To be a man...

This past summer, my girlfriends and I went to watch "The Ugly Truth" played by Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl. Normally, we would never watch a movie that appears to be very degrading for women but we were intrigued since the movie had been well advertised everywhere and this guy, Gerard, seemed so much like an idiot we had to go and critic it for ourselves. The movie of course lived up to my low expectations. It portrayed an overly “masculine” view of men. However, I used the word masculine here very carefully because this according to Barker is a socially constructed term. To be a man in our culture is to be an idiot, for lack of a better word. Gerard Butler does a really job of this.



Men in our culture are portrayed as impersonal, controlling, insensitive people. Things devalued by them are “relationships, verbal ability, domestic life, tenderness, communication, women and children” (Barker). What then happens if a man is tender, has great respect for women or values relationships? Is he then less of a man? Our culture seems to think so. Barker states that the problems that men face are an outcome of the “incompatibility between notions of ‘masculinity’ and what they have to do to live happily in the social world”. Reason, control over other people and themselves is contemporary masculinity according to Barker. It also involves straying as far away as possible from “feminine” (again more of a social construct) ways of doing things. It’s a very confining place to be.

Basically, most men aren’t meeting the standard for the typical “masculine” man because the bar is so low. The media and what we have pushed to be masculine is disgraceful and degrading. It’s awesome that so many rally for the equal rights among women, but it’s time we stepped it up for the men too.
So this movie should not be “The Ugly Truth,” but rather “The Sad reality of what our society thinks men are like.” Rather long, and sad, but true.