The media have focused extensively on this problem, which reveals itself in many forms, including male violence, sexual harassment, suicide and fathers who abandon their children. The writer, who tends to make broad generalizations in her lengthy volume, believes that men have not been fighting for solutions because their troubles have not been clearly identified. Faludi considers the culprit to be today s culture, which naturally also affects women.
Men feel anguished, confused and no longer in control of their lives.
Men are victims of the ornamental culture that has long plagued women and that the women s movement has criticized. Men feel similar pressure to appear attractive and to participate in the celebrity-driven consumer culture. The influence of culture is much stronger than Americans realize, and men particularly prefer not to concede its importance. Faludi feels that to acknowledge its sway is to admit that men never had the power they imagined. To say that men are embedded in the culture is to say, by the current standards of masculinity, that they are not men.