My manhood (oo-er)

Given as I am to existential noodling, one of the questions that has always intrigued me is “what does it mean to be a man?”  Men, it has always seemed to me, have been much poorer at answering that question than women have of answering their equivalent question.  There are many different ways of being a woman, many different types of femininity, many ways in which women may orient themselves to the world.  But what of men? How do we answer that question?  What is a man? What does it mean to be a man?

To judge by advertising, a man is either a sexist boor - think of the WKD, Lynx or Pepsi Max adverts - or a hapless buffoon - think of just about every other advert featuring a man.  Perhaps I’m deluding myself but I don’t think that I’m either of those things - although I’m capable, at times, of being a sexist boor and a helpless buffoon, those characteristics don’t define me, nor do they define my gender.

This is a question that women have had to deal with for far longer than men.  Women have, to some extent, always had to face in men a gender that appears to categorise them into one of two extremes - Madonna or whore.  In part (and here I’m out of my depth, so please don’t shoot me if I’ve got this wrong) it seems that the process of equality for women has been, in part, their escape from this polarisation, so that men will see them as individuals, rather than archetypes.

This is partly relevant to me because I’m a man but also because I’m partly responsible for bringing one up, in the shape of Little ‘Un.  What type of man should I be, to provide a good role model for him?  I don’t want to be either of the examples I’ve recounted above but I’m not entirely sure that being myself would be good enough, either.  I am, after all, a man who has been known to shed a tear a Gillette commercials - although, in my defence, I was very ill at the time and feeling terribly sorry for myself.

I have a colleague who has set himself the target of being a “cool dad” but I’m not entirely sure that I think that’s a good thing. It smacks a little too much of trying to be your children’s friend, rather than their parent.  As a “part-time” dad, many people have told me that I’m lucky because I can be Little ‘Un’s mate but that’s not what he needs: he’ll choose his own mates but he’ll only get one father.  And sometimes, as a father, you have to be the bad guy.  I also wonder whether parents are there, in part, for children to rebel against (I’m sorry, I know that’s horrible grammar) and so trying to be a “cool” dad essentially robs them of an authority figure to mock and react to.  

It also, if I’m honest, has the ring of the “trendy vicar” to it - I can’t think of anything more excruciatingly embarrassing than a self-consciously “cool” father, desperately trying to keep up with the latest trends and fashion.  When I spoke to Little ‘Un about this, his response was that I wasn’t too embarrassing but that was largely because I hadn’t seen too many of his friends. Like all children of his age, he does his level best to keep me out of his social circle as much as humanly possible.  It’s gratifying to know that, on the rare occasions - birthdays and the like - that I have met his friends, I haven’t disgraced myself or shown him up.  I promised him faithfully that I would keep this up, until a significant birthday party or wedding, at which point I would embarrass him totally, with terrible dancing and possibly karaoke. It’s an understanding we have and will probably result in him never marrying.

The event that triggered this line of thought was a meeting I went to recently with a colleague, T.  Now T is very definitely a man - he is what I believe younger women are wont to call a “silver fox.” The meeting was actually about this topic - what it is to be a man and whether men talk about their problems enough - and as I was watching T talking, I was trying to work out what it was about him that made him so... manly.  

He’s tall; well built; he has a very deep voice and the trace of an accent that one would probably call posh; he has steely grey hair.  All of these things are part of it but the key thing, I felt (and I checked this out with another man, afterwards), was the fact that T is very serious. He very rarely makes a joke; he looks... serious, if not stern.  If you put T and I together, there are a lot of similarities but I’m not what you would call a manly man and the biggest difference (apart from the gray hair - mine remains a mousy blond) is that I am usually very far from serious.  In fact, I can often be a bit of a goof.

Is that, I wondered, what makes the difference?  Is that what being a man (and manly) is all about? Taking everything seriously?  I find that hard to do and I’m not sure it’s the best response, anyway.  Life’s too serious to take seriously and I’ve often found that my humour (which I’m informed is sometimes funny to others and not just to me) has helped me enormously.  But perhaps the downside of that is that I’m not seen as manly?

I’ve always had far more female friends than male because they’ve always seemed more interesting; certainly when I was younger, the other men I knew didn’t seem to be interested in much else other than football or some other sport.  It has nothing to do with sexual attraction (I wouldn’t dream of coming on to my female friends, anymore than I’d proposition my sister) and I’ve met some very attractive men - and again I wonder whether, as a man, it’s okay to say that? 

In fact, that reminds me of a story, on which I’ll conclude this little piece.  Many years ago, I knew a guy called Roger.  Roger was a semi-pro football player and very definitely a man’s man but he liked me because I made him laugh and I liked him because - well, everyone liked him - and so we palled around together.  Roger decided to cook his girlfriend a meal for her birthday.  However, as a manly man, he had no idea of how to go about this and so he asked me to help.  Armed with a simple recipe, one that I thought he’d have no trouble following, Roger and I went off to Sainsburys one lunchtime, to buy the ingredients.

You know what it’s like in the supermarket - you fall into a rhythm with other shoppers and you see the same people again and again up and down the aisles.  Anyway, Roger and I were making our way around the supermarket and bickering, as he questioned every ingredient (does it have to be balsamic vinegar - won’t ordinary do?) and I noticed an older lady watching us.  Eventually we all ended up in the same checkout queue (she was in front of us) and Roger and I were still bickering, good naturedly.  I noticed the woman, watching and smiling benignly and it struck me what she was smiling about; I leaned over to Roger and whispered to him, “the woman in front of us thinks we’re gay.”  

Now I thought this was hysterically funny and actually a little bit flattering as Roger was way out of my league, to be honest.  And being seen as gay has never bothered me in the slightest.  It happens a lot (probably because I’m as camp as a row of tents at times) and I have gay friends with whom I happily flirt, which may or may not be a manly thing to do and might just mean I’m an attention whore.  Roger, on the other hand, was genuinely offended - offended enough, in fact, to offend me a little bit (am I really such a repulsive prospect as a boyfriend?) and enough to make me wonder, looking back, whether he was protesting a little too much.  

And I suppose that in recounting this tale I’ve stumbled on the point of my rambling: I am who I am.  By gender, I am a man but I am a man in a way that’s different to every other man in the world, each of whom is a man in his own unique way. In the way that Little ‘Un will be a man in his own way.  Perhaps I should worry less about what it means to be a man and concentrate a little more on what it means to be me.