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Posts tagged: masculinity
Comics Editor Carol writes about Superman, masculinity, and the American Way:
Since alex, Chris and I decided to write about masculinity this month, I’ve been thinking about Superman. Actually, I’ve been thinking and rethinking Superman almost as long as I’ve been writing for The Cultural Gutter. I began really thinking about him while watching Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. I’ve spent most of my life—and certainly my childhood and teen years—ambivalent about him. I grew up with the stodgy, daddish Superman of SuperFriends. Superman represented truth, justice and the American Way, a way that seemed all about straight white masculinity of the most rigid, hegemonic sort—a way that didn’t seem to include me. Whether as aspirational hero or adolescent power fantasy, it’s easy to see Superman as The Man.
art by Mike and Laura Allred, from The Superman/Madman Hullabaloo (Dark Horse/DC, 1998).
Chris Szego takes a look at the men of romance.
During my tenure at the Gutter I’ve said this several times: the central fantasy of the modern Romance novel is not that women women want to be rescued, it’s that men are capable of change. Alpha men often have the most changes to make. Their development is the most dramatic, which makes for more satisfying fiction.
Screen Editor alex ponders self-help books, Mansome and what it means to be a man:
As a transguy, the question “What makes me a man?” has meant both pretty much the same things to me as to any other guy, and also something a bit different. I had to figure most of it out on my own, going through a second puberty of sorts at a point when all my peers were full grown, and in the process I’ve read about and watched a lot of versions of masculinity. From Charles Atlas and men’s exercise magazines to feminist and gender theory, there are so many options and perceived limits around how to be a man. Men’s self-improvement books like The 4-Hour Body and movies like Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Mansome are just a few examples.
