Yahoo Lifestyle Evolution of man
When I was young, talk of a visit to my grandma’s house filled me with trepidation.
Not because of my grandmother; it was the possibility my uncles would be there. There was one in particular who I’d always, unsuccessfully, try to flee from. He’d developed a routine when it came to greeting me that he perceived as hilarious and I saw as terrifying.
It’d go down like this: I’d enter the backyard and run for cover. Seeing that my parents and siblings had arrived, he’d scan the garden until he found me. This would set me scampering around in panic until I felt his bear paws lift me up by my ears, leaving me to wriggle and squeal to be put down. The men of the family would laugh, my aunts would roll their eyes. Eventually he’d grow tired of it, drop me on the grass and resume drinking beer while I’d wander over to the group of women, thinking what an arsehole he was. I wanted to cry, but the only time I let that happen it sparked more laughter from my uncles, and suggestions that I “toughen up”.
Looking back, their loutishness didn’t distress me as much as their reaction to the realisation I wasn’t like them. They were quintessential Aussie blokes, while I was a quiet, bookish kid, and no amount of rough-housing and light child abuse would change that. Sensing I was different, my male relatives experienced mental anguish as they tried to convince me to pick up a footy, be less polite and get into more schoolyard fights.
To them, nothing could be worse than failing to adhere to the proudly masculine ideal that existed at the time. This was ’80s “Straya” – an era characterised by Merv Hughes moustaches and Bob Hawke-sanctioned beer guzzling. A time when macho-ness and its attendants, misogyny and homophobia, were right up there with Four’N Twenty pies and Tooheys – norms predicated on the belief that one needn’t only meet them but also develop a silent yet pervasive hysteria when it came to any potential deviation.
Thankfully, that changed
At some point, more sensitive, intellectual, cultural, open-minded, respectful, well-groomed, less-rough blokes became acceptable – even the norm. Frank Bongiorno, associate professor of history at Australian National University, says feminism is mainly to thank: women’s demand for equality led to anti-discrimination legislation as well as dramatic changes in men’s behaviour.
“It was becoming more acceptable for men to show emotion in public – recall the 1984 tears of Bob Hawke and Kim Hughes,” he says. “The gay-male clone look [of musicians like Bon Jovi], while seemingly hyper-masculine, was also... almost a parody of hard masculinity. And old-fashioned beer was giving way to boutique beers, as well as wine and spirits.”
One only has to look towards popular culture today to see how much Australian masculinity has morphed. When I was growing up, my peers were looking to men like Warwick Capper, Paul Hogan and Angry Anderson for pointers; now, James Magnussen, Anh Do and Angus Stone shine in their respective fields. This isn’t to say that these guys are, as my uncles would put it, “complete wusses”. While their predecessors traded off their aggressively one-dimensional personalities – we’ll give Capper a little bump up to two-dimensional seeing as he was both a bogan sportsman and a “lover”, as his 1993 Penthouse spread with his then-wife can attest – things have changed to the point that the oafishness once considered critical to the formation of our national idols has been usurped by a demand for nuance. Or a bit of variety, at least. Well-rounded men now rule, and those old-school larrikins have become relics.
The upsides for all
So beyond being a little creepy, the cliche that women tend to go for someone like their dad has gradually become somewhat impossible. Marita McCabe, professor of psychology at Melbourne’s Deakin University, says the new norm is win-win, for men and women. Women demanded that men develop
their feminine side, and men are now able to lead much more balanced and fulfilling lives.
“Their fathers had to conform to gender stereotypes,” she says. “These have been vastly modified so that they can work in a greater range of occupations and even be the primary caregiver to children…I think these changes are better for relationships, as there’s greater communication and sharing.”
But Bongiorno says that while we’ve turned a corner, we’re not completely over the hill of hegemonic masculinity just yet. “Yes, there is greater freedom and flexibility in masculine behaviour today, but even the most casual glance at the media would suggest that problems such as violence towards females remain,” he says. “The Gillard prime ministership also aroused some misogyny I suspect some people thought we’d left behind. The continuities with the past should not be overlooked when we celebrate the greater diversity of male identity and performance in Australia today.”
Seems it’s not quite time to raise our Mason jars of boutique beers in celebration just yet…
Luke Malone is an Aussie boy living in New York while he does a Masters at Columbia University’s journalism school. Despite his objections to the “great Aussie male”, he gets quite homesick when Crocodile Dundee comes on cable.
