Now in my comics feed, a 11/22 One Big Happy strip mostly about what home is, but with its first two panels on masculinity for boys (I’ll show you the whole strip at the end of this posting):
(#1) Guy stuff, no glitter — ’cause that would be gay stuff
Another item in my “Masculinity comics” series. From the first, on 10/5/21:
I’ve been accumulating comic strips having to do with boys and masculinity, in particular about what they’ve picked up about normatively masculine behavior and attitudes by the age of 8 or so: the age of the character Joe in the comic strip One Big Happy, who’s the older brother of Ruthie, age 6, who’s the central character of the strip. … To judge from the comics (and my recollections of boyhood), an 8-year-old has an extensive and pretty fine-grained command of the cultural norms of masculinity within his social group.
On normative masculinity. From my 4/12/16 posting “On the brocabulary watch: brocialist”:
[Michael Kimmel’s] first rule [of the Boy Code and the Guy Code] is that “[normative] masculinity is the relentless repudiation of the feminine” …
And the central precept of the first rule is No Sissy Stuff!: avoid anything that might suggest homosexuality. The most wounding insult to a young man is to call him a fag(got), and “That’s so gay” is a powerful put-down among adolescent boys.
But beyond that: avoid women as friends rather than sexual conquests; avoid “feminine” interests (like the arts), avoid empathetic rather than competitive interactions (men improve one another, make one another into better men, by challenging each other agonistically), etc.
Also avoid “Mama values” (at the risk of becoming a “Mama’s boy”): cleanness, neatness, respectfulness, “proper grammar”, no “dirty talk”, etc. – including these values as policed by female partners (standing in for Mama), who are seen as “ball-busters” or “castrating bitches” when they perform this role: women as emasculating.
Glitter, and sequins, in pink. A continuing theme of this blog is the exploration of a huge, complex world of alternative, non-normative masculinities. Including those presentations of a masculine self that pretty much start by embracing glitter and sequins, especially in conventionally feminine colors like pink and lavender, and run with them wherever they might go: perhaps to frilly lace panties for men, or to neon pink leather bulldog harnesses.
As in my 3/20/18 posting “Perfectionist in pink sequin”, about homowear from the Marco Marco firm, notably their pink sequin jock-thong:
(#2) Glitter and be gay; it can be worn for sweaty dancing under the rotating disco ball, or for private display at home.
The 2018 posting goes on to look at some other menswear options in the glitter / sequin family, among them this Toms glitter slipper in light pink:
(#3)
Or you could move to more intense colors in the glitter / sequin family, as in the famous ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz movie.
Appendix: the whole 11/22 strip.
(#4) On guy stuff, and on the emotional meaning of home
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