‘Bring Back Manly Men’

Conservatives are blaming the fall of Western Civilization on a dude wearing a dress

Any person who talks about how a man should act or dress is selling something — aftershave or fancy whiskey or a war in a faraway country. In right-wing activist Candace Owens’ case, she is selling a political identity to a very specific audience: men, the demographic who overwhelmingly support the Republican party.

Owens isn’t selling ideas. Her pitch is simple: Remember the good ol’ days. And in the good ol’ days, men were trees with legs. Men were simple, like bacon and eggs. Hearts like carburetors. Fists like sledgehammers. They were not vulnerable or scared or imperfect. No. Granddad died of lung cancer because happy people chain smoke alone in the basement for decades.

The two political parties sell different versions of the same product. Conservatives sell a past that was a lie, and liberals sell a future that will be a lie. Take your pick. Personally, I prefer to hope for things that won’t happen than deny bad things ever happened.

And she is selling courage to the fearful, strength to the timid, and violence to the ignored. In a tweet today she suggested there’s a conspiracy afoot to neuter men and then she pointed at a fashion spread in the magazine Vogue featuring millionaire pop star Harry Styles wearing a dress, which is a shock to anyone still living in the 1960s.

Imagine what she’d tweet if she ever saw the 1982 movie Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman.

I’m not going to lie, Styles looks good in a gown. Right now, millions of women think he’s sex in a waffle cone. But Candace Owens is screaming that masculinity is doomed because a universally beloved famous dude is having a bit of fun. To her, you are what you wear.

Personally, I think a woman wearing a tuxedo is hot. Who cares, right? There is nothing inherently political about clothes unless you’re a fascist. Fascists love costumes and hate when people don’t wear the right costumes in public.

The only time, recently, that anyone has had anything to say about my looks was this summer when my girlfriend once said my legs would look good in a dress and who am I to argue with her? My legs would look smashing in a dress.

I’m not suggesting humans can just stop judging other human beings for the most superficial of reasons but I can dream, can’t I? I get it. I have a battered camouflaged baseball hat I wear when I visit my family in Texas. I wear it so I can blend in. I’m convinced I get more nods from other dudes and fewer “you ain’t from around here” stares because I wear it. I get it.

If you’re a dude who cringed when he saw Harry Styles in a dress you should give yourself the gift of honesty: That cringe, that feeling of disgust or revulsion, was fear. Candace Owens is here to help you with that fear. She’ll flatter your hate and make you feel pretty good about your undernourished imagination and superficial worldview. In exchange, she just wants your retweets and your money and your votes.

I think Candace Owens should be taken seriously even if her beliefs are nonsense. I don’t know if she’s performing or not, I don’t care. She’s attempting to manipulate men who are desperate to be an “us” instead of a “them.”

I do not think men have been exiled en masse from society but it is intoxicating to be told you’re not getting everything you feel you deserve because of a conspiracy. Owens wants to collect lost men and she’s doing it by baiting snares with self-pity and pep talks about how the creator Himself decreed that all men are created action heroes.

So she’s going off on what is manly and what isn’t manly. It’s a teenager's game and I don’t want to insult teenagers. Adolescence is hard. That is a time when people start to wonder whether they fit in or not. Teenagers are insecure about their place in the world and so is Candace Owens, and those who sympathize with her.

It’s only when you’ve grown up, gotten beat up a little, learned and loved, had your heartbroken, that you realize the only thing that defines a person is their ability to own up. I don’t know if I’m manly or not but I take responsibility for my actions. I have one firm belief. There comes a time in every honorable person’s life when they must bite the bullet.

I expect you to do the same, whether your pronouns are he, she, or they.

I worked for men’s magazines, long ago. A few of the publications were very successful. I learned one thing during those years of sexy photoshoots and bacon tastings and video game reviewing: people change. It’s remarkable. Just think about it: One day men just stopped wearing foofy white wigs and dainty shoes. Poof!

I worked for men’s magazines and so when I write this next sentence consider it an experts opinion: Gender is ice cream in that there are endless flavors. You could fill a dozen walk-in freezers with the stuff. You will never run out of customers, either. Now, take that information and be free. Go! Be free!

Gender is ice cream. Gender is shoes. Gender is marketing. It’s the paint on a billboard, a ribbon on a surprise birthday gift, a promise between two soon-to-be lovers made in the humid backseat of a parked car.

Men want to be told how to be men. One of the unexpected benefits of dividing people into groups is they tend to think their group is special and the other group are losers because, like, you’re not part of that group. How can any group be cool without you?

People want to be told who they are because being — just existing — is backbreaking emotional work. It’s hard to be present and to love other people who will hurt you or leave you or die, one day when you most need them.

When I worked for men’s magazines, my job was to tell men what it meant to be a man. How did I know what it means to be a man? Why I made it up. We just made shit up, the other editors and I. We’d watch a few James Bond movies, and channel our strict fathers and then pull the rest right out of our manly assholes.

Societies that survive are societies that can adapt, change, evolve, which can lose their tail and learn to walk on the ground. Societies that succeed allow their members to experiment with what it means to be alive. Maybe that means the Enlightenment, maybe that means standing up against pants. I don’t know. Men use to wear makeup. We’ve got blemishes, you know.

Societies that fail are the ones that can only look back, like Orpheus, a man who wasn’t strong enough to have faith. The worst part of Candace’s tweet was the brave knights who showed up to defend masculinity like this dude:

His name is Ben Shapiro. He hosts a popular podcast. He makes what I think is a lot of money selling supplements to men who think they’re small in various ways, both literally and figuratively. If you spend too much time on Facebook you may recognize him (and any time spent on Facebook is too much time.) He is a person who has never heard of David Bowie, I suppose. That’s too bad. Bowie’s music is amazing. If Ben Shapiro had ever listened to Bowie, or Prince or maybe the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, he wouldn’t come off as such an insufferable narc.