A Road to Emmaeus

Last month Sara and I went to see what will likely be the biggest blockbuster of 2023: Barbie. I chose to seize the zeitgeist of the moment with my own “barbiecore” outfit, sporting a pink collared shirt and pastel-green shorts. I had never cosplayed before, but Sara insisted that we dress appropriately, and I’m glad that we did. In the theater, Sara and I enjoyed the company of a room packed full of pink-clad revelers, which I estimated was about seventy percent female, with the remainder consisting of an equal share of gay and straight men. Alas, we were not the most committed fans: one guy brought his own cardboard dollhouse.

Overall, I found Barbie to be clever and thought-provoking, with enough philosophical layers to unpack long after you leave the theater. The movie confronts gender roles head-on, with the now famous monologue from America Ferrera’s character – in which she laments the contradictory and confusing expectations that society foists upon women – generating a whoop of approval in the theater. Greta Gerwig’s screenplay is uneven in places, but I appreciated the film for what it is: a feminist romp that also evokes childhood nostalgia. Despite its flaws (more on that later), men should see it to better understand women. 

Barbie is, of course, centered on femininity, but it has some things to say about masculinity too. Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, struggles with finding his identity as a man, and this ended up being one of the more intriguing (and comical) elements of the movie. Ken’s existential journey reminded me of a question that I have been asking myself over the past couple of years. What is “healthy” masculinity, and what does it have to offer the world? 

Our society lacks a widely shared model for healthy masculinity. More and more commentators have been talking about the struggle of young men, both socially and economically. Vast numbers of young men in the Western world are lonely, isolated, and disconnected from the labor force. They feel undervalued by a society in which physical strength, the natural domain of men, is no longer valued, and they lack the “soft skills” to navigate both the new, knowledge-based economy and the romantic expectations of their better-educated, female peers. While our culture highlights the problems of toxic masculinity, these young men feel threatened by such criticism, perceiving it as an attack on men writ large. For such men, feminism is the enemy. Regrettably, some men have gone down the rabbit hole of misogyny and online “red pill” culture in which toxic masculinity is celebrated. An entire ecosystem of anti-woke YouTubers have skewered Barbie as an anti-men, misandrist rant designed to brainwash young women into hating men.

That Barbie has become the latest battlefront in the gender war should come as no surprise. The film criticizes “the patriarchy” in all of its forms: sexualization of women, gender bias in the workplace (in one scene, an unnamed corporate suit lifts his hand to silence a woman trying to speak), proclivity for physical violence, and mansplaining, among others. The critique reaches its peak in the latter half of the movie when when Ken, having realized that men dominate the real world, foments a social revolution in Barbieland, supplanting the matriarchy of the Barbies and installing an equally absolutist patriarchy called “Kendom.” The movie is not subtle in its negative portrayal of men, and I think a less heavy-handed approach would have been more effective in reaching people outside of the progressive bubble. I was hoping that Ken would end his story arc by discovering a positive masculinity, one that Barbie would recognize as worthy of support; alas, a more nuanced exploration of masculinity isn’t part of the script. Still, Ken provides a useful foil for exactly this kind of conversation. 

Whether consciously or not, we have all absorbed lessons about masculinity or femininity from childhood. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I molded my ideas of manhood based on the things my father demonstrated: reliability, honesty, and self-discipline. As an army officer and war veteran, he also foot the bill for what our society defines as stereotypically masculine. I never doubted that he would and could protect us if we were ever in danger. That idea – that men are protectors, guardians of society at large and of their own families – was also reinforced in the toys that my brother and I played with. We loved action figures, and, like most boys our age, we used them to stage climatic battles between good and evil. The desire to control the physical world and use force to suppress evil is, I think, something deeply ingrained in the male mind. The roots of this desire may precede puberty, as studies consistently show that infants show a natural preference for toys aligned with their gender (think dolls for girls and trucks for boys). Puberty, however, supercharges the differences between male and female through the injection of testosterone into the male brain. In our distant past, a man’s testosterone, and the superior muscle mass associated with it, were crucial in hunting wild animals to sustain roving bands of hunter-gatherers. Most men don’t hunt anymore, but the testosterone is still there, and this drives some behaviors that are distinctly masculine. Ken’s portrayal in Barbie does, at least, get this part right, even if Ken himself represents a shallow facsimile of masculinity. 

Recognizing that men and women are different is the first step towards developing a model of healthy masculinity. A caveat: there are exceptions to every rule, and with something as complicated as gender distinctions, there are bound to be many exceptions. Not every man and woman fits a particular mold, but I still think there are tendencies that we can establish, with the median man and media woman tending towards certain traits. 

First, I would name the desire to achieve self-value and respect through one’s work as a primarily masculine trait. In general, men seek validation from work rather than social relationships, while women tend to do the opposite. This is one reason why women, on average, have more close friends than men. Men are innately wired to see the physical world as a canvass of moldable objects to be shaped; in other words, a battlefield to conquer. Men crave achievement and power and are predisposed to seek it, whatever the cost. The emphasis on work also manifests in how men spend time with each other. Instead of meeting for a walk or talking over a cup of tea, as women often to do, men prefer to strive together in some common pursuit, like playing sports.

Second, men valorize the use of physical strength to achieve results in their work. This is particularly true with respect to professions that entail valor or the use of force; think firefighters, police officers, and military personnel. All of these professions are far more open to women than they used to be, and this is undoubtedly a good thing. Nevertheless, men are overwhelmingly likely to choose these kinds of careers, and this is unlikely to change. Similarly, professions in which manual labor is the key component – think plumbers, mechanics, electricians, and construction workers – will always be male-dominated. These professions involve applying physical force to transform the physical world. As such, they naturally favor humans with more testosterone; i.e. men. This is a reality that Barbie seems not to recognize. In one scene, Margot Robbie’s titular character is rollerblading past a construction site in Venice Beach, astonished to note that all of the workers are men, in contrast to Barbieland, which is serviced by all-female construction crews. This scene suggests that the all-male construction team is an example of patriarchy, and by extension something to lament. In truth, even a perfectly egalitarian society, free of sexism, would not have many female construction workers for the simple reason that relatively few women are interested in this kind of work. 

Third, men have an innate desire to be the provider-protector. This means that most men ultimately want a wife and children to love and protect. The shallow, frat boy hedonism of Kendom bears little resemblance to the masculine ideal – i.e. husband and father – that most men desire. If love is a battlefield, a man’s natural instinct is to be the conqueror. Despite the advent of feminism, our society still expects men to be the first to initiate a romantic relationship. This, in my view, is not merely a socially conditioned behavior. The testosterone in a man’s body naturally leads him to the decisiveness and risk required to express romantic interest in a woman. At its worst, this kind of initiative leads to sexual harassment and assault, but at its best it leads to the kind of boldness and directness that women welcome. Many women today are frustrated by men who are too afraid to articulate their romantic interest, which is an unfortunate result of men succumbing to cowardice. 

The provider-protector instinct also matters when it comes to physical protection. A man’s testosterone grants him both physical strength and the impulsiveness needed to respond to danger. There are times when his hardwired instinct for aggression is not only appropriate but necessary, as in the case of a man who defends his partner against physical violence. Women tacitly acknowledge this when they ask a male friend to walk them home. Regrettably, the violence and predatory behavior of some men requires the valor of other men to keep them in check. This is a kind of positive masculinity that is frustratingly absent from Barbie. On several occasions in the film, Ken fails to defend Barbie from aggression. When she is physically assaulted in Venice Beach, it is Barbie that punches her attacker in the face, not Ken (there is of course nothing wrong with Barbie defending herself, but a real man – like Ryan Gosling’s protagonist in Drive – would have been the first to react with force). Likewise, Ken has no response to the constant sexual harassment that Barbie receives in her various interactions with men in the real world. There is even one scene where Barbie is essentially kidnapped by Mattel goons while Ken watches passively from a distance. His indoctrination by real-world patriarchy does not, apparently, include lessons on male heroism. 

The three aforementioned traits – self-esteem through work, valorizing physical strength, and being a protector-provider – all derive, in some way, from a man’s testosterone. As such, I don’t think that these aspects of masculinity arise purely from social conditioning. Men and women are equal in worth, but equality does not require sameness. To deny that men and women are different, or to suggest that men must suppress their masculinity, is unworkable. Masculine energy should be encouraged and channelled for socially beneficial ends, rather than abused in pursuit of toxic ends. Young men should be encouraged to embrace an ethic of self-discipline and hard work for the purposes of building strong families, businesses, and communities. They need to be pushed into expressing romantic interest in a woman and, if she reciprocates, investing in the relationship with loyalty and commitment. We need to acknowledge that physically-demanding work still has value, encouraging some men to pursue apprenticeships in manual trades that, even in the information age, provide a stable income. In short, not only is there room for men to be men, but we as a society need men to be men.

In addition, positive masculinity must embrace traits that do not come naturally to men. Emotional vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, and “manning up” should not require clamming up when it comes to being honest about one’s feelings or admitting one’s failures. This is one area where traditional masculinity has failed men spectacularly. My father’s generation, and practically every generation of men before him, was taught to never admit weakness. We all know that this is counterproductive and emotionally destructive. If emotional vulnerability is a feminine trait, then positive masculinity could use a dose of femininity. Ken and Barbie’s honest conversation at the end of the film, in which Ken admits his failings to Barbie, is one of the few scenes of the movie that points to a healthy masculinity. 

Finally, for a healthy masculinity to thrive, it must not see feminism as a threat. Men should see an empowered and ambitious woman as attractive, not repulsive. Men should not pine for a bygone era (as crudely illustrated with Kendom) in which men dominated the workforce and the vast majority of women stayed at home. This model is long gone and will never return for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that our modern economy values higher levels of education and complex social skills, both areas in which women are excelling more than men. Increasingly, women make as much or even more than their partners and husbands. Even as they find value through work, men should not feel demoralized if they are not their family’s primary breadwinner.

At the end of Barbie, after the Barbies have smashed the short-lived patriarchy of Kendom, Barbie encourages Ken to figure out who he is. Having realized the errors of one model of masculinity, he must now set out on a journey to find another. In that sense, his journey will be the same as that of so many young men in our society. It is my hope that Ken, wherever he is, can figure out how to channel his testosterone in positive ways. There is room in both Barbieland and the real world for Kens who are both confident in their masculinity and accepting of feminism.