#it was a complicated day for the gay sports girlies

[overallsonfrogs]

The entire time they talked about Yuri on Ice getting cancelled all I could think about was The Sunshine Court coming out the same day

🚨 Ep. 43, Destiel Warrior Ben Edlund, is here! 🚨

Join us as we give an URGENT update on (unfortunately) more Supernatural news, and how it ties into the current state of queer television, along with our recap of SPN S4E8: "Wishful Thinking." (We'll return to recapping 2 episodes next time!)

Points of Interest: Studio MAPPA - The fast fashion of anime, Ryan Murphy is going directly to Hell, a Young Sheldon fun fact, saving a baby from a pipe in the wall, Korra walked so Buck from 9-1-1 could run, “I entertain its possibility,” intended Destiel subtext, Schrodinger’s homophobia, killing Dean Winchester with hammers, Vancouver tourism ad, BookToker Sam Winchester, our personal opinions on Bigfoot, Dean’s morning sickness, Jinkx Monsoon Slime Tutorials, Sam and Dean’s pretty privilege, and Dean’s "finna be in the pit."

LISTEN NOW, in your favorite podcast app!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Céline Calame

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Last year, I made one of the biggest changes of my life when I decided to stop trying to disguise my sex. A few days after my 28th birthday would have marked ten years since I began injecting testosterone. I had always thought I would feel at peace with that milestone, so deep in my so-called “authentic life.”

Heading home from work one day in February 2023, I stopped to look at the newspaper stand, where a headline about Jamie Reed blowing the whistle on “gender medicine” at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital caught my eye. As I read the article, it shook me to my core how much I related to each and every line. I myself had used the phrase, “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” on my mother, a phrase I had heard online, a phrase apparently recited by medical professionals to distraught parents. I was horrified to realize I was not the only one who had gone down this path as a minor.

I had already stopped taking testosterone several months prior, fearing medical complications. Despite my facial hair, as my body fat began to redistribute I began to be correctly sexed by confused men in public restrooms. I debated my next step. My little niece had only ever known me as her “uncle,” since my husband and I lived outwardly as a happy “gay” couple. Having grown a beard and undergone a double mastectomy, I continued pretending to be a man… but did I want to?

* * *

As a child growing up in Alabama, I simply thought life would be better if I were a boy: I wouldn’t get stared at in the video game aisles or made fun of for liking sports. Never mind that if I were a boy, other boys would have judged me for my Care Bear collection and my affinity for Barbies. Each night I prayed and every year I made birthday wishes to one day wake up as a boy with not a soul having any recollection to the contrary. 

And yet in some ways I did not really mind being a girl. Our neighbor loved to tease my sister and me by yelling to us, “Hey, boys!” which was met without fail each time with: “WE’RE GIRLS, MARK!” In truth, I was less of a classic tomboy and more of a healthy young girl who did not let stereotypes dictate her life. I didn’t worry about my body until I learned about the ways others changed theirs. My issue was that everyone around me seemed obsessed with separating boys and girls by telling us what hobbies or friends we were allowed to have, something I did not understand. 

When I first went online, in 2006 or 2007, I was about 10 years old. At first I mostly played dress-up games. Eventually I learned that I could look up questions I had, which led me to Yahoo! Answers. I wound up on the LGBT section of the site, where I asked if I could be “a boy inside” even if I loved my long hair, liked my “girly” clothes and hobbies, and didn’t really mind being called a girl. The answer was, bizarrely, a resounding “yes.” Several of the responses even gave me resources: forums I had absolutely no business being on, full of adults trying to change their sex, as well as webcomics glamorizing medicalization.

I learned to hide things from my family and to judge them negatively for not being able to understand or accept the complexity of “gender identity.” How could they deny that I was a boy inside? How could they deny “gender” might exist in shades of gray? Adults online told me that males who said they did not “feel like guys” were only saying so because they “never had to think about gender” the way I did.

My mother, at her wit’s end with how much I had gone silent towards her, did the only thing she could think to do: She read my diary. The first page of this new journal was dedicated to the logistics of stuffing my underwear with rolled-up socks to create a phallic bulge while still needing to use the girls’ locker room at school… my mother confronted me angrily, asking me how long I had been doing all these things to look like a boy. I completely shut her out, my trust in her shattered. I decided never to tell her about things going on in my life, such as self-harm, sexual abuse from a neighbor that made me ashamed of my own body, and the isolation I felt as a result of my hereditary progressive hearing loss.

My mother took away my “boy clothes” and refused to let me cut my hair. She would threaten to send me to all-girls schools. Several times she followed me to the store to ensure I was not buying duct tape, which she learned I was using to flatten my chest, or shaving razors, because she knew I was no longer shaving but instead self-harming. All of these things pushed me further away. My story finally looked more like the desperate stories of other teenagers in my boat, with families who fought every step of the way against gender ideology.

One day, realizing that my mother sometimes used male pronouns in front of me but used female pronouns when talking to anyone else, I came to the horrifying conclusion that I would never be accepted by my family as the opposite sex. Everyone online told me that suicide rates for “transgender” teens were sky-high, that without “transition” death would be my only relief. I attempted to take my own life. The tides turned in my favor: I never heard my birth name again, and was exclusively referred to as male.

Years later, when I wanted to back out, I remembered how hard it was to convince her in the first place.

* * *

At age 14 I found a gender therapist in Montgomery and emailed her, explaining that I was uncertain if anyone would let me medicalize my body because I was “a little nonbinary.” She told me I would be surprised at how open-minded she was. I began saving up money to see her. Every single penny was pinched with the goal of one day using it all to “transition.” I did not do anything fun with my friends or create savings goals for adulthood.

At age 17, I finally had an appointment with her. She made sure to schedule it for the same day as a group meeting where I met another 17-year-old girl who was already on testosterone and a man pretending to be a woman who did most of the talking while we both sat there shyly, silently.

I spent all of twenty to thirty minutes telling my story, leaving out details regarding my nebulous sense of “identity” as tumblr had suggested and instead highlighting that I had “lived as male” for a few years at that point. The therapist asked why I had come to see her, since I “sounded so sure” of myself. I needed to see a therapist in order to be prescribed cross-sex hormones, I said. She turned to her computer, entering my name into a form pre-filled for just this purpose. She handed me a printed copy, saying she would also submit my referral to an endocrinologist who worked in the same building. I was floored. Was it really going to be this easy? 

When I saw the endocrinologist he was alarmed that I had listed lithium, a mood stabilizer, as a medication I took. I explained that I had mood swings but that I had full consent from everyone to begin hormones. He was uncomfortable and wanted letters from my parents and psychiatrist, but then ignored these letters after I submitted them.

Sometime during the following year, I dragged my mother to the probate judge to change my legal name. She sat there, looking desolate and defeated as I assured the judge that she fully consented. He told me he could not in good faith assist a minor attempting to lie about her sex.

A few days after turning 18, I returned to the endocrinologist, having never seen the gender therapist past that first appointment. On the basis of “informed consent,” he could not turn me down: as long as I said that I was aware of all the risks and side effects, and accepted them as par for course, I would be prescribed cross-sex hormones. Did I understand the medical risks of what I was doing? Sort of. All of the side effects meant nothing to me because I had been told online that the alternative was a life of misery and eventual inevitable suicide. It would be years before I saw myself in Jamie Reed’s words: “All it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.”

I left with a prescription which I filled that day. The taunting at school stopped as the bullies who mocked me heard my voice crack, then drop. Facial hair sprouted. I bound my chest, sometimes with very frilly, cutesy custom-made binders. (A cupcake print one comes to mind.)

I entered college very open about the fact that I was female but wanted to be a man. I frequently wore makeup and sometimes women’s clothes, saying I was “expressing femininity as a man.” I was on every “transgender student” panel and did my best to “educate” everyone on the intricacies of people like me. I got a large tattoo to mask my breasts, thinking I’d never be able to afford a mastectomy. 

At the appointment the tattoo artist asked me, her deaf client, “How do you sign MY BODY IS AMAZING?” I showed her and she turned it into a dance. It was the dance of another woman who struggled her whole life to love her body. I had begun to love mine but was still obsessed with not looking completely like either sex. This made romantic endeavors difficult because I insisted on trying to be with gay men despite not being male and no longer even making an attempt to look male.

I found out that my student health insurance covered “transition,” so I made a consultation for a “simple release” metoidioplasty because I wanted ambiguous genitalia. At the appointment, I had no sign language interpreter and did my best to understand the staff and communicate what I wanted. The surgeon asked if I wouldn’t prefer a more linear path involving a mastectomy first. The nurse shook her own breasts at me while looking at my chest, eagerly smiling to indicate that the doctor was right. Uncomfortable, I took off my shirt. The surgeon assured me that my tattoo would remain totally intact and that because I was so small-chested the mastectomy could be done with the keyhole method, leaving me without scarring. 

The day of the surgery, I kept wondering if something would go wrong. If my insurance would suddenly fall through. If my ride home would cancel, thus necessitating we reschedule the whole thing. Instead everything went very smoothly. Everyone assured me that when I woke up, I would be happy.

A few days later in my dorm room, seeing my new chest unbandaged for the first time, I could hardly remember having breasts. I thought this meant it was the right thing to do. In hindsight, it was trauma. I was 21 and had no idea that my breasts would not grow back if I stopped testosterone. Prior to the operation, I told my therapist I might one day have a child and want to breastfeed my baby, but we never followed up on that thread.

Post-mastectomy, I got a vaguely worded letter from the surgeon expressing that my sex had been “changed” and that I was now “physically male.” My birth certificate and driver’s license were amended to reflect this lie.

I was not unhappy, per se, but taking cross-sex hormones is like trying to install a Windows operating system onto an Apple computer. You can certainly do it, but the machine is not equipped to deal with that. I had already been through female puberty. My bone structure would never look male. I would never gain muscle the same way men do. I began struggling with my eating disorder much more severely following my mastectomy because I saw my stomach sticking out so much further than my now-flat chest. I developed vaginal atrophy and cervical problems which I am only just beginning to have treated because I avoided gynecologists for so long.

After meeting him on a gay dating website and falling in love, I married a man in 2019. We moved to the Midwest and I did something I always thought I wanted: I went totally “incognito” about being transgender, and let everyone believe me to be wholly male. Instead, I felt empty inside for years. I could never be wholly truthful about my childhood. My husband was privately uncertain how it was possible for me to “feel like a man” and later admitted to being terrified of the medical experimentation I was undergoing. He loved me dearly as his “husband,” and was willing to refer to me as such regardless of whether or not I medicalized myself. He expressed what my family was by then afraid to: How long would I live?

* * *

After reading an article about Jamie Reed in our local paper, I researched detransition. I had been taught to see people who stopped lying about their sex as self-hating, “transphobic,” or even rare cases of other issues being mistaken for “genuine gender dysphoria.”

What I found was so different from what I had been told: thousands of people who had been prescribed cross-sex hormones after a single appointment, many never seeing a therapist even once. Hundreds of women whose breasts had been removed without ever being asked why they wanted that. People whose healthy genitals had been mutilated to poorly approximate those of the opposite sex. So many who really did at some point–or even still–struggle with the desire to be the opposite sex, an impossible endeavor. 

The future was uncertain to me. I was nearly 30 and had lived half my life lying about my sex. There was no adult woman I could return to being.

Was there?

Hundreds of people told me that even if I had lived my whole life pretending to be male, detransition did not mean “going back” to anything. It meant stopping the medicalization and the lies. It meant starting over. It meant moving forward.

I planned to wait a year before publicly detransitioning as a way of “serving penance” (a coping strategy my husband suggested, knowing the guilt I felt about my medicalization) and to avoid being perceived as a man pretending to be a woman. I wore women’s clothing at home, along with breast forms, which took an insane amount of courage because I felt like I was crossdressing as a woman despite being female. 

One day, I snapped. I felt miserable going to work every day living a lie and absolutely could not continue to handle the frustration of dealing with a period in the men’s restrooms. I told my HR director about my situation, expecting shock. I expected a few slow weeks of telling managers, then coworkers, eventually changing my name tag and restroom habits. Instead, she was completely unsurprised. Expressing that she would support whatever timeline I wanted, she reassured me that absolutely no one would be uncomfortable with me in the women’s restroom. 

I changed my name tag that very day and told all of my coworkers through a handwritten note that I passed to them with shaking hands. Not one was fazed. Most reacted with great positivity and support. A few asked me privately why I had “transitioned” in the first place and I told them very honestly: I was groomed by adults online and felt trapped in my decisions. The last decade of my life had been the epitome of sunk-cost fallacy.

Gender ideology ruined my childhood. I wonder today what would have happened had I never been exposed to the rhetoric online or had therapists pressed me about where I was getting these ideas. Today I know that being a woman is just about being female. It has nothing to do with the way she dresses, the way she sits, or the way she walks, talks, and lives her life. My mother is relieved to have her daughter back. 

One day my in-laws came to visit while I was wearing breast prosthetics and feminine clothing. My husband and I expected bewilderment that never came. After a few hours of aimless conversation, I told them that if they weren’t going to ask why I suddenly looked like a woman, then I would just have to tell them. I was met with love and support, but wondered if I should say anything about the hole I saw their daughter falling down. 

My teenage sister-in-law had brought her sketchbook over to show me her drawings: large-breasted anime characters that she insisted were male. Later, I texted her about my detransition to which she responded with her desire to be a boy, her involvement in the same Internet circles I had fallen for, and her intentions to look more masculine. I see myself in her: She is ashamed of her body and the Internet has already told her this means she is “a boy inside.”

I wrote this for her but she is unwilling to read it. 

I’ll be there for her when she’s ready.

--

About the Author

Céline Calame is an aspiring literacy specialist for deaf children in the Midwest. She volunteers with Women’s Declaration International USA, having joined its Desisted & Detransitioned Women’s Caucus in 2024.

[mcl38]

I feel the exact same way when I see people use “girly pop” or “babygirl” or the 💅 emoji when what the really are insinuating is f*g. I see it wayyyy to often on other social media sites. Especially about Lando. Yes sometimes it’s meant lovingly, or endearingly, but more often then not it’s used in a mean way.

and even if its used lovingly it most likely carries an undertone of condescension. idk i had a very illuminating conversation two days ago w these two very straight guys id watched quali with, who said they didn't realise the limp wrist meme / the word 'zesty' / babygirl and girlypop were derogatory gay stereotypes, they thought it was 'how girls talk' or imitating women rather than imitating feminine gay men. and i find it soooo funny that when cultural artefacts that are meant to b subversive in the gay community spill over into straight culture, the cishets rly do just turn it back into good ol' gender stereotypes. thats why lando's whole astrology bit for HIM is a casually misogynistic imitation of astrology girls (complete with the pitched up voice), but to tiktok it ended up reading as 'fruity' or 'zesty' or whatever other stupid fucking euphemistic adjective they use to skirt imaginary censors that don't actually exist.

and its funny bc lando is actually so straight-man-ish from his obsession w the world's most boring rich boy sport to his bragging abt sexual exploits on stream to the bluntness / refusal to couch his words & soften the blow in interviews that in women generally doesn't survive past teenhood. but bc hes generally slender and baby-faced (even with that atrocious chandler-bing-in-alternate-reality-episodes goatee) ppl will still code him as feminine on social media / tiktok / fanart / fics especially. idk as someone who like among other things has drawn lando as a girl or in dresses i also personally have a bit of a complicated relationship with the idea of a feminine lando, but it definitely isnt helped by the thoughtlessness with which people in fandom spaces, and also on the internet in general, and also in real life treat these new incognito homophobia cultural trends

[newhologram]

Okay, so conversely - I'm gay, and because of the general groups of people I've been out to, I've either been told I don't act feminine/"queer" enough, or treated as an embarrassing failure when I tried. Independently, I've still been called a fag, as a slur. So how am I -not- supposed to look askance at a term like "girlfag," when you make it clear that there's only a very limited set of gay guys you identify with, and you disparage all the others?

I understand that this is controversial because of the language and meaning the same way that “male lesbian” has been for a long time.

But I think you may have misinterpreted something because I do not understand where this assumption comes from. There seems to be some connection you have made which is false. There is not a very limited set of gay guys I identify with (and I do not disparage all the others, why would that mean that?).

I mean to be honest it’s pretty confusing for myself,  I also have a major dissociation between my “woman” self and myself, New, whoever this is, so it gets confusing and difficult for me to express in ways that won’t be misread (and offend someone, because my experience is weird but I know after all these years that I am not alone in this feeling). 

I have never been able to feel attractive as a woman, and when I finally got brave enough to start binding, it was life-changing. I suddenly stopped feeling hideous. For a long time it was the only thing that made me feel okay. If I had to skip binding one day to school or work I felt so damn ugly and I can’t really fully explain why because it’s hard for me to understand myself. I felt horrible on those days. I really miss binding but with my chronic pain I just can’t and it wouldn’t be healthy to keep doing so like I did anyway. I wore it for too long, I wasn’t really responsible or safe, but I had such horrible anxiety when I took the thing off that it became like a security blanket.

Also as a child I identified almost exclusively with male characters even before I knew that being gay was a thing. This is not a new thing that I just decided I wanted so I could feel special, this is an experience I have had since I was small. At playtime I was always the husband, the Vegeta, the strong monster dude, the small ambiguous mutant dude. If I was a girl character I was always a pretty specific type, like Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo lol. Like if you asked me which giant alien robots I identify most with the answer would be TFP Starscream and TFP Wheeljack. I identify equally with both even though they’re very different people (you could say one is very femme and the other is butch).

When people thought I was a boy (particularly in middleschool when I was very ambiguous and my voice got deeper) I got called it in mean ways. Secretly, inside, something felt good about it (the gender part) in ways I wasn’t able to express for obvious reasons. As I got older my friends always made comments like, “you are a cute little man!” from my behavior alone, or how I came out of my shell at Pride, or how I modeled in photoshoots. Then in highschool after I confided in a friend (who later learned they were trans) my confusing feelings on gender and how I felt so lost and unhappy, they called me it jokingly as a way of saying, “I accept you” and I liked it as a confirmation. It was something nice between us. Everyone has very different experiences. 

As for my first encounters with the term younger trying to figure out my gender and sexuality, it was presented as a way of describing a certain experiences that a lot of us have with being “not trans enough” to count, even though we experience dysphoria and being differently gendered. I mean I wore a binder for like 3 years, and I got super angry when people asked me “so when are you going to get The Surgery?” for obvious reasons, bad question, rude and inappropriate and also, not every person who is differently gendered wants this. There was a boy I was hanging out with who stopped being interested when I told him about all of this because he did not want to date a boy, or whatever I was, because he was straight. And since I was something in between but at the time going by a male name, he wasn’t comfortable with it. 

In truth, it goes way back. As a girl I wasn’t girly enough to be a girl, so I was called a tomboy and often shamed for it by peers and by family. As a boy, I wasn’t butch enough or wanting to change my body enough to find shelter under the umbrella. If I was afab, but felt that things made more sense and felt more comfortable as a boy, but loved wearing wigs and eyelashes (weirdly this makes me feel a strong masculine energy, I can’t explain it ever), and eventually grew to be okay with other people not being able to grasp my gender and just thinking I was Just A Girl... then, nope, I can’t sit with anyone because I’m too different among the different. The word, like others have said, sums up a lot of that experience. 

Like. I had panic attacks a lot when I was in college because I was terrified. Terrified of what my family would think, of how people would react, terrified that I would never be happy because no one would accept me because I didn’t fit in anywhere. I lied to my dad that my binder was just a sports bra I had bought in the wrong size on accident and didn’t want to return. 

It’s not clean cut for everyone, it’s very complicated and day to day I’m still trying to figure out just who the hell and what the hell I am. I might never know. 

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Men, Isn’t It Time We All Accepted That We’re A Bit Inadequate?

http://fashion-trendin.com/men-isnt-it-time-we-all-accepted-that-were-a-bit-inadequate/

Men, Isn’t It Time We All Accepted That We’re A Bit Inadequate?

Once you hit a certain age, say 40, it feels like a big deal because A) everyone tells you that it’s a big deal, and B) you probably remember your dad turning 40 and thinking what a real man he was. Just pure guy, 100 per cent bloke. The patriarch, the provider, the professional. He was probably good at football (or some other sport), confident, authoritative, an alpha male – everything a man supposedly should be. He was 40, and he encapsulated ‘dadness’.

Now you’re 40, maybe approaching it, maybe giving it the stare in the rear-view mirror. Maybe you’re a dad, too. Only what you see staring back at you each morning is something less certain, less overtly masculine, less blokeish. Sure, you’re a patriarch, but only in the biological sense; and you provide for your family, but so does your other half. This immediately presents two realisations: the first being that our expectations of masculinity might have shifted somewhat in the last twenty-something years, and also that your dad was probably blagging it anyway. Turns out he’s shy and kind, and he works hard, but a macho man, he is not.

Whatever overtly masculine vibes you saw him to be giving off had been fed to you. Fed by various suppositions that were nurtured in your head, passed down through the generations, and then passed through a basic set of childish filters. Because you saw him only in ‘dad’ terms, all you saw were the traits that dads were supposed to have. But the more you talk and reminisce now, the more he likely alludes to his uncertainty and insecurity as a young father. Of being a man.

The lesson here being that ‘masculinity’ in its most draconian sense isn’t something that’s easy (or even possible) to live up to. It’s long been absurdly defined as something stoical, successful, strong. Few of these traits honestly point towards the reality of being a man. Even the archetypes of brave soldiers coming home from battle belie a hidden truth of generations surely crippled by post-traumatic stress, numbed by war.

For every Gazza scoring an iconic goal against Scotland, thousands more Gazzas are looking lost and bewildered in the street. And as you lie on the beach during the summer, scroll through Instagram or sedate yourself with another episode of Love Island, it’s not hard to notice the hordes of guys who have succumbed to a social trend that requires normal people with normal jobs to have Olympian bodies. What the hell is that all about?

“Work was always the central way men could define themselves, their identity depended on it,” suggests sociologist Robert Proni. “Now, with the feminisation of the workplace, you could argue that there is more pressure to express masculinity through body image.”

Whatever it is to be a man right now, it all looks quite complicated and contradictory – gentle and sensitive but also beefy and strong, self-confident and go-getting yet humble. To put a positive spin on it, each of us has a chance to be a modern-day Renaissance man, open to and capable of anything. But it’s also little wonder men are having greater struggles with their mental health than ever before. We’ve forgotten that it’s okay to be inadequate, it’s fine to be unheroic, it’s no problem to like yourself in spite of all of the things you’re seemingly getting wrong.

“I’m not sure that the strong and silent stereotype for men holds true anymore,” starts masculinity expert, author and journalist Mark Simpson. “They perhaps don’t always express themselves in the same way as women, but that doesn’t mean they don’t express themselves. Perhaps people need to listen more.”

Mental health, certainly amongst guys, seems to be on the social agenda in a big way, with men talking about it on a bigger platform. Everyone from Dwayne Johnson to Stormzy has opened up about their experiences with depression. Even the Royal Family – notorious for centuries of oil paintings depicting them as noble warriors (or, at least, as better looking than they are) – have entered the debate. Princes Harry and William have taken to encouraging the nation’s menfolk to address their inner struggles and to tackle mental health head-on. This, it has to be said, can only be applauded, because the topic of depression has long been an absurd taboo, seemingly viewed as a sign of weakness.

However, the statistics tell a story of a society struggling to do battle with its demons. In the last couple of years, it’s been reported that suicide is now the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. Anxiety, depression and eating disorders have also skyrocketed by over 600 per cent in younger men over the last decade.

It’s impossible to say whether this is the result of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ — a phrase that seems to be wheeled out every so often at our convenience — or whether men are simply finding it easier to be open and, as a result, the reported cases are causing a spike in the stats. Whatever the underlying reason, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that men are becoming humanised in a way that makes for shocking reading, but also in a way that can ultimately benefit not just men, but everyone. Because once age-old notions of men being one way, and women being another, are finally laid to rest, society can edge closer to total equality.

Perhaps, though, any male ‘crisis’ is simply down to men being required to give up their privilege and reprogram their outlook. “Masculinity has been in crisis forever, but I don’t believe that masculinity is ‘in crisis’ today,” agrees Simpson. “On the contrary, it’s probably in less crisis than it has ever been before – masculinity has been liberated by a metrosexual revolution, from oppressive and impossible expectations of what ‘being a man’ is.”

So what are we left with? A society where men are being alleviated of (or stripped of, depending on your outlook) their old purported responsibilities. It’s no longer set in stone that you must be the breadwinner; you are no longer required to hunt and gather; you are allowed to feel weak, or unhappy; you have permission to share your innermost workings. You are not the king of your castle. Instead, you are a cog in a much bigger machine than you, sharing all of the duties and responsibilities that come with it, and you’re allowed to identify as a child of the universe – lost, uncertain and imperfect. Now, this all might sound a bit negative, but in reality, it’s brilliant. The freedom to embrace your inadequacies and to aspire to something other than being respected and stoical? Bring it on.

“Truth is, nobody knows what being a man involves today, and that’s actually rather good news, not a cue for ominous music and scary statistics,” continues Simpson. “Most of the ideas about masculinity, back when we all knew what it was, were prohibitions: not sensitive, not gay, not passive, not girly, not good with colours. Repression was an essential part of old-school masculinity, including the part of it that everyone misses: self-sacrifice, strength and stoicism.

“Essentially, being a man was sold as a form of heroism – a ‘man’ was a heroic ideal, something almost impossible to embody. That isn’t to say that everything is hunky-dory now, but on the whole, things are a lot better – we can actually talk about men’s ‘failings’ and problems now.”

Another area that has shifted markedly in recent decades is the come about of social media. In the same way you were not privy to your father’s inner workings, neither were you tuned into his brand ideals – he didn’t have a preferred Instagram filter and, in general, you didn’t see men on holiday turning their disposable cameras around and sucking in their cheeks and puffing out their chests.

In fact, when you look back at the men that defined masculinity around that time – Sean Connery, Tom Selleck, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, Bruce Springsteen – they weren’t sculpted and shaven, they weren’t even particularly shredded. Instead, that absurd subsection of muscularity was left to the Stallones and Schwarzeneggers, who were far from the norm. They were the exceptions, walking testosterone, something to be exhibited rather than aspired towards.

Skip to now, where everyone from boyband members to reality stars to A-Listers like Ryan Gosling and even Justin Beiber is seemingly expected to have Adonis bodies that tell a story of a lifetime spent in the gym. Add to that the occasional gigantic beard and the epidemic propensity towards getting multiple tattoos, and you start to wonder if these things might have a more profound message, that they might be totems of a lost masculinity. A desperate lunge towards validation as ‘men’.

“In terms of body image, any shift can be related to the consumer culture of today,” says Proni, who lectures at Kingston University, London. “The commodification of our bodies – the cultural emphasis on youthfulness, desire and pleasure – this doesn’t just apply to men, the media images for all of us are now woven into the fabric of our daily life. And unfortunately, this notion that we are all responsible for ourselves can lead to depression, confusion and anxiety in men. Instead of finding ourselves, we lose ourselves.”

Indeed, in the quest for validation and approval, it seems that many more men are going under the knife – presumably, in a bid to provide the world with the fantasy version of their masculine selves they would urge you, and probably themselves, to buy into.

“I’ve always had a high proportion of male patients in my practice,” says cosmetic surgeon Dr Jonquille Chantrey. “But there are definitely more men attending now than ever before. Their top reason for coming is to ‘look less tired’, but lots of them are also interested in non-surgical body contouring procedures to get rid of stubborn fat that won’t shift, even with their gruelling workout regimes.

“The pressures to look a certain way have been there for some time in terms of body appearance and grooming, but it’s quickly transgressing into face and health – most of the men we treat work hard to keep up their fitness, which can ironically make them look gaunt and haggard.”

“Modern men definitely feel pressure to be looked at and ‘liked’,” continues Simpson. “But that’s because we live in a hyper-visual, social media culture. I don’t think this is necessarily bad. It’s good that men no longer look, and women are no longer simply looked at. Men have discovered the desire to be desired – which was always at the heart of metrosexuality. It’s no longer something just for gays and girls.”

So, all of this would suggest that, with the diminishing gender divide, men are now essentially experiencing the same pressures to look a certain way that have been dogging women forever. The patriarchy is dying, the shoe (or heel) is on the other foot. Masculinity is reshaping itself, and presumably, some men have been left feeling confused, exposed, discombobulated and uncertain about their place in the world.

But don’t confuse this as anything other than positive. Men have been shackled by old notions of masculinity for way too long, forever urged to be part of a gang, or to fit into tired stereotypes. Now we can be honest, open, and complex individuals – we can unashamedly (or ashamedly, it’s up to you) be ourselves. We can dress how we want, we can be candid about our desire to become better people, healthier people, and we can even be truthful about the things that make us feel inadequate. We’re basically Eminem at the end of 8 Mile, listing our faults in a bid to become glorious and triumphant. And the nicest part is that we can now work on becoming genuinely brotherly with one another in a way that women have been supporting one another for years.

“Self-confidence is more powerful when it comes from a healthy inner perspective,” says Dr Chantrey.

We’ll drink to that.

[odettegibson-blog]

character sheet - odette marie gibson

BASICS

full name -- odette marie gibson (née lawless) meaning of name --  odette means wealthy, marie means bitter   nickname -- blossom by her biological father birth date -- 26th of april, 1999 astrological sign and details -- taurus

element: earth

quality: fixed

color: green, pink

day: friday, monday

ruler: venus

greatest overall compatibility: scorpio, cancer

lucky numbers: 2, 6, 9, 12, 24

strengths: reliable, patient, practical, devoted, responsible, stable

weaknesses: stubborn, possessive, uncompromising

taurus likes: gardening, cooking, music, romance, high quality clothes, working with hands

taurus dislikes: sudden changes, complications, insecurity of any kind, synthetic fabrics

birth place -- raymond, mississippi age -- eighteen nationality -- american race -- caucasian hair color -- blonde hair style -- loose with gentle curls, or a braid glasses or contacts -- neither eye color -- blue skin tone -- light scars or distinguishing marks -- she has nail shaped scars on her neck of where her mother held her to drown her disabilities -- none build or body type -- slender height -- 5 ft 8" weight -- 119 pounds weakness -- her ptsd, her sexuality, her past

FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD

mother -- emmy-lou elizabeth buckley (†), twenty when odette was born father -- merle george lawless (†), thirty-nine when odette was born mother's occupation -- housewife father's occupation -- handy man and carpenter family finances -- working class, on the verge of poor birth order -- born as an only child, is now the third child out of four in the gibson family brothers -- merle lawless, jr. (†), connor gibson, matthew gibson  sisters -- josephine gibson other close family -- a grandmother in connecticut best friend -- susan peterson, the girl living accross the road other friends -- robert green, audrey sloan and fred winkle enemies -- none pets -- a bloodhound, named chuck home life during childhood -- she lived in a two bedroom house that was very small, but that was always filled with music and happiness for a long time. her father was her hero and her mother cared for her just fine, until she got post-partum depression. her father passed away from cancer, and that made the depression even worse. it was left untreated and this lead to a complete breakdown where her mother drowned her son, merle jr. and tried to drown her daughter, before killing herself. what did his or her bedroom look like -- she had a room that she shared with her little brother. it had faded yellow walls and she had quite a spartan bed and a big, old, wooden closet. in her room, her guitar was always in the corner and she had a bookstand filled with sheetmusic and country CDs. any sports or clubs -- none favorite toy or game -- she loved her three Barbie dolls as well as her toy guns schooling -- she did fairly well in school but had to redo her freshman year, which is why she is still a senior. favorite subject -- music popular or loner -- a bit of an outcast, but she isn’t being bullied and people are generally nice to her important experiences or events -- her father’s death, her mother’s breakdown and death, her brother’s death, her move to her grandmother, being adopted into the gibson family, becoming aware of her sexuality health problems -- she is struggling with ptsd, which developped when she was fourteen culture -- she is a southern girl and her father even had a rebel flag outside her house. she knows that the confederacy wasn’t great and was racist, but she still sort of hangs on to southern tradition and songs that are about the confederacy.  religion and beliefs -- she was raised an evangelist christian and went to church every sunday, which she still does

CHARACTER

bad habits -- twirling her hair, whistling, twirling her grandmother’s ring around her finger good habits -- drinking lots of water best characteristic -- she is very friendly and wants everyone to feel included worst characteristic -- she can be very self-centered and only think about her own dreams and to achieve those, she’ll push aside whoever she has to worst memory -- her dead brother’s body and the sounds of her mother choking on her own blood in the background best memory -- her father teacher her ‘amarillo by morning’ on guitar and then singing together proud of -- her vocal abilities and her skills on the guitar embarrassed by -- the fact that she is still a senior and not in college yet driving style -- very careful and annoyingly slow strong points -- driven, reliable, patient, practical, devoted, responsible, stable temperament -- she isn’t easily angered, so quite calm and gentle weakness -- her sexuality, her past and other people being successful while she isn’t yet fears -- being anything like her mother, going to sleep, water, public flashbacks secrets -- her sexuality, her family tragedy regrets -- not being able to stop her mother, not being there when her father passed away feels vulnerable when -- people ask her about having a boyfriend, judge her accent pet peeves -- chewing sounds motivation -- wanting to make her father proud by becoming a country star short term goals and hopes -- kind of hopes for a girlfriend, but also doesn’t at the same time, graduating long term goals and hopes -- becoming a country star sexuality -- she is 99,99% gay exercise routine  -- does not exercise but does eat quite healthy day or night person -- day person, because the night is filled with nightmares introvert or extrovert -- extrovert optimist or pessimist -- optimist

LIKES AND STYLES

music -- country, bluegrass (carrie underwood, dolly parton, george start, merle haggard, willie nelson, loretta lynn...) books -- she really doesn’t like reading magazines -- southern living, country living foods -- fried chicken, fried okra, biscuits and gravy, collard greens, catfish and cornbread drinks -- sweet tea, pop animals -- dogs, horses sports -- football social issues -- quietly for gay rights, religious freedom,  favorite saying -- god willing and the creek don't rise color -- yelllow clothing -- loves dresses and wears them pretty much always, but if she isn’t she’s wearing that it’s cut off jeans or jeans skirts jewelry -- she wears her grandmother’s ring, always and a cross she got from her father around her neck tv shows -- heart of dixie, nashville movies -- brokeback mountain but that is a secret, imagine me and you, carol, la vie d’adele, totally not for the love scene greatest want -- to be famous, loved and accepted greatest need -- love and acceptance

CURRENT LIFESTYLE

home -- lives with her adoptive parents in a big house, as they are rich favorite possession -- her guitar most cherished possession -- old tape of her father singing “sunday in the south’ and playing the guitar. she loves it because it also has little merle talking on it neighborhood -- rich and fancy, in her opinion town or city name -- mystic married before -- no significant other before -- she’s had a boyfriend when she was sixteen but she felt nothing for him other than friendship children -- none relationship with family -- she loves her new siblings, but she misses the love of her parents. they’re not around and she doesn’t think they care much for her best friend -- tbd other friends -- tbd enemies -- tbd car -- an old, red pick up truck she asked her parents to buy for her pets -- none career -- senior in high school salary -- none other income -- none dream career -- country singer/songwriter dream life -- she wants to get married and have children, preferrably three. she knows that she wants a woman, but she isn’t sure if she’ll ‘give in’ to that yet. love life -- non-existent but she has crushes left and right sexual turn ons -- girls, in general but she especially likes nice curves, full lips and she is very much into girly girls sexual turn offs -- she just isn’t into butch women, she can’t help it. she also doesn’t like arrogance, rudeness and people who push her into things she doesn’t want to do hobbies -- singing, playing guitar, writing songs, listening to music guilty pleasure -- her goodie box of pictures of semi-naked and naked models in the back of her closet sports or clubs -- none talents or skills -- singing, playing guitar intelligence level -- average finances -- dependent on her parents greatest strength -- charm greatest weakness -- being a people pleaser health problems -- ptsd culture -- she grew up in a lower class family and adapting to her rich family isn’t easy for her. she just doesn’t feel like she fully fits in. religion -- evangelist christian