“Bring Back Manly Men”
By: John Devore
Tags: Style, Politics, Masculinity, Men, Twitter

Image: Candace Owens via Twitter

“Bring Back Manly Men”

Conservatives are blaming the fall of Western Civilization on a dude wearing a dress

Any person who talks about how a man should act or dress is selling something — aftershave or fancy whiskey or a war in a faraway country. In right-wing activist Candace Owens’ case, she is selling a political identity to a very specific audience: men, the demographic who overwhelmingly support the Republican party.

Owens isn’t selling ideas. Her pitch is simple: Remember the good ol’ days. And in the good ol’ days, men were trees with legs. Men were simple, like bacon and eggs. Hearts like carburetors. Fists like sledgehammers. They were not vulnerable or scared or imperfect. No. Granddad died of lung cancer because happy people chain smoke alone in the basement for decades.

The two political parties sell different versions of the same product. Conservatives sell a past that was a lie, and liberals sell a future that will be a lie. Take your pick. Personally, I prefer to hope for things that won’t happen than deny bad things ever happened.

And she is selling courage to the fearful, strength to the timid, and violence to the ignored. In a tweet today she suggested there’s a conspiracy afoot to neuter men and then she pointed at a fashion spread in the magazine Vogue featuring millionaire pop star Harry Styles wearing a dress, which is a shock to anyone still living in the 1960s.

Imagine what she’d tweet if she ever saw the 1982 movie Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman.

I’m not going to lie, Styles looks good in a gown. Right now, millions of women think he’s sex in a waffle cone. But Candace Owens is screaming that masculinity is doomed because a universally beloved famous dude is having a bit of fun. To her, you are what you wear.

Personally, I think a woman wearing a tuxedo is hot. Who cares, right? There is nothing inherently political about clothes unless you’re a fascist. Fascists love costumes and hate when people don’t wear the right costumes in public.

The only time, recently, that anyone has had anything to say about my looks was this summer when my girlfriend once said my legs would look good in a dress and who am I to argue with her? My legs would look smashing in a dress.

I’m not suggesting humans can just stop judging other human beings for the most superficial of reasons but I can dream, can’t I? I get it. I have a battered camouflaged baseball hat I wear when I visit my family in Texas. I wear it so I can blend in. I’m convinced I get more nods from other dudes and fewer “you ain’t from around here” stares because I wear it. I get it.

If you’re a dude who cringed when he saw Harry Styles in a dress you should give yourself the gift of honesty: That cringe, that feeling of disgust or revulsion, was fear. Candace Owens is here to help you with that fear. She’ll flatter your hate and make you feel pretty good about your undernourished imagination and superficial worldview. In exchange, she just wants your retweets and your money and your votes.

I think Candace Owens should be taken seriously even if her beliefs are nonsense. I don’t know if she’s performing or not, I don’t care. She’s attempting to manipulate men who are desperate to be an “us” instead of a “them.”

I do not think men have been exiled en masse from society but it is intoxicating to be told you’re not getting everything you feel you deserve because of a conspiracy. Owens wants to collect lost men and she’s doing it by baiting snares with self-pity and pep talks about how the creator Himself decreed that all men are created action heroes.

So she’s going off on what is manly and what isn’t manly. It’s a teenager's game and I don’t want to insult teenagers. Adolescence is hard. That is a time when people start to wonder whether they fit in or not. Teenagers are insecure about their place in the world and so is Candace Owens, and those who sympathize with her.

It’s only when you’ve grown up, gotten beat up a little, learned and loved, had your heartbroken, that you realize the only thing that defines a person is their ability to own up. I don’t know if I’m manly or not but I take responsibility for my actions. I have one firm belief. There comes a time in every honorable person’s life when they must bite the bullet.

I expect you to do the same, whether your pronouns are he, she, or they.