I fundamentally disagree with most of the claims made around masculinity here in the West. I have spent a lot of time deconstructing my ideas about masculinity, how I choose to present it, and what it means to identify as a “Man.”
The foundational assertion that drives most of my thinking is that gender and gender presentation is social construct. All this means is that we as a group of people make up the rules about what it means to be a man. This is why men in Korea typically wear makeup, men in Europe dress in a much higher fashion and wear shoulder bags, and men in the US don’t do either. The culture and the needs of the region define what is acceptable and what is inappropriate. This is more broadly true in all aspects of our lives, but I’d like to deconstruct why we define masculinity in it’s current western form and break it down to it’s smallest components so that we, as individuals, can rebuild what masculinity means to us while feeling confident in that unique expression.