrays her 50s mentality not just liking but adoring gay men? Surely gay men are sissies too, Ms Blatchford!

Violence as communication

I agree with Blatchford when she says, “the onus for stopping bullies lies not with the people being bullied, but with those who see it happen.” However, I don’t agree with her idea that “taking the bully out for a short pounding” is a solution.

“This has been true for centuries,” she insists, “and it is still true, and it works equally well in the locker room, the office, a bar, and on the factory floor or street.”

Pain, like fear, is another good motivator. A punch in the chops (or “assault” as it’s known nowadays) is a good way to get someone to see your way. Corporal punishment kept people in line during these darker days of modern masculinity when men and boys were not allowed to talk about their feelings (only girls do that!); they talked with their fists instead, in the hopes of teaching wordless lessons, symbolic of the ridiculous masculine stoicism of the generation.

What I think Ms Blatchford overlooks here is that “short poundings” don’t do well helping people understand why they’re getting pounded, and I expect that arbitrary poundings are painful, possibly maiming, and surely confusing, producing anger and/or depression in the pounded. Doesn’t she know how this works? Hasn’t she read Bukowski’s Ham On Rye? Humans are reasonable when they’re treated reasonably,  I find.

Action!

In her generational wisdom, Christie Blatchford understands the way boys and men are “supposed” to be. She offers us “a few reminders of the way it was once upon a time and really always should be,” recommending that boys engage in  ”killing”, “whacking”, “shooting”, “kissing”, “farting” (on cue, no less), and “making the sound of a train in a tunnel” (hello Dr. Freud). ”Hugging is not” on this list.

I’m just plain sick of hugs, giving and getting, from just about anyone, but particularly man-to-man hugs.

Not sure why this bothers her, or why she’s letting it get to her. She could simply turn her head away from the sight of a man expressing his warmth, fellowship, and affection to his friends.

Ms Blatchford says, “I know men have feelings too. I just don’t need to know much more than that.” This makes me think of emotionally immature males who are squeamish hearing about the inner workings of the female reproductive system – they just don’t want to know about it.

The people of Toronto have got into a bit of an uproar about Blatchford’s article, so much so that someone started a Facebook group, Christie Blatchford Needs A Hug. One member wrote, “…our whole society could definitely use more hugs. Affection makes us stronger, isolation only weakens society.”

In response to Blatchford’s “Sissies” article, Jeff Perera, of The Good Man Project, wrote The Invisible Gun of Manhood, saying,

Every one of us was meant to embrace our whole, full humanity. Yet, enforced ideas of what being a man is leaves every boy and man wrestling to suppress themselves. We are raised to value an unattainable standard and devalue anything “less than,” which is any aspect of our humanity labelled “feminine.”

Men are left feeling that they are not given permission (from others or from our own self) to discover our handcuffed array of emotions. Denying or being forced to deny sides of our selves, we are the walking dead, numb and emotionally illiterate. This leaves us numb to the very fact of the gun pressing on our soul. The sound of the resulting trauma inflected on the world is muted by a silencer, but the impact resonates like an endless echo of gunfire on women and men worldwide.

I’m not getting too excited about the Blatchford article because it originates from a place of obsolete thinking, and the world has changed too much to return to such a rigid existence. Toronto, next time you see Christie Blatchford walking her bull terrier around Rosedale, stop, embrace her, tell her you love her, and bring her up to speed about the modern world. Tell her about the internet and digital communication, about newly discovered species and advances in medicine, and don’t forget to break the news that Elvis Presley died 35 years ago.

Douche-bagging

A douche is a body cavity irrigation system, not a stupid person.

As an observer of masculinity and society at large, I take notice of different words and terms that come in and out of fashion and vary in popularity. “Douche bag” is one of these terms that I hear often and I’m not sure that I’m clear on it, so I asked some people I know to give me other names for douche bag so that I can understand it.

“Jerk, boor, fool, wanker, tool, motherf#@%er, dick, *sshole, *sswipe, and Jack*ss”, they told me. Esquire calls “douche bag”  ”a troublemaker without brains, a narcissist without charm, a breeder of ill will and contempt…”. Okay, I think I’ve got it.

But what I don’t understand is how an inanimate object, an object used to administer a vaginal (or sometimes a nasal) wash, came to be a way to describe and insult a fellow such as this. I guess I’m of the literal sort and I find the term “douche bag” a rather bizarre insult for anyone, but especially men who have nothing to do with vaginal rinses.

Do people who use the term “douche bag” actually know what they’re saying? 

If you’re French, “douche” means shower.

Dictionary.com explains a douche as “a jet or current of water, sometimes with a dissolved medicating or cleansing agent, applied to a body part, organ, or cavity, for medicinal or hygienic purposes.”

The Urban Dictionary says that a douche is “a word to describe a person who is a waste of oxygen; an idiot; an individual who is very brainless in some way or another, thus comparing them to the cleansing product for vaginas.“ Thus comparing them to the vaginal cleansing product? I don’t see how a person would make a connection between being brainless and the cleaning of a woman’s box. I guess if you’re brainless/stupid, you’ve could have the IQ of any old inanimate object, but why a douche bag? Why not an enema bag or Neti pot; an acorn, a shoe, or a pad of paper for that matter?

I’m curious about how this term began as something benign and turned into a face-slapping insult. Linguists may consider “douche bag” as a pejorative, a semantic change whereby a word acquires unfavourable connotations. Such as the case for “douche bag”. I found a good site explaining “douche bag is an olde tyme insult, much like “trollop” or “dingbat.” The Oxford English Dictionary says the word was first printed in the 1930s and was popularized in the 1950s as a term of contempt towards women.

Another blog went a little deeper and found a stronger proof of the term used in a pejorative sense and perhaps locating the first usage of “douche bag“, back in 1951 in the novel,  From Here to Eternity:

“The trouble with you, Pete,” the voice that did not seem to come with him but from that cigarette said savagely, “is that you can’t see further than that douchebag nose of yours.”

(I’m trying to imagine what the voice meant by describing the nose as “douchebag”…)

The  San Francisco Weekly that says the use of  ”douche bag” goes back to 1967, “when “douchebag” was a popular epithet for “an unattractive coed”; it has since morphed into a general term of disparagement, esp. for an unattractive or boring person.”

No matter how much reading I do, I still can’t seem to find the magic moment when “douche bag” became a popular term in the 2000s for pompous jerks, so I’m going to let it remain a mystery, unless anyone out there thinks they have an answer – if so, please share it with us in the comments.

Now, onto other things.

Vagina, a self-cleaning organ

Men, if you haven’t realized it by now, the vagina is an amazing organ. Among other things, the vagina is like a self-cleaning oven: it cleans itself and flushes away bacteria and residual menstrual blood with its own fluid and it doesn’t need any outside help.

Douching rinses away the natural vaginal discharge and is not recommended. The medical world agrees that douching is not a good idea because it messes with a woman’s natural ph balance, it can introduce bacteria into the cavity, and can put women at risk for infection. If a pregnant woman douches, she increases the risk of preterm delivery, according to Medscape.com.

I suppose douches exist because the makers of douches like  Massengill and Summer’s Eve decided that they could make money from yet another product that we don’t really need. Or the makers of commercial douches decided that a woman’s natural scent was offensive and decided to turn society against it. If you don‘t have a squeaky-clean vag, you‘re just not fresh and you‘re not socially acceptable!

I have never used a douche; I don’t like the idea. I’m not comfortable with shooting acidic vinegar and water into a body cavity, nor am I into spraying an orifice with water mixed with artificial scent – ooh, the sting! Research shows that some douches contain octoxynol-9 – a spermicide, potential breast carcinogen, and according to the Natural Skincare Authority, a substance that can “instigate immune system response that can include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of the skin.” A woman can just as easily take a shower and let her natural powers clean her insides – a nicer alternative, non?

If there is a foul smell about the vagina, it could be an indication that there is an infection and douching to “freshen up”/cover the smell may make things a lot worse. A strong scent from down below may indicate that a woman’s flora is compromised and she might want to visit her doctor. Nature is good at giving us cues.

Douche bag or bottle?

Hundreds of years ago, a douche would be administered through a carved bone syringe-looking thing with a flat end with holes in it to plunge the liquid through, and during the early 20th century, a rubber bag was used to hold the douching fluid. Nowadays, a douche is not administed through a bag at all, it’s used with a squeezable plastic bottle, but for some reason, “douche bottle” never caught on…

Growing up with the Fonz

Aaaaeeee! The Fonz was a role model for boys in the 70s.

For the last few generations and for the first time in history, there have been 20 – 25-year lapses in style (music, design, art, clothing), due to rapid advances in technology,  manufacturing, and undoubtedly, marketing. When people get into their 30s and 40s and get nostalgic for the good old days where there much less stress and way more fun, the days/daze of high school, and for times of experimentation with music and clothing and finding out who you were, the entertainment industry is always there to cater to that longing.

As a Gen-xer, I’m part of the first generation to witness all of these quarter century lapses because I believe the Baby Boomers started all of this through television, K-tel Records, and swinging hi-fis. We are in an 80s revival now (get out your synths and viva la Madonna), the 90s were all about the 70s (platform shoes and Tarantino films), the 80s were influenced by the 60s (mini skirts and a psychadelic-influence in music – i.e. XTC as The Dukes of Stratosphere), and the 1970s had a thing about the 50s.

The 50s influence was all over the 70s – the films and music from Grease and American Graffiti and the consequent rebirth of Wolfman Jack. Television was no different – who remembers Sha Na Na? 50s-inspired sitcoms began with Happy Days in 1974 and the era of the Fonz began.

Fonz

Arthur Fonzerelli, Fonz, the Fonz, or Fonzie, was a character on Happy Days, an American television comedy set in the 1950s with character stereotypes of the period: the all-American family in a modest two-storey house where Tom Bosley knew best; high schooler Richie Cunningham and his best friend, Potsie, a sass-mouthed kid sister, and Fonzie, the bully with a heart of gold.

I wondered how having a role model like the Fonz would affect the developing self-esteem of the boys who watched the show, seeing as though Fonz was a stoic high school drop out, a former gang member known to police, a terrible womanizer, a thug who would beat you to a pulp just for looking at him the wrong way, but also a guy who stood up for his friends.

I liked the early years of the show the because they were so much more authentic to the period – costumes, issues, and the Bill Haley theme song – rather than in later years when Richie had moved on and Joanie wore permed hair though it was supposed to be 1963. I was able to watch the first (and best) season of Happy Days on YouTube to research Fonz for this post.  I also collected the opinions of men who wanted to share their thoughts about the Fonz in an online survey. These are my findings:

Interesting Fonz facts

• Fonz and Ralph Malph were cited as co-stars in the first season.
• Fonz arm wrestles and drag races to prove his power.
• Fonz can start a jukebox by hitting it just so with the bottom of his fist.
• Fonz will go out with teenage girls only if he thinks they will put out.
• Fonzie’s first move: Snapping off a bra that Potsie attached to the bathroom radiator for Richie to practise on. Fonz then turns to the mirror to comb his Brylcreemed hair and realizes it is already perfect.
• Fonzie’s first line in Happy Days: ”You played with her chest?”
• Fonz wore a light blue or cream-coloured cloth bomber jacket until the drag racing episode where the black leather jacket comes out for the first time.
• Fonz is still within each of us who grew up with him:

The Fonz survey

I asked five questions about Fonzie’s influence in the survey and in return, I got some really interesting and surprising data. Some of the answers were hilarious, others honest, and some felt almost hostile towards him.

The first survey question revealed a lot. Though most liked him, more men than I expected said they didn’t like Fonzie for various reasons – some seemed to loathe him. I was delighted to read that several men saw through the tough facade and recognized the softer side of the Fonz, and that Fonzie spoke to the sense of self-confidence that many wished they had as boys. Most of the pollsters recognized the satire of the Fonzie character and none suggested having picked up any bad influence from him.

Questions and favourite answers below:

1. Did you look up to Fonzie as a role model? What impressions did he make on you, or did he teach you anything?

1. Yes. Loved the leather jacket – loved the signature ‘ehhhhh’ – liked that he was too cool for school, but still had heart.
2. I didn’t like Fonzie. I thought he was a bully. But I had a begrudging admiration for his ability to seduce women.
3. No, I did not. He was supposed to be a tough biker dude but they softened him up, took away his edge therefore took away his mojo.
4. Yes. He taught me the importance of coolness, the art of superciliousness and how to rock a leather jacket.
5. He taught me that it was OK to express myself and be unique to me – not follow what everyone else was doing. He also taught me the meaning of friendship.
6. Yes. Be confident and kind.

2. About being the Fonz, Henry Winkler says that the Fonz was his alter ego, that Fonz was everything he wasn’t. Did the Fonz represent something similar to you? Please explain if you can.

1. He didn’t represent anything to me.
2. The Fonz represented fearlessness – he was afraid of nothing or no one. Plus, he got laid a lot.
3. He was the über cool guy unaffected by emotional vulnerability and self-consciousness that no high school kid really is.
4. I never saw myself as being “cool”, but dressing in a way that was shocking gave me that “cool” feeling.
5. He definitely was everything I wasn’t.
6. The Fonz couldn’t even dance, or sing. i only hope he was a good mechanic. The Fonz represents all the things I don’t like about myself and avoid in others. He liked westerns, and claimed to have a sense of honour. If that is true, I will give him some credit for that.

3. What do you think made The Fonz cool when you watched Happy Days as a kid?

• He stood up for his friends: 76.5%
• He was popular with women: 70.6%
• He was “tough”: 58.8%
• He didn’t seem to need anyone: 35.5%
• Other: 17.6% (Some other reasons Fonz was cool: “He was untouchable. Almost god-like.” Also, “the thing about him “not needing anyone” and “not showing his feelings” was a cover up. Underneath he was a sensitive dude.”)
• He rarely showed his feelings:0%
• He dropped out of high school: 0%

4. Did you imitate Fonzie as a kid? If so, how?

1. No.
2. No
3. No.
4. “Aaaaaay!”
5. I’m sure I tried. But never successfully. It’s a tough gig.
6. Yes – I admired his self-confidence to be himself.
7. Mockingly, as did MAD magazine.

5. Please read the following YouTube comment found on a Happy Days episode: “OK, so let’s get this straight, a grown man… kicks the shit of 4 kids and then rails a highschool girl….yea, that would work real well today…”.

I think what this person is saying is that the concept of Fonzie and his “coolness” is dated. How do you feel about the Fonz now as an adult?

1. I think the concept of Fonzie and his coolness was already dated in the 1970s when the show aired. Happy Days was not a simple portrayal of the 1950s, but more of a multi-layered commentary on the changes of mores and societal pressures between the 1950s and the 1970s.
2. I agree that this behaviour is dated, but not his overall coolness.
3. Older men are still banging high school girls. Fonzie was the 50′s model, so the character is dated, but not the behaviour.
4. I think he would likely be arrested today.
5. While the details may be dated, the core notion of the Fonz is timeless — the guy above the fray, at the centre of attention, mysterious and self-sufficient, the guy who seems to know something the rest of us don’t.

Fonz was many things to many people. Fonz was loved, he was hated, he was cool, and people didn’t mess with him. The most ironic thing about Fonzie is that Henry Winkler, the actor who played Fonzie, is Dyslexic, and felt he was hopelessly uncool. He says that the Fonz helped him experience life. Give Henry a couple of minutes of your time for the last word:

From boy to man

I hear all of the time from women that they’re glad they’re not men. I’m often saying that I think it would suck to be a man because of all of the social pressures and expectations we have of men, and the constant stress to prove themselves as men.

Womanhood comes naturally to us through our bodies that can create, feed, and nurture babies. Womanhood is never questioned and no one ever doubted it. It just is.

Manhood seems to be more of a challenge. Men and boys need to prove their masculinity to themselves and the world constantly and consistently, and the stress, I imagine, must be so hard to bear. Our culture is lousy with guys trying to prove themselves  - we are endlessly bombarded with the glorified tales and deeds of men in movies, books, and on TV, and idealized versions of men in sports and video games.

Women are also under pressure but in a different way: one could say that we feel pressure to look a certain way while men are pressured to perform a certain way. Example: catalogues – we see women holding gifts or resting their gentle hands on the shoulders of fellow long underwear models – I’m here to be seen, behold me - while men are always in action, “catching” a football, “chopping” wood – even in their y-fronts!

Of course, I’m talking about straight men. I don’t think that open gay men are expected to prove their manhood because their identity falls under a different jurisdiction. Gay men live under very different cultural rules than straight men do, and have other things going on, but once out of the closet, no one ever asked them to prove their manhood, because the need to prove it isn’t in their culture.

What I want to bring to light this week is what boys have to go through on their way to become men, including the rejection of the feminine and the rites and rituals that a boy must endure as he pieces his masculinity together. For this topic, I’m going to be quoting a lot from Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity by anthropologist, David D. Gilmore, who studied cultures from all over the world and found a strong underlying understanding among males is to reject anything remotely resembling the feminine.

Strap yourselves in, it’s going to a bizarre and cringe-inducing ride that may make you squirm.

Rites of Passage

Quoted in Gilmore, French anthropologist, Arnold van Gennep’s 1908 work, The Rites of Passage, explains the theme of passage as the change in status and identity as the boy “dies” and is “reborn” a man, each stage accompanied by appropriate symbolism:

1. Separation: The boy severs relations with childhood, often literally, by renouncing the mother or being forcefully taken away from her.

2. Transition. He is sent away to a new place in the bush or is otherwise isolated while in limbo – a status where he is neither boy nor man.

3. Incorporation. He emerges as a man.

The first stage, being taken away from one’s mother is meant to remove the boy’s dependency on the mother because this is largely understood to mean weakness, and weakness is not tolerated well in the world of men. If you’re weak, you’re a sissy, not unlike a girl (horrors!), and you may get your ass kicked. In some cultures like Spain and Morocco,  ”a man must gain full and total independence from women as a necessary criterion of manhood,” according to Gilmore.

This independence begins with the separation from this “source of weakness” and can take many forms, breaking the psychic tie between sons and mothers. For instance, sociologist, Michael Kimmel recognizes the act of baptism as “[t]he old “feminized self” born of a woman is destroyed, and the priest, always a man, brings the new self to life. In a sense, then, the male priest has given birth to the new man. The mother may have given birth, but the child does not become a member of the community until the priest confers that status. Women are pushed aside, and men appropriate reproductive power.”

Kimmel denies any empirical evidence suggesting that boys who stay close to their mothers “become any less capable of manhood than those who reject her in a wrenching separation.”

He says there is good evidence suggesting that the separation from one’s mother has negative consequences for women in his future, where he learns to distrust them and seals himself off from ever showing his true vulnerability and neediness.

“He becomes a man alright – a cold, hard, unfeeling one.”

Rite or torture?

Once the separation has taken place, boys in different parts of the world may be subjected to cruel and brutal rituals to symbolically shed the feminine so that they are “wiped clean of their female contaminants – so that their masculinity may develop.” (Gilbert H. Herdt)

While in New Guinea, Gilmore observed and worked with ethnic groups where boys “were subjected to numerous tests and brutal hazing, some of which involve either physical beating or painful bloodletting – nosebleeds resulting from bamboo canes forced down the esophagus inducing painful vomiting. The boys are also flailed violently with sticks, switches, or bristly objects until their skin is “opened up” and the blood flows.”

Gilmore says that the point of the bleeding is “specifically to remove the mother’s blood and milk and other “polluting” feminine influences from the boy’s body, because these maternal influences inhibit masculinization and therefore adult role play performance.”

Herdt notes that the rites teach the boys to ignore the flow of their own blood and show a stoic resolve. These experiences are said to “explicitly” prepare them fo the life of manly endurance that awaits them.

Bleeding is just one form of this cleansing ritual. Gilmore’s tribe in New Guinea also partakes of ritual fellatio:

“Men cannot help noticing how the child is “too dependent” on the mother and the breast. Apparently, the aggregate response is to wean the boys on their own penises.”

To instill responsibility, independence, and manly strength, the Gisu tribe of Uganda have boys undergo “stressful rites of transition to manhood, including painful bloodletting and circumcision,” and to show pain – even the slightest flinch – will result in ostracization and ridicule.

The young Gisu initiate must stand perfectly still, without the slightest movement, while first his foreskin is ripped open and then the subcutaneous flesh is slowly stripped from around the glans of the penis… the elders describe the degree of pain as “fierce”, “bitter”, and “terrifying”.

The Gisu believe that this terrible ordeal will awaken a fierceness in a boy that makes him fearless, “for he has already experienced the worst pain life has to offer,” Gilmore says.

He sees compelling evidence linking masculine ideology to social and natural environments: “The harsher the environment and the scarcer the resources, the more manhood is stressed as inspiration and goal… it indicates a systematic relationship in which gender ideology reflects the material conditions of life.”

Conditions in central Africa are quite different than in western countries, and without guidance and perhaps without ritual, Michael Kimmel sees young men limping towards manhood in North America, without guidance from their elders, and without rites and rituals to mark their passage.

“Most guys actually do become men – eventually,” Kimmel says, “They may try to convince themselves that they are proving their manhood by torturing each other through initiation, drinking themselves into unconsciousness, watching porn, blowing away virtual enemies, and hooking up with every willing – or sometimes unwilling – woman they meet. But that’s not the way it happens. Most guys just drift into manhood.”

I find it upsetting to think that we as a species are so out of balance that we put men through so much so that they live up to our ideal of what we think a man is. Putting boys through torture in order to become “men” is inhumane and ridiculous. Perhaps if men embraced their Anima, or feminine side, as suggested by Carl Jung, instead of fighting with it, we would be more balanced and less brutal. The journey to manhood is an unnatural construct, and it’s important that we know that we have a choice in how we treat boys and men. Maybe it’s time for reevaluation.

In the end, I still don’t know why displaying one’s feminine side is so bad. I think that when it comes to toughness, women’s bodies are naturally more durable and resilient than men’s bodies, given our monthly menstruation or what I imagine to be the intense pain of childbirth. Mums, like any other mother in the animal world, are often more fierce and courageous than males because they have carried and given birth, and must protect their brood in the world. We don’t actually get any training for this; our toughness is natural.

Comedienne, Betty White, sums up this topic beautifully: ”Why do people say “Grow some balls?” Balls are weak and sensitive! If you really wanna get tough, grow a vagina! Those things take a pounding!”

Sh*t fit

While waiting for a client in Club Monaco last month, I wandered into the women’s clothing section to kill some time. There was a cute little suit jacket on the rack that, upon further inspection, I deemed too large for me.

"Manity sizing" strokes a fella's ego by "decreasing" his pant size by name only, which may in fact increase the risk of health problems.

I looked at the tag for the size.

0. Zero. Size Zero.

Were it 1960, I would be considered a size 14, but at Club Monaco in 2011, I would fit a negative size – a minus 1 or minus 2.

A minus size, a minus size; a size of no sum or consequence. How can I be a negative size?

This terrifies me in a way because  I see a negative size as a non-size and as a human, I feel erased; fitting a negative clothing size makes me feel like a non-person. What is this new sizing system and what else are they messing with?

This is a post to explain why your clothes don’t fit you.

Erratic sizing

To keep things efficient, manufacturers use “average” sizes of a cross-section of people to create patterns for different sizes (small, medium, large, etc.), classified by their height and weight. The measurements (neck measurement for men, chest, waist, hip measurement for women, etc.) are added together and divided by the number of people measured, giving “average” measurements.

But there are lots of interpretations of average and so few of us are actually average-sized, that this is just one of the factors working against us when we walk into a clothing store:

• There is no industry standard for sizing – I have size extra small, small, medium, and an extra-large piece from Chinatown in my closet but my measurements remain static, unchanged;
• Every designer cuts a little or a lot larger or smaller than the next designer, so each line will fit differently (e.g. Tiger of Sweden is a trim cut but Mark’s Work Warehouse has offerings for more robust fellows);
• Some but not all manufacturers buy into “vanity sizes”, whereby a piece of clothing that may truly fit you is called something smaller (you could have an actual 34″ waist measurement but you might wear a 32″ or 33″ vanity-sized pant);
• Each style of garment is going to fit differently on each body – e.g. the rise of the pant will give a larger waist size because it sits at a wider point on the hips.

This causes a great deal of confusion for people who have to wade through an ocean of arbitrary sizing that may or may not hold their own weight. Pun intended.

In the age of political correctness where we’re more sensitive to other’s feelings, business owners and manufacturers have to keep in mind that a compliment in the form of a “smaller (vanity) size” can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Vanity

I’ve been told by women that wearing a “smaller” size makes them feel better about themselves. I understand what it’s like to be heavy and not feel one’s best (I was pushing 150 lbs at age 22 – about 30 lbs more than I weigh now), so I can see why a size 8 would feel better than a size 12.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the vanity sizing practice began in women’s clothing, but it has seeped into menswear, adopting the name “manity sizing”. This rather dishonest sizing system has become totally out of hand, so I looked at some online research to figure out what this silly sizing system is all about. This is what I found:

“Vanity sizing is the practice of using smaller numbered sizes on bigger clothing patterns… to make customers feel better about themselves and become more inclined to buy,” says one blogger who runs a PR and marketing company.  Her opinion has a ring of supply and demand to it.

“It is important for manufacturers to have an idea of what sells because retail sales still have not fully recovered since the recession hit in 2008.”

However, on vanitysizing.com, this suggestion is (rather cuttingly) downplayed. The author of the article has an economics background and suggests that sizing is based on demographics.

“If you sell to lower-income people, your average size is going to be larger than the average size sold to rich people. Boutiques sell pricier clothes that are sized on average, smaller than product in mass merchant stores.”

A very good Esquire style blog describes the confusion with the vanity sizing for men. First, the writer calling the practice

From the Esquire style blog - vanity sizing for men's pants.

“flattery”, but as we know, flattery can only take you so far. He says he’s got a Russell Crowe build and though he’s enjoyed his manity-sized pants, he’s still perturbed.

“This isn’t the subjective business of mediums, larges and extra-larges — nor is it the murky business of women’s sizes, what with its black-hole size zero. This is science, damnit. Numbers!”

But the numbers don’t add up and because sizing is basically a free-for-all without a standard measurement guide. The illustration below from Esquire shows to what extent we’re being lied to - to the tune of up to 5″.

Erratic sizes

The waist is the most misunderstood part of a man’s body, I think. When I’m taking my client’s measurements, I explain the waist measurement concept/confusion.

I tell them that if I were a doctor and we were doing an annual physical, I would measure his waist just above his hipbone/through the navel. Most people don’t wear their trousers that high anymore (men did in the 40s) and that means that the point at which his waistband sits is not necessarily where we’ve taken the measurement of the waist – different styles of pants with different rise lengths (the distance from the crotch to the top of the waist) will give different waist measurements at different points on the torso.

An article from The Telegraph reports findings of a study they conducted on men’s waist sizes and found that “[o]verall, 28 out of 50 garments checked were found to be larger than on the label.”

“Shoppers quite reasonably expect 32 inches to mean just that,” said Richard Cope, chief trend analyst at Mintel, a London-based market research company. “They are becoming increasingly frustrated to discover their sizes vary from fashion brand to fashion brand and from item to item.”

Confused yet? You should be.

Health problems

If clothing manufacturers began vanity sizing to make larger people feel better about themselves as some people maintain, that’s one thing, but I’m seeing this sizing practice as a dangerous denial and health threat.

Vanity sizing is delusional, offering solace in a lie and erasing any guilt from consuming another baker’s dozen, putting people at greater risk of the health problems associated with obesity.  As the Esquire blog asks, “why should pants make us feel better about badness at health?”

Obesity is an enormous social and economic problem. Pun intended. Men with larger waists face different and more serious health problems than slim guys – a Stats Can study identified type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, some cancers, and gallbladder disease associated with obesity, as well as “psychological problems, functional limitations and disabilities.”

Have a look at these astounding rates from Statistics Canada‘s study of adult obesity in Canada:

In 2004, nearly one-quarter (23.1%) of adult Canadians, 5.5 million people aged 18 or older, were obese. An additional 36.1% (8.6 million) were overweight.

The 2004 obesity figure was up substantially from 1978/79, when Canada’s obesity rate had been 13.8%.

As body mass index (BMI) increases, so does an individual’s likelihood of reporting high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. (Check your own BMI here.)

Canada’s adult obesity rate is significantly lower than that in the United States: 23.1 % compared with 29.7%. The percentage of Canadians who are overweight or obese has risen dramatically in recent years, mirroring a worldwide phenomenon.

I have to wonder if vanity/ manity/ insanity sizing is really making things better by way of our self-esteem, or if it's plunging us deeper into clothing chaos and confusion and denial about our bodies. To my mind, this sizing practice is a psychological experiment that may give extra space for denial; the man with the 41" waist who's wearing a 36" pant from Old Navy may feel a little dietary freedom because he thinks he's got room n0w: Hey, I can fit into a size 36 for the time being, so I've got room for another coupla Krispy Creme KFC Double Downs - bring it on! 

Like a temporary sugar rush before the crash, I think that as a society, we're just asking for trouble lying to people about their sizes. Sometimes I ignore sizes altogether and rely on a tape measure where the numbers are hard and they don't tell me any fibs. The point is to be comfortable in clothing that fits us, regardless of what size the marketing department gives.

Pink and blue, what’s it to you?

Pink and blue have been fashionable for both genders at different points in history. Shown here: Peter and Paul in this 19th century biblical painting.

Because I work with men who most likely have not had the opportunity to experience colour like women have, I like to introduce my clients to colour in a language they will likely understand, through science. Seeing colour as physics, or solar radiation, gives men an opportunity to appreciate colour for what it is – colour as light in its pure state instead of colour laden with social meaning.

Colour perception

For both social and physical reasons, men are apt to see colour differently than women. As a gender group, boys are not socialized to appreciate and be free with colour as girls are, and they are more prone to colour blindness.

“The fact that color blindness is so much more prevalent among men implies that, like hemophilia, it is carried on the X chromosome, of which men have only one copy,” says the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, “7 percent of [American] males either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green differently from most people, but this affects only .4 percent of women.”

The strong colours and geometric shapes of Split Enz' True Colours album appeal to babies.

I read some websites about infant perception and learned that by two months old, babies can pick up high-contrast colours, simple patterns and shapes, and by five months can distinguish between basic hues and softer pastels.

One of my cousins was born in 1980. My aunt and uncle found their son transfixed by the strong colours and geometric shapes of Split Enz’ True Colours album cover, so my aunt put it in his crib, and it worked like a pacifier.

The album cover came out in a series of different colours, even black and white. This video is one of the singles from the record and besides being a really great song, the set and lighting design plays with the colours and shapes on the album cover – quite clever. Enjoy:

Babies, like children and like adults,  react to colour, especially bold and high-contrast colours. Somewhere along the line, we – and when I say we, I mean society at large, directed by designers and retailers who actually decide what we wear, move from brightly-coloured toys, clothes, furniture, bedding, and diapers for all babies, into a more rigid chromatic order when boys and girls move into school age and are socialized into gender roles.

When boys get to school, they are expected to suck up their feelings and conform to the look and behaviour associated with their gender. Colour choices for childhood clothing seem to symbolically reflect unnatural and socially-imposed behaviour (think “boys don’t cry”), and the bright happy colours that babies and young children enjoy are replaced by darker, muted colours by the time a boy is in grade school. Next time you’re in a department store, go by the children’s clothing section where you will see for yourself the differences in colour (also in brightness) between the girls and the boys clothes. You may find that girls have vivid, multi-coloured choices in clothing, while boys are offered drab reds, blues, greys, and earth tones.

I’m a huge proponent of wearing colours that reflect our personalities so muted colours to me are symbolic of muted expression, and assigning gender-specific colours is robbing everyone of chromatic joy.

History of gender-specific colour

Colour associations have always existed in human culture and continuously change over time. It hasn’t always been pink and blue that carried gender associations, as John Gage explains in his excellent colour theory book, Color and meaning: art, science, and symbolism, but many other colours that carry gender significance:

…about 1809 the German Romantic painter and theorist Philipp Otto Runge devised a colour-circle expressive of ideal and real values, on which the warm poles of yellow and orange represented the ‘masculine passion’ and the cool poles of blue and violet the feminine. When this scheme was taken up a century later by the neo-Romantic Expressionists in Munich these values were reversed, so that for Franz Marc blue became the masculine principle and yellow the feminine, ‘soft, cheerful, and sensual’.

Prior to the 20th century, the practice of dressing girls in pink and boys in blue was reversed. As quoted in a Smithsonian.com piece on this topic, a June 1918 article in Earnshaw’s Infants Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for boys and blue for girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

“Pink and powder blue were used as lighter versions of red (the ‘masculine’ colour of blood and fighting) and blue (the iconographic colour of the Virgin Mary),” explains cognitive linguist, Veronika Kolle, in her excellent article, ’Not just a colour’: pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication.

Around World War 1, these colour associations began to change. A 1927 Time magazine chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys did not yet show a consensus on colour. A scale reflecting colour preferences in 10 different stores in 8 American cities saw 6 out of 10 stores identify pink for boys and half of the stores suggested blue for girls. It took some time for this change in traditional sex-related colours to occur, but once it did, there was no turning back for at least two generations.

The Virgin Mary in blue robes.

The colour code identifying pink for boys and blue for girls “persisted not only in Catholic countries until the First World War,” Kolle says, “when changing gender roles and increasing secularization led to the decentering of the quintessential maternal figure of the Virgin Mary. The colour blue consequently came to signify male professions, most notably the navy, rather than being an element of religious iconography.”

Academic author, Alison Lurie, has said that blue  as the colour of faith in the Christian Church became associated with trust and hard work (“blue collar”), and was adopted by males to represent their loyalty and perseverance.

Some argue that gender colour segregation was created by retailers to achieve higher profit margins. (If you noticed, the pink for boys and blue for girls idea was suggested above by Earnshaw’s, a children’s clothing retailer.)

“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Jo Paoletti, author of Pink & Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, says of colour differentiation. Chiming in, Kolle says “Marketing and consumer culture helped disseminate the new colour code across almost all Western cultures.”

“Nowadays,” Paoletti says, “people just have to know the sex of a baby or young child at first glance… What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted.’ ”

Visual artist, JeongMee Yoon does a really interesting job of looking at the relationship between gender, colour, consumerism, and socialization in her Pink and Blue Project.

“Perhaps it is the influence of pervasive commercial advertisements aimed at little girls and their parents, such as the universally popular Barbie and Hello Kitty merchandise that has developed into a modern trend. Girls train subconsciously and unconsciously to wear the color pink in order to look feminine.”

What does this all boil down to? My next statement may shock some of you, but gender-specific colours that you may believe to be real and true are actually manufactured concepts and nothing more than manipulation by the retail industry to get you to spend more money. Gender-specific marketing drives profits, you see.

Pink

Gainsborough's 18th century portrait of The Pink Boy.

Salmon, bubble gum,  watermelon, cherry, strawberry, fuchsia, rose, carnation, coral, blush, peach, magenta, and puce are all types of pink, a tint of red, the longest solar wavelength, measuring 630–740 nanometers (billionths of a meter, nm often used to measure atomic particles), if you choose to get scientific about it. Pink results when red is tinted with white.

Pink, like any other colour, is light absorbed by the rods and cones in the retinas of our eyes. Anything outside of this, as in the cultural meaning of colour,  is purely and arbitrarily fabricated by humans.

Kolle says, “What is associated with a colour or shade is indicative not of the colour itself but of the cultural and historical formation in which it is constructed as having particular characteristics and being suitable for particular social groups.” In other words, people attach meaning to things and concepts that actually have no meaning at all.

When segregated gender colour is so heavy-handed, as imposed on Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers that were spawned by the Boomers, this kind of social expectation and peer pressure can be so deeply ingrained and so rigid, that it moves from childhood into adulthood without missing a beat.

Sometimes I come across men who refuse to see colour as solar vibration as I try to present it, because to them, colour comes with gender identity and meaning attached to it.

I worked with a client a couple of years ago who is a former law enforcement officer (I mention this because an industry such as policing tends to adhere to rigid gender identities). After analyzing his personality and his colouring, he allowed me to choose the fabrics and colours for his new shirts that he would order from an overseas shirt maker. I chose shirts for him in colours true to his palette, including white, blue, yellow, and a light salmony pink. After a few weeks, I emailed him to see if his shirts had arrived and how he liked them. Everything was fine except for one thing.

“The shirts are great, but I will NEVER wear pink,” he wrote.

A die-hard social stance on the adoption or rejection of certain colours starts in childhood and takes away from the wonderful chromatic sensations that light offers our eyes.

Paoletti says, “One thing I can say now is that I’m not real keen on the gender binary – the idea that you have very masculine and very feminine things. The loss of neutral clothing is something that people should think more about. And there is a growing demand for neutral clothing for babies and toddlers now too.”

With any luck, the colour spectrum will be stripped of gender connotations and people will be open to experience the unbiased joy of chroma. As Oscar Wilde said, “Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”

Men and suicide part 2

Last week, the suicides of two NHL players inspired part 1 of the men and suicide series. In it, I discussed depression, suicide, and the masculine code of silence which ultimately acts as a muzzle on men and boys, keeping them from freely expressing their feelings, and putting them at emotional and physical risk.

In an attempt to cast a light on this topic and begin a dialogue about the way we treat males in our society and hopefully improve support systems for men and boys, this week we’ll look at factors understood to lead some males to suicide, including what I consider to be the abusive treatment of boys in our society, the impact of bullying, and imposed gender roles.

Gender roles

As we saw in part 1, the male suicide rate is an average of three times higher than female suicide rates in most countries, with males using more lethal methods of suicide than females. (Females have a higher rate of suicide attempts than males, their actions suggesting a call for help rather than a sincere desire to die.)

Males learn to emotionally stifle themselves in order to become what society believes a man should be, and should a young man stray from this unnatural masculine persona, he runs the risk of ridicule, shame, and torment, sure to leave nasty, lingering memories and feelings of anger, self-loathing, and depression, sometimes leading to suicide.

When we pressure boys to always be strong, be brave, and withhold their feelings (via a reward/punishment system, for example), this to me, reads as a collective abuse of boys. In allowing this, we are stripping away what makes them human, and I think it is time we began questioning this type of sexist treatment of boys.

In The Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell sees a pattern in the anxieties that boys experience, a repeating pattern that make boys feel less than equal to girls:

“By addicting boys more to girl’s bodies than vice-versa… [this addiction is fed if not planted by the media that makes the female body very accessible for ready consumption - look on any magazine rack for a plethora of unnecessary feminine body parts]. This reinforces boys performing for girls, pursing girls, and paying for girls to compensate for their inequality. When they perform and pursue inequality – or feel they will never be able to earn enough to afford what they are addicted to, this creates anxiety which in its extreme form, leads to suicide.”

Bullying

Abusive behaviour common in childhood is bullying. Bullying.org defines bullying as a person or group trying to hurt or control another person in a harmful way.

“In bullying, there is a difference in power between those being hurt and those doing the hurting, bullying involves hurtful behaviours that are repeated and intentional. Bullying is not about a conflict that needs resolving. In bullying, the power is all in one person or a group’s control. People who bully others show loathing and contempt for those they are trying to hurt.”

Bullying can have deeply psychological and long-lasting effects for both sexes and have bearing on the child as an adult; bullying can damage self-esteem and self-confidence, and in boys who are not encouraged to discuss their troubles with anyone, bullying may even lead to violence.

In their article, Suicide by mass murder:  Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings, sociologists Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel discuss the relation between young men who take assault weapons to school and go on shooting sprees and bullying:

“Nearly all had stories of being mercilessly and constantly teased, picked on, and threatened. Most strikingly, it was not because they were gay (at least there is no evidence to suggest that any of them were gay), but because they were different from the other boys – shy, bookish, honour students, artistic, musical, theatrical, non-athletic, ‘geekish’ or weird.”

“For some boys,” Kalish and Kimmel say, “high school is a constant homophobic gauntlet, and they may respond by becoming withdrawn and sullen, using drugs or alcohol, becoming depressed or suicidal, or acting out in a blaze of over-compensating violent ‘glory’.”

To get a sense of what it is like to be bullied, the authors quoted the work of fellow sociologist, Ralph Larkin, known for his analysis of the 1999 Columbine high school rampage that saw 13 people killed plus the suicides of the two murderers at the scene. Larkin was interested to learn about the power of bullying and interviewed marginalized boys who experienced the pain of ridicule and torment. Here is one such experience:

Almost on a daily basis, finding death threats in my locker … People … who I never even met, never had a class with, don’t know who they were to this day. [When I] walked home… every day when they’d drive by, they’d throw trash out their window at me, glass bottles. I’m sorry, you get hit with a glass bottle that’s going forty miles an hour, that hurts pretty bad. Like I said, I never even knew these people, so didn’t even know what their motivation was. But this is something I had to put up with nearly every day for four years.

When bullied boys have nowhere to turn because society expects them to play the “manly” role, what choices does he have? Kimmel says, “Young men are socialized to embrace a set of behaviours designed to prove or assert their masculinity, and taught to use violence, especially in response to threats against one’s manhood.”

The suicide class

Shame, inadequacy, and vulnerability all threaten the self, and as Kimmel says, “[v]iolence is restorative, compensatory.” He and Kalish suggest that young men who grow up in a world where they are socialized to see violence as a way to prove their manhood, violence becomes a legitimate response to the perceived humiliation. (It’s the socialized theme of every Western that was ever made – “American men don’t get mad; they get even.”)

So when their nascent masculinity is challenged or threatened, young men who have been stripped of their right and possibly their ability to communicate, may feel isolated, dark, sullen, and hopeless, sometimes turning their anger outside to violently punish those who tormented them like the bullied young men at Columbine, or turn their anger inside, where feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred can turn against the self.

When the boy grows into a man, he does not necessarily leave threats to his manhood in the school yard. Men’s identities, their sense of what it is to be a man, is often associated with their work, and if there is a loss of work or threat of loss of work, it can have devastating effects.

With the loss of work/identity/manhood, Farrell says that men can feel “humiliated, violated, helpless, angry, guilty, self-blaming, depressive, lower in self-esteem, and suicidal. Their vulnerability leaves them feeling powerless, as if the whole world were an elephant and they were an ant.”

He maintains that until we hear men communicate their suffering, men “will be rough, tough cream puffs: the suicide class.”

Help

I have attempted to provide some reasons to understand the condition of boys and men and how and why they might turn to violence or suicide to deal with their problems. I certainly don’t want to gloss over anyone’s individual story of depression or suicide, but the findings in the research suggest a common core in men’s depression and suicide: stunted or damaged self-esteem.

To begin to change things for the better, Warren Farrell suggests that we begin in child-rearing to “counter boy’s socialization and the socialization of girls who love boys who pay, perform, and pursue; to stop subsidizing male child abuse in the form of football and calling it “education”, to develop programs to prevent men from being 95% of the prisoners, and 85% of the homeless; to do for men what we would do for women.”

Of grown men and suicide, he says, “The single biggest solution to male suicide is making men feel needed as humans. Not just wallets. When men feel needed primarily as wallets, they are more likely to commit suicide when their wallets are empty. Many men have a deep need to send warning signals, but their belief that they have no right to ask others to rescue them from a disaster they feel they must have brought upon themselves, keeping them from even letting themselves know they have that need.” (Italics mine.)

American psychiatrist, Dr. James Gilligan, is an expert on violence. Dr. Gilligan works with men in prison and says that the best way to rehabilitate is through love, through nurture, and through education, not through punishment.

“The human soul, the human psyche, needs love in order to survive, just as specifically as the body needs oxygen in order to survive… prisoners were like people whose oxygen supply had been cut off, but it was their love supply. And I realized that without love, the soul dies. That’s what these men were telling me – their souls had died; that’s why they were capable of killing other people.”

From Toronto’s The Work of Men, relationship coach, Owen Williams, offers this advice for supporting men: ”The most important relationship for a man is the one with his father and then the quality of his friendships with other men. A depressed man usually has a poor support system in the realm of male friends. A man needs at least five other men in his life who will challenge, love and champion him to be his best. Men need to be supported in their greatness. We love to rise to the challenge of life and we cannot do it by ourselves.”

When it comes to depression, Williams asks men to look at depression as an absence of joy.

“A powerful area to explore would be to look at where joy is missing from a man’s life. Real joy that is! Not what a man thinks he needs to have in his life to gain the approval of others, what he needs to have to gain his own approval. In short, the most effective cure for depression is action. When a man steps up despite the feelings of inertia that inevitably accompany depression, he will liberate himself from the condition.”

From my work in the gay men’s outreach program at the AIDS Committee of Toronto, I know that when people feel badly about themselves, they are more likely they are to harm themselves or put themselves at risk. I also know from working with men and their image, that when a man feels good about himself, he treats himself well and his relationships improve, so I see image work as a harm reduction model because it builds self-esteem.

There are a variety of ways to make life better for men and boys, but ultimately it begins with us. Think about what you’ve read here today and decide what you want to do – sustain masculine anxiety by allowing an abusive and unfair gender system that mistreats males, or will you choose to help men and boys build their self-esteem through kindness and nurture, appreciating them for who they are and what they can do?

It’s up to you.

Men and suicide part 1

The hockey world has been rocked by the deaths of three players in the last four months. In May, 28-year-old New York Ranger, Derek Boogaard, was found dead of an overdose of alcohol and painkiller, oxycodone. August saw the deaths of former Winnipeg Jet, Rick Rypien, 27, and 35-year-old forward/defence man and former Maple Leaf, Wade Belak. Both apparently hung themselves. All young men made their livings as NHL “enforcers”, also known as “tough guys” or “goons”, and at least two of them suffered from depression.

The deaths of these three young men have sparked today’s difficult and complex post. There is so much to discuss that I have chosen to break it up into two parts. Today, I will attempt to discuss depression, suicide, and the masculine code of silence. Next week, I will examine the treatment of boys in our society, socialized sex roles and gender behaviour, and possible ways to support men – a stride to improve society at large.

NHL “enforcer”

Boogaard, Rypien, and Belak played unofficial NHL positions whose job it was to “deter and respond to dirty or violent play by the opposition. When such play occurs, the enforcer is expected to respond aggressively, by fighting or checking the offender. Enforcers are expected to react particularly harshly to violence against star players or goalies.” (Wikipedia)

The life of an NHL enforcer “involves hard hits and playing a role that may seem unnatural,” says Ross Bernstein, a sports journalist whose book The Code details the culture of fighting in the NHL.

“[The enforcer is] the toughest job in sports because 99 per cent of the battles are for other people, they’re constantly injured … and they know there are 10 guys willing to do their job,” he told the Montreal Gazette.

The Globe & Mail  reports that these three untimely deaths have led to calls to “ban fighting in hockey, to monitor concussions more closely, to address the abuse of prescription painkillers by athletes and to provide more post-career support to former hockey players,”  but something is missing from this list, something very important.

Rypien suffered from depression and took two leaves of absences in three seasons. Wade Belak’s mother has reported that her son suffered from depression as well. Both of these young men suffered in silence, a silence that for some reason is expected of men; an imposed silence that is very much to our society’s detriment.

Men’s depression

The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) sees depression as the most common mood disorder, affecting 10% of us. Depression can bring on feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, changes in eating and sleeping patterns, constant tiredness, an inability to have fun, and thoughts of death or suicide.

“Experts in the field suggest that a suicidal person is feeling so much pain that they can see no other option. They feel that they are a burden to others, and in desperation see death as a way to escape their overwhelming pain and anguish. The suicidal state of mind has been described as constricted, filled with a sense of self-hatred, rejection, and hopelessness.”

Depression can be bleak, miserable, and dark. As someone who experiences depression from time to time, I can tell you that it is NOT a nice place to be and it is a very deep hole to dig oneself out of. As a woman, I will experience and express depression differently than the way a man will because if I decide to talk about it, it is more socially acceptable for me to express my feelings and ask for help, and I probably won’t be labelled as “weak” for it. In our present society, men are not granted the same empathetic response that a woman in crisis may receive, and sadly, he may be ridiculed or otherwise mistreated for what he cannot control.

National Post columnist, Aaron Sands, wrote an excellent piece this week discussing his own depression and the stigma attached to Wade Belak’s mental illness, which Sands believes is Belak’s true cause of death. If we want to take a step forward in masculine social support, it is imperative that we take men’s mental health seriously and give men a voice to express themselves. This should not be thought of as a sign of weakness, on the contrary, it should be thought of as being human.

“Men have a hard time with depression because it is seen as weakness,” says Owen Williams, relationship coach at Toronto’s The Work of Men. ”In the world we live in, despite all the technological advances that we have made, the one area that we fall short on is redefining masculinity. To be a man still means to be strong, having it all together and fighting the “good fight” which in short, means to suck it up. We are still in the dark ages here.”

Sociologists Michael S. Kimmel and Jeff Hearn, in Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, describe men’s learned or socially-imposed stoicism as violence toward the self: “stuffing” their emotions and trying to reach a traditional masculine ideal that rejects feminine emotionality. Young men are discouraged to express emotion (with the exception of anger, which I believe has become a default emotion for males because they have been taught to recognize few others), and “they often fail to learn the language with which they could describe their feelings, and without language it is hard for anyone to make sense of what he feels.”

During the men’s movement of the 1990s, the Iron John period when men were encouraged to (re)discover masculine archetypes, go to the forest, beat on drums, and unleash their Wild Man, Warren Farrell wrote a book called The Myth of Male Power. In it, he challenges men to be responsible for themselves and their actions, including the responsibility of helping themselves to express their emotions and depression.

At least at the time the book was written, Farrell unfortunately did not see a lot of men taking this initiative.

“Men are still most likely to buy adventure books, financial journals, and sports magazines that teach men to solve problems, overcome barriers, or repress feelings. There are few men’s shelters, “masculinist” psychologists, men’s crisis lines, or men’s centres.”

I think the world is a little better for men since Farrell wrote his book, and men’s services, from spas to image consulting to psychotherapy are taking hold and offering men freedom and safety to explore and appreciate themselves. The world is slowly recognizing the need to take men seriously, but the shame of reaching out for help still burns within so many.

Depression can lead to suicide

Globe & Mail columnist, Andre Picard, recently explained the stigma attached to mental illness for men. Picard recognizes the social expectation of boys to silently internalize their pain, act tough, and not show their natural feelings.

“This silence can be fatal,” he says, “Yet the continuing carnage that results – more men die by suicide than in motor vehicle collisions – is largely hidden away and invisible.”

The Canadian Association of Suicide Prevention (CASP) says that suicide is one of the top ten leading causes of death. In 2005 in Canada, suicide accounted for 3,743 deaths in 2005 with a male to female suicide ratio of 3:1. The World Health Organization’s international suicide rates reflects this trend and reports that in some countries, male suicide rates are over 6 times higher than women’s. It has been noted that elderly and very young men (15 – 25) constitute these high rates of suicide.

Kimmel and Hearn say that “[o]ne explanation for boy’s higher rates of lethality from suicide attempts is that males adopt more traditionally “masculine” methods (i.e. guns or knives) and psychological postures (e.g. aggression, goal-directedness, passion to succeed, and denial of feelings) when attempting to kill themselves.”

Masculine silence is one of our key problems in trying to keep men and boys healthy. This rather bizarre and unnatural practice of teaching boys not to recognize and express their feelings, insisting on their constant strength, and not allowing them a voice is not doing anyone any favours, especially the boys themselves. By supporting the idea of keeping men stoic and silent, we’re expecting men to fend for themselves in a world they were not properly trained to operate in, a world that denies them the outlets and the support they deserve. If a more supportive system for males existed in our society, our three late enforcers might still be with us.

“We really need to offer men a comfortable and empathetic environment to express themselves,” Warren Farrell says, “Anything less is a crime against masculinity.”

Top 10 ways to turn off a self-respecting woman

Men, it’s time for a perspective change. To prepare yourselves for this, you first must consider yourself by thinking about the degree to which you can focus on something. Next, think of other men and how intense you may have noticed they can be when concentrating on reaching a goal. Got it? Now, put a bunch of these men in a room and put drinks in their hands.

I want you to now imagine that you’re a single woman in the same room and think about what it might be like to be the target of this intense and intoxicated masculine focus. If you can do this, you may be able to understand why single, self-respecting women choose to remain single.

1.  When she’s standing at a bar, make sure to confine her space – i.e. barricade her with arms and elbows.

2.  Walk up to her, introduce yourself, and follow with “wanna shag?”

3. Assume that she wants you to paw her, just because she said hello back.

4. Put your hand up her dress.

5. Ask the woman if she’s married, what her sexual orientation is, and make comments like, “with a body like that, you mustn’t have any children.”

6. Keep talking to her and hang around her though she isn’t even making eye contact with you.

7. Get really drunk and flash a wad of cash around, making sure she’s seen it at least 3 times. Try not to stagger while you do this.

8.  Get really drunk, walk over to a woman with whom you’ve never spoke, grab her by the arm, drag her to the dance floor, and force her to dance with you.

9. Get really drunk and interrupt the conversation you’re having with the woman to get into a fist fight with another drunk guy.

10. Exclaim ”Don’t leave me!” when she turns to walk away.

* All items in this list are are true and actually happened to me. I’m sorry to report that 6 of these 10 points happened in one night not too long ago.