It has become a great source of anxiety to enjoy things nowadays, especially aesthetic things.
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”
“Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.”
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The first was popularized by the counselor John Gray in 1992 to express the differences between the two sexes. The second is a schoolyard rhyme used by young girls to shoo away the taunts of their male classmates.
Be it innately biological or socially constructed, at this age, young boys are less likely to bare their emotions, as they would rather bare their teeth. Boys are indeed rougher, more rambunctious, more loud and mischievous: no wonder the term boisterous sounds like it has the word “boy” built into it. And it carries on through high school and into the early years of college. But when these boys, now young men, are exposed to the culture of higher learning in academia; they come to realize the aesthetic aspects of life that are far more entertaining than the drivel they were used to in their youth.
Art, culture, music, film, literature—all these things suddenly become a more dominant dimension in their lives. It usually occurs at the point in late adolescent development when they become more interested in things other than themselves. The development of a boy to a young man begins in the crucible of genuine life experiences, compounded by the beauty and truth these experiences reveal. And this beauty and truth is reflected and further extended in the art and aesthetic around them.
These young men begin to read, to listen, to seek, and to curate what they seek. They begin to think more deeply, to contemplate. The general anxiety of achievement that hangs before most young men no doubt helps fuel this attitude. They begin to pay attention to what they wear, and to how the outside can more accurately reflect the inside. Their tastes move beyond mere chorizo and chicken (though we still indulge) and they take their first sip of bitter coffee or grassy-tasting tea. And they seem to like it.
All of a sudden, they realize that the outside is more conducive to genuine experiences than the inside. They go out more, and they either revel in nature and sport or in the quiet solitude of a cafe they have chosen to gatekeep from others. Young men, be they the brusque and highly masculine or the quaint and intellectual, seek to enrich their “experiencing” as most men do. That’s why—for the most part— we like classical literature, traditional or Greco-Roman aesthetics, and/or dream of pursuits of grandeur that give our life meaning beyond our boyish compulsions.
Why would one ever hate that?
There is a popular and persisting notion that the only thing that truly motivates the male animal is carnal desire. From that, another notion springs forth: that men only act “cultured” to attract women. These men have been called performative. I do not deny their existence. But when a label like that is thrown into a crowd, the explosion usually maims innocent bystanders, too. And when people started calling them “performative,” seemingly all men became more anxious to explore their aesthetic sensibilities. At least in public. Now that that label has died down in relevance, I invite my fellow young men to go out and enjoy their aesthetic pursuits in peace.
Sartre called this “the Gaze”; be it the gaze of women, the gaze of other men, or the gaze of society. This “gaze” casts a shadow of doubt and anxiety that threatens the freedom and autonomy of an individual and leads them to live their life in bad faith. That they shouldn’t be themselves, but be someone else more socially acceptable. And there is nothing more performative, in my mind, than that. Authenticity is a golden apple at this time of our lives, but we must keep reaching for it. And in reaching for it, we must live freely and authentically for it. For when you perform a character, all the praise and adulation goes to that character, not to you, not to who you truly are. Just as fans can come to hate a character and adore its actor, in “performance,” you furnish a pagan idol for worship that only looks like you, but isn’t actually you.
Read your favorite book, order your favorite coffee, play your guitar or violin wherever you want to, speak your mind freely on things you believe in. Be moral, be ethical, of course. But in the space between the good and the bad, you have the freedom to seek the experiences that will build you up to who you will be one day. To perform a character is to build a facade, a facade that one day might not be stable enough for you to stand on. In Montaigne’s own words, “I shall see to it, if I can, that my death makes no statement that my life has not made already.”
Don’t worry, you are not “performative.” You’re just a dude, we all are.
