masculinity
When it comes to men, I don’t like facial hair. I detest tattoos. I dislike guys who slob around all the time. Maybe you will understand what I do like if I say that this picture excites me so much that it takes my breath away:
by Michael Appleton
It is a beautiful photograph so redolent with masculinity that I feel I could resurrect an old-fashioned activity and swoon. You can smell the room, right? That gentlemen’s store smell.
When I was little, my father would take me with him on his Saturday morning errands: the dry cleaners, the tailor, the market, etc. We’d always stop at a certain men’s clothing store. It didn’t make bespoke suits, like the shop pictured above, but it did smell of men’s clothing. There was a long shoehorn I used to play with, a contraption that produced a flame for your cigarette or cigar, and some butterscotch hard candies. I don’t know what my father did at this shop every week; I think he just went to check stuff out and to talk to the men who ran it.
But the store in the picture: you wouldn’t go there merely to browse. In fact, the picture looks less like a store than like the corner of a man’s dressing room. I look at the dressing gown, the shirt, the jacket, and I think of the man who would wear them, how he would look in them, and how his body would look underneath them, when he took them off, or when I took them off him. I can smell his shaving foam: Taylor’s of Old Bond Street. I can see the jacket on him, or being taken off and hung over a study chair. I imagine his cuff links, being threaded through the cuffs, or unfastened to roll sleeves up to the elbow. I can feel the heat of his body through the dressing gown, his hardness when engaged in a kiss. The man who wears these clothes is a man who understands something essential about what it means to be masculine, and that something does not involve track suits or tattoos or vegetarianism or a lack of grooming, any more than it involves emotional illiteracy, sports obsession, extreme skepticism, or compulsive topping. I can’t find the words to describe the potent masculinity in this picture, but I am drawn to it inexorably, as the feminine has always been drawn to the masculine ever since opposites began to attract.
Yet, my kind of feminine does not possess a waspish waist, stiletto heels, makeup, or a flirty little personality. Mine rides a bike to church and there changes into stockings and a skirt knee-length or lower. Mine wears tomboy shorts in the garden, or gray flannel when summoned to a certain type of study. Mine can surrender to love while seeking surrender in return. It can work a Melita drill, cook pizza from scratch, scuba dive to 170 feet, make algebra lucid, or deal with children who suddenly start to cry. It isn’t a Victoria’s Secret catalog, but it craves this.
by Michael Appleton
English flannel with Twist? Yes. Please.
June 7th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Oh dear, I have a confession.
I have a beard, its quite a small, silvery grey, academic looking one (I’m told), but its a beard nonetheless and its growing on my face., What to do ?…..
cdm Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I respect men with well-groomed beards, even if it wouldn’t be my first choice as a romantic partner. And for men of your very advanced age, beards are a more acceptable accessory. *ducks*
June 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
I have a question, which I hope will come across in the right way. Your attraction to the old-fashioned masculine look and feel is fair enough, and mostly that’s what you describe. But this strikes me as odd:
I get the point that “emotional illiteracy” and “sports obsession” are seen as stereotypically male, but not a good thing, so that fits. But “extreme skepticism”? I also can see that that might be an issue for you in a man, since it wouldn’t fit with your religious beliefs, but it seems to me that’s a complete separate preference thrown into the mix here. Are men traditionally seen as extreme skeptics? Or is that just something you also happen not to like? Are you saying that there are limits on how skeptical a “real” man can be? If so, why?
cdm Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Perhaps I ought to have defined “extreme skepticism”. I am attracted to and respect men and women who are skeptical, particularly of powerful, protected, and/or trendy ideas. I’ve also encountered people (more men than women) who appear skeptical to the point of refusing to value or open themselves to anything they cannot measure or explain, or who substitute scoffing and condescension for skepticism. This is what I would call “extreme skepticism,” and I personally find it as limiting as emotional illiteracy. I listed extreme skepticism here because I wanted to evoke a kind of traditional masculinity that was still open to emotion, intuition, and aspects of reality that lie beyond the purely rational. I’m not sure how men are traditionally seen vis-a-vis skepticism, but I was addressing the stereotype of the man who lives exclusively through the rational. I find well-wielded rationality and skepticism a powerful turn-on, but beyond a certain point it begins to feel shallow to me. I would also say, incidentally, that my experience of religion and theology involves a robust measure of skepticism, intellectual rigor, and free inquiry. This, too, is something I’m drawn to in the masculine. As for what a “real” man can or cannot be, I don’t think I was speaking of “real” men (whoever they might be) but merely an essential type of masculinity that attracts me.