1996: The Year Toxic Masculinity Died (sorta)

         So … yeah, this is obviously an exaggeration.

The thing we’d call toxic masculinity is, regrettably, still with us, like a fart that just won’t terminate. It is in the workplace. It is in elected positions of power in the United States and across the world. It is behind closed doors. It is out in the open.

In the wake of certain recent events, some voices have expressed some opinion about whether the fight against toxic masculinity has died and whether we’d best just hang up our boots and return to our trash piles. I think such attitudes are certainly understandable, but not at all helpful. The attitudes that feed the parts of masculinity we might call toxic have been reinforced for centuries. Any such campaign to clean out that mess was going to have to persist for far longer than the life cycle of any one hashtag. The good news is that history shows us we are maybe a little further into this fight than we thought. And in our effort to understand masculinity's relationship with itself, we can certainly refer to this thing called film as the window into the popular consciousness.

Twisters (2024)

    We'll start this rodeo by acknowledging that the basic expectations of what successful masculinity looks like haven’t really changed over the lifespan of feature filmmaking. Masculinity has preserved a certain construct of itself that extolled not just strength but impermeability.

    Counters to this depiction have, of course, appeared across time. James Stewart basically branded himself as everyone’s favorite scoutmaster, though even he was allowed to show his dark side under the right circumstances. And even paragons of manhood like John Wayne were still permitted glimmers of vulnerability at precise moments.

But my attention falls onto the year 1996 for two reasons, and those two reasons are Doug Limen’s Swingers and Ted Demme’s Beautiful Girls.

These films both emerged out of the same ecosystem, not just in the year in which they premiered, but also as parcels of independent filmmaking during a time in which independent filmmaking was arguably at its creative highpoint. These are both stories about men and their relationships to the women they love, but they’re also studies of the bonds that men form with one another … during a time when filmmakers were experiencing perhaps unprecedented freedom in the stories they got to tell onscreen.

         So what was it about this magic year? What does it reveal about the nature of masculinity? And what needs to happen for that arc to complete itself in the world offscreen?

 

History of Masculinity

His Girl Friday (1940)

        Specific expressions of masculinity will come and go, but the media tends to default to what it imagines the typical male viewer wants to see in himself. Assertive, confident, eloquent. We can identify ancestors to this type through icons like Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Suave, assured, and ultimately very desirable. 

But this image perhaps crystallized in the 1960s. Middle-class masculinity was desperate for stable images during a time when the status quo was anything but stable. Enter stars like Paul Newman with movies like Cool Hand Luke. You also had movies like the original Ocean’s Eleven with Frank Sinatra popularizing a certain kind of well-dressed, smart-mouthed figure. This was also the decade we got our first James Bond movie.    

    There were threads of deconstruction even at the time. Paul Newman in 1961’s The Hustler gets to wonder whether being an ace player in the cutthroat world of pool is worth it. But this figure would only gain traction in the decades to come as angst and counterculture-ism became internalized within the social fabric. He was perhaps never more at home than in the chaotic symphony that was the 1970s cinema where players like Jack Nicholson made this sort of anarchy feel knowable. Yet even times of relative peace like the 1980s and 90s would continue to find new ways to invite this guy to the party.    

     This was also where movies like Reservoir Dogs were springing onto the scene and revolutionizing cinema, not only in their craft and distribution but in the images they were presenting to audiences. Tarantino’s films tend to have a certain vibe that certain sects of the internet find very, very exciting. The drive behind Reservoir Dogs is these swag dudes shouting off F-bombs and shooting off bullets and looking really cool doing it, and this sort of thing also has an influence on the way that masculinity gets discussed. Similar to our cowboys essay, we could have all sorts of debates about representing vs endorsing, but let it suffice to say that in the early nineties, the foul-mouthed, dominating gangster held the imagination of gen-Xers who were just discovering the internet.

There is a sort of bro-code that underpins the film and the connection between the male characters. Loyalty is held up as the ultimate indicator of goodness, more than even whether or not that person values human life. But that loyalty only manifests itself in very specific ways. The one place in Reservoir Dogs where something like kinship between the criminals shows up is in the bond between Mr. Orange and Mr. White. White holds Orange’s hand while he bleeds in his backseat after the heist goes wrong, and it’s a moment of connection between them. Orange even asks White to “hold me” as he thinks he is dying. 

Of course, this only sets up for the reversal when White finds out that Orange is the undercover cop who blew the operation in the first place, and learning this causes White to shoot Orange. This betrayal almost plays like a means of punishing our protagonist for having let his guard down in the first place. This is the point in the conversation in which Swingers and Beautiful Girls come in to speak up about how … maybe there are representations of manhood that speak a little more to the moment.

The Graduate (1967) vs American Beauty (1999)

Mind you, the 1960s and the 1990s were fundamentally different periods in American history. Both decades can drop a film about trying to find meaning in the flaccidity of American suburbia: one of these films is a cultural touchstone, the other was dated the day it came out. One of these films knew was it was like to feel detached, the other was just bored. The social temperatures of either era put masculinity in a different kind of crisis.

For the sixties crowd, lots of institutions were under attack as many marginalized groups finally had the means to upset the status quo–a status quo that really benefited the white straight male. Lots of social progress would be made during this time, but the status quo would spend much of the following decades trying to wrestle society back into a place where it felt comfortable again. 

By the 1990s, middle-class America felt sufficiently distanced from any genuine sense of social unrest, and that somehow didn’t solve anything. Part of what this reveals to me is that masculinity may chase stability, but it’s never truly satisfied with it, at least not in this world. Maybe it would be if equilibrium was predicated on true social equity and there was no cause for those with power to amend the playing field.

The Little Mermaid (2023)

    But the forces at play have duped the national masculine identity into believing that it will fold if anyone calls for correction or reparation. This identity needs not only constant assurances of its own dominance, but also to never have that stability challenged by the presence of any other group or party. Turns out the only thing that actually threatens alpha males is multi-cultural mermaids.

Anyways, to the films at hand … 

 

Crash Course

Left to right: Charles, Rob, Trent, Sue, Mike

Swingers is about a group of friends who pick up one of their own after he is fresh off a breakup from a six-year relationship. They try to help him get back into the game, but through their own efforts, they are forced to expose the gaps in their own lives.

Owen Gleiberman described, “The beauty of Swingers lies in the irony of its title: Despite their lounge-lizard posing, these guys will never really live up to their Rat Pack dreams. They're looking for action in an era when talk is what counts.” Todd McCarthy called it, “Another guy movie, but quite a sweet and funny one."

Left to right: Tommy, Michael "Mo," Kev, Paul, Willie

Beautiful Girls is about a group of friends approaching their class reunion. This is their ten-year reunion, yet they are all trapped one way or another in their senior year mindset, especially when it comes to women.

         There are like five or six threads with this film. Each of the guys in Beautiful Girls are at some kind of crossroads in their relationship. Tommy is neglecting his loving girlfriend in favor of his old flame, who is married. Mo is well-adjusted with a loving wife and home, but wrestles with the feeling that he maybe gave something up on his jump to domesticity. Paul is refusing to accept that his longtime girlfriend has broken up with him, even though she’s dating another man. Willie is being pressured into giving up his career as a musician, which is itself causing tension in his relationship with his girlfriend.

         Screenwriter, Scott Rosenberg described the genesis of the film, saying,

“… I found myself, back in my hometown outside of Boston, during one of the worst winters ever. I was waiting for Disney to approve CON AIR. I had just broken up with my girlfriend of seven years. The snow plows were driving by my window, many driven by my buddies from high school. When it occurred to me: there is more quote ‘action’, going on with my buddies here – with turning 30 and not being able to deal with the women in their lives — than in twenty Jerry Bruckheimer movies. I remember very clearly, saying to my kid brother: ‘I am going to go into my room and write a script called BEAUTIFUL GIRLS but it’s going to be all about guys.’ Five days later I emerged with the script. It just poured out. I didn’t think it was special. It was a piece of catharsis. It was entirely written for myself. Which is probably why it resonated with so many people. And, inexplicably, still does to this day.”

         I’d like to examine both films and the attitudes they present on masculinity. We’ll organize this more or less thematically jumping back between either film.

Manliness

The meditation on manhood in Swingers is seen mostly from the vantage point of the least manly of this crew. Mike is at the bottom of two bowls when we first meet him: he is still bruised after breaking up with his girlfriend, and he is also between gigs as a comedian. He is failing at the two most essential fronts by which men define themselves, and the scenario suggests a link between the two: because he is not manly enough to make it as a romantic partner, he is not manly enough to make it as a worker. Or, if you’d prefer, vice-versa. Mike’s timidity and lack of swagger are initially framed as hindrances that he must overcome, but we get to see that his friends don’t necessarily know any better than he. Especially not Trent.

    Trent thinks what Mike needs is a night out in Vegas, but of course, this does not work out for him, and he winds up blowing all his funds (though in fairness he does eventually score 20 bucks). There’s even a comedic bit where we see these two strutting into a sparkling casino ready to stake their claim, and it immediately cuts to a bunch of elderlies playing bingo.

The other thing to keep in mind is that these dudes all work in showbusiness. They’re not necessarily movie stars (though try telling them that there’s a difference), but these are gents who are fed by celebrity and worship. Take that away from them, and they flounder. Poor Rob can’t even get a gig as Goofy at Disneyworld. 

         Still, I’d hesitate to call the movie’s attitude toward these guys totally derisive. You still have shots of these dudes strutting down the LA night scene underscored by upbeat swing music, and they are all allowed to arrive at their respective resting places by the end of the film without too much bruising. The movie doesn’t full-on lampoon these folks so much as allow the veneer to peel off gradually and naturally as they discover better outlets for their feelings. Mike, for example, eventually has to learn to accept these low-points in his life as part of a natural rhythm of ebb and flow, and that his inherent worth as a person does not waver during these periods.

        A bedrock bit of exposition for Beautiful Girls is the fact that these guys are all checking in for their ten-year reunion, yet none of them have really accomplished anything in their lives. At least, not in the way they’ve been trained to measure these things. They’re all still living in their hometown, mostly working entry level jobs. Willie is the only one of this friend group who ever got out of town. But even he is running out of steam. He is considering giving up on his dreams of being a musician in favor of a more stable career. These guys are all stalled.

         The conclusion that this film keeps returning to is that these guys are still basically children. Not deliberately abrasive, but developmentally stunted. It feels like no coincidence that this story takes place during the winter, a time of dormancy and stagnation. You also see through this window the state of masculinity during this period of American history, a period of aimlessness and denial.

But I think it’s essential to note that the film is also specific about the kind of entitlement that it examines. The guys are annoying and petty, especially in their relationships, but the film doesn’t try to excuse truly toxic behavior. (At least not consciously. The guys are also unnecessarily crude in ways I’m not sure were examined by the film itself. As with a lot of films of the time, the movie is a little liberal with the use of the “r” word as a derogatory term.) This isn’t Armageddon trying to recast literal abuse as a humanizing feature of the working-class breadwinner. There are lines that this film does not make us cross, behaviors it doesn't try to excuse.

    The character who's probably most testing is Paul--the guy whose bedroom is literally plastered with posters of scantily clad women. Paul is also the guy who won't let his ex-girlfriend, Jan, move on with her new boyfriend, and he thinks he is perfectly justified in barricading her driveway in snow. But Paul's arc also ends up being relatively unique among the other guys in this crew. Everyone else gets to arrive at a place of reunification with the woman they are involved with. Paul and Jan, meanwhile, are not together by the film's end, and presumably will never get back together, and Paul has accepted both her verdict and his part in the deterioration of that relationship in the first place.

    The male drive to achieve and to accomplish is wreaking havoc on these guys and their individual love lives. By most meaningful metrics, Mo is the most successful among them. He is the head of the plant he works at, and he has two budding offspring with his adoring wife. But that success only makes him feel out of place next to his unattached friends who have no obligations. And this leads him anxious to act out, to prove to himself that he still “has it.” 

But has what? The freedom to act out impulsively? To put his life at risk? That illusion of freedom that they had as kids becomes more seductive than their lived reality. And that’s the paradox of manhood: success just brings its own kind of failure. Once you’ve “made it,” you’re consigned to a stationary non-existence and left to stare at your unattached buddies shooting off the walls like hyperactive pinballs, neither party appreciating how miserable the other actually is.

         Both films have a moment where some part of each respective friend group feels compelled to certify their manliness through some display of aggression.

         In Swingers, Sue gets in a confrontation with a gang member who calls him a “b****”, pulling out a gun in response, no doubt emulating the kind of behavior he saw in Reservoir Dogs. After the gang members run off, Mike and company start going after Sue for being incredibly reckless. Of course, in Sue’s mind, what he did was an alpha male move. But the futility behind this action is revealed as the tension naturally just blows over and no one can remember what the confrontation was about one day later—they’ll later have this crew over for a gun-free video game night.

         In Beautiful Girls, Tommy gets into a confrontation with the husband of his old flame and is hospitalized. In retaliation, Tommy’s buddies race over to this guy’s house with the intent of beating him up in return. Mo is about to start doing some damage when this guy’s little girl comes to the door asking what’s happening. The sight of her triggers his own feelings as a father, which quells any and all desire to hurt him. They leave without enacting any violence.

The demands of primordial masculinity are rather taxing and not at all fulfilling, and these films allow both casts to come to terms with this and find better ways of defining their own relationship to manhood.

 

Girlfriends

    We literally enter the world of Swingers with Ron Livingstone explaining to Jon Favreau about dating politics, explaining that if he acts like he doesn’t care about his girlfriend, that will make her want him more, and that ex-girlfriends intuitively know how to not call them back until after their ex-boyfriends have forgotten about them. The absurdity of this equation may be obvious to the audience, but neither Ron nor Jon can spot the discrepancy.

         The engine behind Swingers is mostly concerned with Mike’s love life, and the efforts that Trent goes to in order to help Mike bounce back after he and his girlfriend, Michelle, have broken up.

        Trent is never what I’d call crass, but he does sort of approach romance like a video game and is determined to do whatever he needs to get the highest score possible.  He explains at one point, “You think I know what the h**l they’re saying half the time? … All I do is stare at their mouths, and wrinkle their eyebrows, and somehow I turn out to be a big sweetie.” This attitude is also called out within the film itself. Trent manages to score the number of a girl who shows genuine interest in him, and then tears it up right in front of his bros the moment his back is turned to the girl as some kind of power move. Mike calls it a “d**k move.”

    But because Mike is struggling to keep his head up in this game, it’s not totally clear whether the film is totally on his side. Mike himself confides to Trent, “Girls don’t go for me the way they go for you.”

Mike has a particularly embarrassing episode late in the film where he gets the phone number of a girl he meets at a bar, and his friends insist to him that he has to wait two days minimum before he calls her. Mike is very insecure about his situation (this is right after Sue pulls a gun out on a passing crowd of gangsters, and when Mike calls him out for this, Sue fires back at his wounded sense of masculinity by calling him out for still pining after his old girlfriend), and he decides to leave her a single message at two in the morning. And just to assure he’s not doing this because he’s desperate, he calls her right after to tell her he’s not desperate. This quickly escalates into a series of cascading calls which quickly becomes deeply cringeworthy. Around the sixth or seventh message, she answers back to tell him to never call her again, and he walks away feeling dejected. 

    Trent insists that girls do not go after guys who are sensitive or talk too much about puppies. And the film initially seems to support Trent’s thesis. We see Trent trying to coach Mike on a date, and Mike’s initial gingerness and failed attempts at humor don’t do much to enchant the ladies, and it’s all he can do to keep the conversation away from his career failures. Trent, meanwhile, is in complete control of the room.

But when Mike reveals his sore spots around missing Michelle, that ends up endearing him to both of the girls. Mike interrupts their moment to call Michelle, and when she doesn’t answer, both girls fall on Mike to console him, much to the frustration of Trent, who suddenly becomes uninteresting next to this guy who just wants his old girlfriend to be happy. Neither of them get sex that night, but Mike does end up with something like companionship. What Trent fails to see is that while his method is good at getting one night stands, he will never plant roots or experience real closeness.

    Mike’s problem is not in his sensitivity, but in his insecurity. And as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin, his inherent strengths and charms naturally rise to the surface, such that talking with a beautiful girl, even taking her to town on the dance floor, is effortless. The one moment where Mike’s friends do look on him with genuine awe is when he is dancing with Heather Graham, having a good time with someone he feels genuinely comfortable with. 

         The guys in Beautiful Girls are basically just as clueless in the ways of romance. They have no idea what it means to invest in or nurture a relationship with another person who has feelings and needs.

         But one feature I’d say Beautiful Girls has over Swingers is that this study of male entitlement actually lets women be a part of the conversation. While this is obviously a guy’s movie, the film gives space for the women to give their side of the story. You have scenes where the burdened female characters get together to air their frustrations with the men in their life, and Rosie O’Donnel’s character also gives a long monologue midway through where she takes the boys to task, telling them, “If you had an ounce of self-esteem, of self-worth, of self-confidence, you would realize that as trite as it may sound, beauty is truly skin-deep. And you know what, if you ever did hook one of those girls, I guarantee you'd be sick of her … unless there is some other s**t going on in the relationship, besides the physical, it's going to get old, ok? And you guys, as a gender, have got to get a grip. Otherwise, the future of the human race is in jeopardy.” 

         This ends up putting the women in positions in which their responsibility is to functionally coach the men into being their best selves, and I think there’s a conversation to be had there about female characters being allowed whole personhood in narratives, but I also don’t think this model is wasted here. 

         The film drops in Andera, played by Uma Thurman, and it wastes no time in remarking upon how she walked right out of their fantasies. But Andera’s also not an idiot. If she’s a manic-pixie-dream-girl, she is one on her own terms.

    Her barest function is to drop into the lives of these dudes and teach them some life lesson—each of the main guys get their own “moment” with her—but these little episodes work to humanize this Venus character (literally, Thurman played Venus back in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen). And they all get to arrive at these conclusions without any kind of romantic consummation with her. Her episode with Tommy, for example, has her explain that all she’s really after is four words, “Good night, sweet girl.” She talks about this like it’s a low standard, but the audience catches onto the irony that this is one threshold these dudes don’t know how to cross.

         That said, I’m also not saying this movie is perfect in this regard. There are a lot of jokes where guys get to hit on the more stunning looking women in the film, and said girls just kind of giggle at their awkwardness, like when Willie tells Andera that he just can’t believe that there’s a guy out there who gets to “pepper your belly with baby kisses.” The joke is obviously on the guys for being dopes, but for a film that feels groundbreaking in so many other ways, this is probably the moment where the women of the film dissolve into the exact plastic figurines the film purports to be rebuffing. Anyways … 

         The two most central love stories in this movie happen with Tommy and Willie. And their problems are having a perfectly loving girlfriend … whom they won’t fully commit to.

    Tommy’s girlfriend, Sharon, is completely invested in the relationship, but Tommy has continued to hook up with his old girlfriend from high school, Darian Smalls, who is married with a kid. Sharon withers under this neglect, subjecting herself to an eating disorder to try to keep herself desirable. Sharon will eventually walk away from the relationship, at least for a time, once it becomes clear that he’s refusing to commit, telling him, “How do I get through to you when the best years of your life were in high school?”

         Willie, meanwhile, is reaching a crossroads with his girlfriend, Tracy, but fears going over that matrimonial line. Meanwhile, he finds himself weirdly smitten with the girl living next door to his parents' house. She certainly shows promise, even if she is only thirteen.

         Willie’s interactions with Marty (played by a young Natalie Portman) interactions fall just on the side of flirting, but I also don’t think the film wants us to root for this relationship. At least, not as a romantic vehicle. Willie’s connection to Marty is played like a coping mechanism, a means of retreating, and the necessary devices are in place for the film to examine this for the bad idea that it is. Willie is faced with adult decisions as it relates to his career and the potential of marrying his girlfriend and letting go of bachelorhood. This frightens him, so he offsets his fears about aging onto this idea of a woman.

         This is the reverse of Willie’s situation with his real girlfriend. Tracy is the one who ultimately pushes him to not give up on his career as a musician. She helps him to see that the best days of his life are ahead of him—why would he ever need to look back?

The film arrives at its ultimate conclusion with the Marty-Willie relationship about midway through. He makes the responsible decision to draw some necessary boundaries with her, but not without telling her she’s got promise. The film’s ending scene even has Willie introducing Tracy to her. The film also comes to these conclusions without having to subject its underage girl to compromising displays. (Side-eye to American Beauty.)

         Tommy and Willie both have the same fundamental problem: they dread the future so much that they have to retreat into the tease of their younger days. For Tommy, that’s staying tethered to an old relationship that has since expired. For Willie, that’s transferring all his feelings about romance onto this empty vessel. But Roger Ebert put it best in his review of the film when he said, “But somehow, doggedly, true love teaches its lesson, which is that you can fall in love with an ideal, but you can only be in love with a human being.”

 

Brotherhood

The thing these dudes spend so much time quarreling over is girlfriends, sex, and the like. But underpinning all that is the deep emotional connections they have forged with each other.

In Swingers, the connection is strongest between Mike and Trent, but these guys are also situated in a larger brotherhood. They appear to have a reliable network of friends with whom they go out clubbing. Most of what consumes this conversation is ruminating about their respective failures. You see how these maladaptive ideas about women are propagated in these petri dishes (like when Trent compares the act of getting a girl’s number to the act of tearing apart a baby bunny with your claws), but you also get see these guys having genuine investment in each other’s well-being.

The bromance at the center of this film has a specific dynamic in their relationship where Trent never really sees what Mike brings to the table, but he also never puts him down. Over and over, Trent keeps trying to tell Mike how “money” he is, and he also speaks up for Mike when anyone starts railing on him. Trent appears to genuinely want what’s best for Mike, even if he has no idea what’s best for himself.

Rob comes in late in the game and helps Mike reorient. They have an honest discussion about hurting and feeling like a failure. He gives a very male-centric pep-talk about “making it” and all with an eye for letting him see possibility. “You don’t look at the things you have. You only look at the things you don’t have.” This has a fundamentally different attitude than the majority of the “money” discussions they’ve had, yet you still see how their shared experience as men on the same road ultimately leaves them in a unique position to build each other up.

         The relationship between the guys in Beautiful Girls is notably more volatile than in Swingers. The friends here are all prone to curse at each other and tell the others what a d*** they’re being. The only time we see the guys in Swingers get truly combative is when Sue literally pulls out a gun and the guys are very justifiably like, “What the flip, dude?” Willie’s company never reaches anywhere near that same volume, but it doesn’t take much for them to tell the other what a “f***ing d*****bag” they’re being if someone else calls shotgun. 

    But there’s also much more going on than simply a bunch of 28-year-olds needing a swear jar. They also call each other out on their crap, like when Mo is there to reel Willie in when he’s gushing over a thirteen-year-old, or Paul grilling Tommy for basically giving his girlfriend anorexia. Yes, these guys are rather thorny with one another, and we assume have always been, but we’re meant to understand that this bond has survived because of their dedication to one another: there’s real loyalty there. They all go to see Tommy in the hospital, and they all show up to see Willie off when he goes back to New York.

         I think there’s a discussion to be had for imagining alternative ways for men to express their commitment to one another. Men deserve to have options for interaction that don’t include abrasiveness. Perhaps men can “take it” when their bros are ribbing them; that doesn’t mean they should have to.

But at the same time, I also don’t think it’s totally wrong for them to showcase men who aren’t emotionally literate as still having genuine friendship and being capable of sincere support. There is legitimate love here, and that’s worth recognizing.

A key point worth recognizing with both movies is that these stories do not suggest that either form of masculinity is itself inherently bad. No one has to fundamentally change who they are to become their best self. They have to discard attitudes and behaviors that are not serving them, yes, but they are perfectly capable of doing this without changing their base DNA or turning their backs on the people who have built them up. Manly men are still capable of having complex emotions and complex relationships.

 

Why Didn’t It Stick?

Transformers (2007)

The 2000s brought with it many opportunities for American masculinity to feel wounded, starting with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, forever compromising that American sense of invulnerability. Add to that an economic recession taking away men’s ability to prove their mettle in the field of work, and the white middle-class male is going to feel displaced. 

As this is all going down you have all sorts of social movements that are calling for American masculinity to loosen its grip hold on the national identity. This could have been an opportunity for American manhood to both exercise reliable judgment and demonstrate its own security with itself by opening up some necessary doors, but the powers that be quickly turned that narrative into one of competition. Them or us. And this is more or less the situation in which we find ourselves today. 

         But that’s not to suggest that this period of reflection was wasted. You do see how this awakening left a trail for how masculinity would be explored in the decades to come.

         When we first meet Tony Stark in 2008, for example, we see that he has basically reached the height of masculine achievement. He is at the top of the empire he built for himself. And seeing the way he commands power in whatever room he’s in, we’re not at all surprised. The boys in Swingers and Beautiful Girls absolutely wish they could be Tony Stark.

But the muscle behind Tony’s arc comes from him doing away with all that. He stops mass-producing weapons and starts using his influence to help people who cannot help themselves. By the end of his story, he’s become a supportive figure to Peter Parker and a doting father to a little girl. Parts of Tony obviously never go away. He is a sarcastic son of a gun right until the end and does not shy away from panache when the opportunity presents itself. But his center of being moves from cultivating the appearance of success to giving himself to the service and protection of people who depend upon him.

         There’s a lot to be said for allowing men to have opportunities to become the heroes they need to be. But I also think that an essential factor here is simply men allowing themselves to be at ease, and realizing that the most important fights won’t be on any battlefields, at least not in the usual sense. Part of all this is also getting masculinity to recognize its obligation in sharing the stage with groups that have not historically had access to these things. But men will only do this when they attain a level of security that the status quo will never be willing to provide for them.

         Tommy winds up having that moment with Sharon at the end of Beautiful Girls when he can finally tell his girlfriend that he’s not the man he thought he would be back in high school, and he’s deeply insecure about that. Tommy lets his guard down with someone who has proven her devotion to him. This is the most courageous thing we’ve seen him do.

Maybe the fight for wholesomeness is always in contest. Maybe boys of every generation have to discover for themselves what healthy masculinity looks like. Though, that transition will certainly be easier for all of us as we continue to feed a trajectory that allows for a flexible definition of strength and courage. As I argued in my piece on A Perfect World, some of the most awesome, powerful displays of masculinity allow men to find their footing as protectors, guiding hands.

Regrettably, we are not as bored as we were in the 90s. Trying to reclaim masculinity today is like trying to perform surgery on an airplane that is also in tailspin. The currents are suggesting that manhood is on a trajectory to try retreating to a state of not only belligerence, but also unmalleability. The kind that resists correction. No one would be better off for it, including the men who report to desire it. But again, these things have always been in contest, and when we try to understand the root causes, we allow ourselves the opportunity to redirect the current. Michael Kimmel wrote in his book, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (which believe it or not also had its first edition published in 1996),

Lost in Space (2018)

“But more and more, American men are finding that the real test of manhood is not steroidal bulk but internal integrity. After all these years of running away, pumping up, and excluding everyone else, American men have started to come home …This acceptance isn’t the result of some grand ideological transformation in the meaning of manhood. Rather, it is the inevitable result of countless micro-level decisions made by families every day: about their daughters’ and sons’ education, a growing unwillingness to tolerate bullying or harassment, a sense of fairness about reducing wage inequality and discrimination. It’s not that men woke up one morning and decided to scrap their traditional definition of masculinity. Rather, they gradually, and without fanfare or struggle, drifted into more egalitarian relationships because they love their wives, partners, and children.”

    And when you consider the cost of choosing to walk away from the fight, what other course of action is there? 

            --The Professor