Over the past few years, as men like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Kanye West have sucked up far more than their fair share of air in American life, and I have simultaneously been raising two boys as a father, I have been pondering what it means to be a man.
A few years back, I came across a great article about a professor named Michael Kimmel who asked his students to describe characteristics that would ideally describe two categories of men: a Real Man and a Good Man. A Real Man, Kimmel’s students told him, avoided weakness at all costs. A Good Man, meanwhile, was caring and honest and put others’ needs before their own. Unsurprisingly, there was little overlap between the two.
I couldn’t help but notice recently that many level-headed friends and acquaintances of mine were losing their shit in the best possible way over the selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as Kamala Harris’ running mate. People would describe Walz as a popular governor, a moderate Democrat, a hunter, a football coach, a veteran, but would keep circling back to the notion of Walz as an affable, encouraging Midwestern dad.
Jokes were made about Walz being the guy who would fix your carburetor without being asked, give you advice about what kind of wrench you needed for the job, or tell you to shut the door while the AC was on. (He was, literally, the guy posting on Facebook about setting up his daughter’s stereo in her college dorm room: “Quality speaker wire matters people!”)
It is telling that even when speaking to people who knew Walz personally, they reach for pop-culture analogues to describe him. One of his former players described him to the Washington Post as “like Coach Taylor…only a bit kinder and nicer.”
Walz took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night to accept his party’s nomination for vice president and described a society where “everybody belongs, and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.” He laid out his vision of a life governed by “the belief that a single person can make a real difference for their neighbors.”
After listening to the governor tell us that our job “is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling. One inch at a time, one yard at a time, one phone call at a time…We’re going to leave it on the field,” I was ready to strap on a helmet myself, run onto the field, and pile-drive one of those tackling dummies until it knocked over the opposing team’s uprights. If your children are crying with joy at seeing you accept the VP nomination, you have perhaps done something right in your life.
As a culture, we are yearning to teach the next generation—to teach ourselves! —how to be Good Men and not Real Men, how to serve others with relentless cheer and optimism and forthrightness and dignity. We all know that we need a positive vision of masculinity to offer to boys, one that is more than a list of rules to follow or crimes to avoid.
And man, is that a hard job.
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