While the last fifty years have been characterized by increasing freedoms for women, this has not been true for men to the same degree. \u00a0Women have entered masculine arenas throughout society, from where they work to what they wear, but men have not been freed to pursue feminine interests. \u00a0Men still face teasing, ridicule, stigma, or even violence for daring to do “girly” things. \u00a0Being a dancer or an elementary school teacher comes with raised eyebrows, askew glances, and questions as to one’s sexual orientation; enjoying “chick flicks” or preferring Cosmos to Coronas likely attracts teasing; and wearing a dress or high heels is essentially tolerated only on Halloween.<\/p>\n
So girly things are still a no man’s land.<\/p>\n
Unless.<\/p>\n
Unless a very high status man — a man whose masculinity is undeniable, a leader among men — explores that land and plants a man flag. \u00a0If a man is so manly as to have begun to define manliness itself, then that man<\/em> can change the very definition, thereby de-feminizing, and therefore de-stigmatizing an activity. \u00a0What once would have been cause for ridicule suddenly becomes unremarkable, i.e., man-approved.<\/p>\n Marco Roso, of DIS Magazine<\/a>, sent me an example of such a transformation: the alice band. \u00a0Known to Americans as headbands,” an alice band is a loop or horseshoe-shaped hair accessory designed to push hair back away from the face. \u00a0It is a distinctly feminine accessory. \u00a0Or at least it was. \u00a0European footballers have begun wearing them to keep their hair back while playing. \u00a0While \u00a0a man lower on the masculine social hierarchy may have been teased relentlessly for donning such a girl-associated item, these high-status, wildly-admired men seem to be changing the social construction of the alice band.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While the last fifty years have been characterized by increasing freedoms for women, this has not been true for men to the same degree. \u00a0Women have entered masculine arenas throughout society, from where they work to what they wear, but men have not been freed to pursue feminine interests. \u00a0Men still face teasing, ridicule, stigma, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,55,2087,8092,108],"class_list":["post-36402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clothesfashion","tag-gender","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-sports","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36402"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67999,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36402\/revisions\/67999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}