If you could, what would you like most to change about yourself as a man?
What a complicated, in depth question. To be 100% honest though I would probably go with the simple answer: I’d like to look more masculine. My jaw line isn’t chiseled, my muscles could use a lot of help. I would like to look like the 6'3 hulking man on a Men’s Fitness magazine. Judith Butler believes this is not coincidence.
In her book Gender Trouble, I believe Judith Butler is saying I have been taught and conditioned to give that answer because of political and cultural hierarchies. She writes:
“…theory and practice has effectively argued that sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse and power, where power is partially understood in terms of heterosexual and phallic cultural conventions.”
Simply put: masculinity is defined by power. I can personally admit this mentality is one that, for most of my life, took hold of my brain and something I struggle with to this day. It stems from being aware of not only my own physicality but other people’s physical descriptions as well. The sickness? I became obsessed.
I began to care too much about what the guy passing by me might think of how tight my shirt is. Does he see that I’m wearing a medium when I should be wearing a large? Is he laughing inside?
He probably thinks he’s better than me.
I can go to class in sweats and a pair of Nike sandals; I can scream I don’t care. But 99% of the time when I step out of the door I am completely obsessed with how I will be viewed. I have been taught to want to be the biggest lion in the jungle. The truth is it’s not even because I want to look like hot stuff. I just want to be accepted as a lion in this jungle. Anything that will make me vulnerable, terrifies me.
So why am I this way? Kate Phillips agrees with Butler in that it is plastered everywhere in our culture. In her Wellness Blog, she writes:
“…we’re surrounded by magazines splashing celeb diet makeovers on their covers, personal trainers touting the health benefits of losing unwanted pounds, reality TV shows airing contestants’ body transformations.”
Personally I realized my own answer when asked the question “At what moment in your life thus far have you felt the most powerful?” The answer is hands down, no doubt when I stepped on a scale and realized I had lost seventy pounds. I could walk on water in that moment. I had spent the first 21 years of my life being unhealthy and overweight.
I had spent the first 21 years of my life not being a man.
And finally, finally no one could make fun of my weight. I didn’t have to wear double XL. I had the power to do anything. I was no longer open to the criticisms of society.
Writing for a Gender Sexuality Program at the The University of Pittsburgh, Morgan Fillet captures why the body is the male’s primary pipeline to masculinity. She writes:
“…men have less access to more abstract forms of masculine validating power, like economic power or workplace authority, so the physical body and its potential for violence provide a concrete means of achieving and asserting man hood.”
I had grown up living this. From elementary to high school I witnessed the shallowness of society. Getting picked on was a daily routine for me. A girlfriend was a pipe dream. I would forever be in the friend zone. I accepted it. I accepted that we live in a heartless world physical appearance defined my status as man. But today I know this is wrong. The world is filled with people who don’t give a damn about my insecurities or my appearance. So I am dying to finally shed this skin and be my own man; with whatever definition I choose.
