The Year of the Manly Man

From Menletter January 2007

By Tim Baehr

Here I was doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen while my wife talked on the phone. In the background, our tiny kitchen TV was intoning that this was "The Year of the Manly Man." It was a clear case of cognitive dissonance - or perhaps just a living oxymoron. The TV show, from a local outlet in Boston, was giving examples of manliness ranging from Harvey Mansfield's scholarly tome, Manliness, to a man-room installed in a sports fan's basement (huge TV, kegs, 20-foot bar), to a boxing club, to $3,000 "mancations" (vacations for men) at a posh Boston hotel, to obtaining the perfect shave at a razor boutique - er - store. The host interviewed a wine merchant who had been identified by local pundits as the epitome of manliness, because he dresses so sharply and is tall and handsome.

Let's see . . . manliness is all about expensive male-only vacations, a bar in the basement, getting the perfect shave, and beating up boxing equipment and each other. Add in Mansfield's definition: manliness is facing risk with courage. Oops. Women do that all the time too, Harvey. Granted, a half-hour TV show has its limitations, scratching the surface of a few trendy phenomena and cobbling up something broader, like an entire year of being manly. It was mildly entertaining at best, and kind of silly.

After KP

But the show did lead to some interesting discussion. As we sat at the kitchen table, KP done and phone call ended, my wife and I tried to come up with definitions for "manly" and "womanly." It was hard - no, impossible - for us to come up with simple, compelling definitions that would go beyond stereotypes. Even the TV show didn't offer clear guidelines. The guy with the sports bar in his basement doesn't keep it off-limits to his and his buddies' womenfolk and children. And he said that one of the pleasures of his "man-room" was that several families had become good friends, through their kids. The wine merchant hurries home after work to be with his family, and he even (gulp!) changes his infant son's diapers. For all his pronouncements about "real" men being better and more dutifully faithful husbands than "sensitive" men (who might just be sensitive to more than one woman - horrors!), Mansfield came across as a meek, middle-aged academic. He had admitted in an earlier newspaper interview that he did some housework, not leaving all the distaff stuff to his wife. Oh, and the boxing club admits substantial numbers of women.

We tried definition-by-example. Is neighbor Jack more manly than co-worker Mack? How about Manuel? Which women do we know who are more womanly than others? We kept drawing blanks.

Are there inherent qualities based on sex, or are manliness and womanliness defined by activities? We talked. Round and round we went, getting nowhere.

Another Kitchen Scene

A few days later, my wife and I were cooking brunch for our youngest son and some friends, who were recovering from his 21st birthday bash the night before. They wanted great quantities of pancakes and scrambled eggs.

I noticed an old pattern: The two of us, in a fairly cramped space, were moving around each other, acting as sous-chefs for each other, and dividing up the tasks. A friend once called us a symphony of movement in the kitchen (though sometimes it's Mozart and sometimes it's Messaien). I set the table and did the eggs. My wife did the pancakes. We kept up an entertaining banter for the hung-over kids. We weren't fulfilling manly or womanly roles; we were just having fun.

Comes the Dawn

A dozen eggs and a couple dozen pancakes later, it dawned on me: The definitions don't matter. Yes, there may be some masculine and feminine archetypes (or perhaps just advertising fantasies). But force-fitting actual people into these categories is an exercise in futility. At least in relationships, what really works depends on how comfortably two people can divide up their large and small tasks and decisions, without keeping score.

Overall, Ann and I have a fairly traditional division of labor, with the emphasis on traditional, and with some variations. Cooking and general organization are (usually) hers. Garbage and repairs are mine. Laundry and cleaning are ours. Our parents' generation followed a more precisely gender-divided tradition. But it was just tradition, and not some biological imperative or overt rule of society. Today's traditions among younger people must certainly be different, with huge numbers of women at work outside the home, and men sharing more fully in home-related activities and child-raising. To claim that manliness is diminished because it doesn't track with some former definition or ideal of manliness is just silly. Maybe the notions of manliness and womanliness need to be redefined, or scrapped altogether.

There will always be differences, biological and social, between men and women. The differences can put us at war with each other or lead to some mutually entertaining skirmishes in which we take neither ourselves nor our differences too seriously. It seems to me that gender wars are started (aren't all wars?) by ideologues with an axe to grind and a certainty that the other side is evil. The best response, at least for the gender wars, is to relax and enjoy each other, not taking each other's contributions for granted.

What strikes me about the way Ann and I live and work is the amount of mutual respect, admiration, and appreciation we've shared over a couple of decades - and also the sparks of passion that have deepened over the same decades. Whatever "manly" and "womanly" may mean, we've found our own meaning in each other. I can't see why respect, admiration, and appreciation wouldn't work for any couple no matter who takes out the garbage.