femininity – Chad Comello

A BoyDad reads ‘BoyMom’

I recently read BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman, a journalist and mom of three boys who wrestles with her own fears, frustrations, and biases as an avowed feminist raising boys in a world with conflicting views of modern masculinity.

As the father of two young boys myself, I found the book deeply relatable, validating, challenging, and illuminating. It facilitated a lot of great discussions with my wife as we try to envision a better, more wholehearted life for our wild and wonderful boys.

Here are some random thoughts and takeaways.

The ‘buddy’ system

Whippman shares an anecdote of her preschooler’s male teacher welcoming students into the classroom, greeting the girls with nicknames like “sweetheart” but the boys with “buddy.” It’s such a small thing, but it’s an example of how language can create emotional distance with boys compared to girls from a very early age, and set an expectation for which terms of endearment are acceptable for each gender.

After reading that, I realized I too call our 5 year old “buddy” (and our 1 year old “mister”) almost unconsciously. So I’ve resolved to start training myself to use different nicknames that aren’t gendered (Bun and Muffin) so that they know they’re much more than my buddies.

Breaking the wheel

A key point Whippman makes is that the movement to counteract “toxic” masculinity with more positive alternatives like “healthy” or “aspirational” masculinity is, though well-intentioned, a kind of half-measure that still perpetuates the expectation of fulfilling prescribed masculine ideals. Instead:

Boys don’t need more masculinity, but freedom from that paradigm; they need permission to be fully human without the pressure to conform to oppressive masculine norms.

This idea reminded me of the Daenerys Targaryen line in Game of Thrones: “I’m not going to stop the wheel—I’m going to break the wheel.”

Stopping the wheel isn’t enough, because it can always be restarted or rebranded using the same structure. We need to break it altogether and offer alternate modes of transportation, so to speak.

Too much of a good thing

There’s a book called Too Much of a Good Thing: How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us by Lee Goodman, and it lays out why some of humanity’s behaviors and biological functions helped us thrive as hunter-gatherers but are detrimental for the sedentary office workers we’ve become:

Overeating was good when every calorie mattered, but now causes obesity.
Preferring salty foods helped retain water, but now causes high blood pressure and heart disease.
Blood-clotting saved us from bleeding to death from injuries, but now can cause heart attacks and strokes.
Hyper-vigilance and aggression saved us from predators and enemies, but now make us destructive to others and ourselves.

I think about gender in a similar way. Whatever combination of nature and nurture that modern masculinity and femininity entail, they contain evolutionary adaptations developed over tens of thousands of years. That’s not something you can fundamentally alter or remove overnight. (As E.O. Wilson wrote: “The real problem of humanity is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.”)

What are the good and useful elements of masculinity that helped us survive and evolve as a species? Which of those elements can still be used for good today? And which are now too much and have become detrimental—to both men and women? How we answer those questions will determine what masculinity will look like for current and future generations.

August 29, 2024 Add Comment

Mad Max on the Feminism Road

Really enjoyed this post from Freddie de Boer about his frustration with the common misinterpretation of Mad Max: Fury Road as “Furiosa replaces Max in a Mad Max movie”—a take that’s entirely false:

It’s important to understand that Furiosa doesn’t replace Max because the entire movie demonstrates the failure of dictatorship and the superiority of communal leadership. It’s not about men being erased in deference to women; it would be totally bizarre for a movie with that intent to place so much agency in its male characters. (Nux’s sacrifice saves the lives of the remaining characters, to pick an obvious example.) It’s about the superiority of democracy and shared governance and diversity over the the whims of an individual autocrat.

He then links this framework to how a “new masculinity”, embodied by Max, can be “unthreatened by the strengths and abilities of others” while joining with the ideal version of feminism:

Feminism is not about women replacing men in an equally stratified and undemocratic structure as the patriarchy that preceded it; that’s a parody of feminism. Feminism is about equality, diversity, communalism, and radical democracy. Indeed, the movie models consensus and communal deliberation for us. When they stop and discuss whether to continue on the salt flats or turn back for the Citadel, Max and Furiosa do most of the talking, but everyone weighs in and is heard. Furiosa doesn’t lead by fiat. She listens and becomes convinced, as do the rest, and they all make a plan together. Max isn’t erased; he’s a valued and essential part of the whole, just as white men will be in the new world of democracy and equality we are building.

In that group discussion on the salt flats—one of the few quiet moments of the movie—Max concludes his case to Furiosa thusly:

Look, it’ll be a hard day. But I guarantee you that 160 days riding that way, there’s nothing but salt. At least that way, we might be able to, together, come across some kind of redemption.

What a great metaphor! The path towards a better world is hard and painful, but retreating away from it is worse in the long run. “The obstacle is the way,” as Ryan Holiday would say.

Might be time for a Fury Road rewatch.

July 12, 2021 Add Comment

On Paper Trails and Typewriting Females

I just finished reading Cameron Blevins’ new book Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West, which I learned a lot from (see my full notes and quotes from the book below).

One thing that popped out to me was the role of women in the Post Office’s workforce. Women made up two-thirds of all Post Office employees by the end of the 1870s, with the Post Office itself accounting for 75% of all federal civilian employees at the time. This made it a vital source of work for women early in the movement for women’s suffrage.

Their chief work was within the Topographer’s Office, which produced maps of postal routes. The layout and drawing of the maps was done by men (it was actually called “gentlemen’s work”). But the “ladies’ work” of coloring the routes according to frequency of delivery was arguably just as if not more important, because it added the dimension of time to the otherwise inert graphics and kept the maps up to date and therefore useful.

This wasn’t easy given the constantly changing routes and limitations of paper. As Blevins put it: “These women were, in effect, trying to paint a still life while someone kept rearranging the fruit.”

All this was on my mind when I saw Richard Polt’s Instagram post for International Typewriter Day.

I’m not sure how much typewriters factored into the work of the female “colorists” given its graphical nature, but the people’s machine without a doubt contributed to the societal sea change happening concurrently as women marched first into offices and then, eventually, the voting booth.

Anyway, I recommend Paper Trails primarily for history nerds—specifically 19th century America. The academic writing is refreshingly accessible and peppered with illustrative graphs throughout. I’m happy to file it under my “technically first” series of books about how innovative technologies came into being.

Notes & Quotes

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June 23, 2021 3 Comments

#SheToo: Favorite Films of 2017

The overarching theme of the year in film, to me, was Wonder Women. Not only was the Wonder Woman film good, but in a year when badly behaving men dominated the news, I’m grateful there were so many richly drawn female protagonists who ran the gamut of strong, vulnerable, funny, and complicated, and who made their movies better.

I mean, just consider Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird, Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman, Elizabeth Olsen in Wind River, Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water, Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project, Jenny Slate in Landline, Haley Lu Richardson in Columbus, Jennifer Lawrence in mother!, Meryl Streep in The Post, Jessica Chastain in Molly’s Game, Cynthia Nixon in A Quiet Passion, Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Margot Robbie in I, Tonya, and Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, to name a few.

As with the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, I hope #MeToo and the new Time’s Up campaign in Hollywood lead to positive change in cinema. (I just realized all the aforementioned actresses are white…) The world benefits from different kinds of stories being told in fresh ways by people who in a different time wouldn’t be able to tell them. More power—and funding!—to those people.

So many films from this year have stayed in my mind. Ranking them felt as arbitrary and borderline sadistic as ranking works of art actually is. I almost took the coward’s way out and listed them alphabetically. But in a bid for clarity and uniformity with my previous best-of lists, here are my favorite films from 2017:

1. The Florida Project

No joke: Brooklynn Prince for Best Actress. Her very real chops as a 6-year-old allowed Tangerine director Sean Baker to wrangle from her a well-rounded, film-carrying performance as Moonee, a wily, incorrigible kid tromping around unsupervised in a low-income motel community. The fragmentary, mosaic-like narrative structure might have dragged a bit here and there, but it also created images that pay off later in the film, like Moonee in the bath. Very well done, with an ending that slams like a motel room door.

2. A Ghost Story

“Casey Affleck in a bedsheet” is technically what most of the movie consists of, but that ain’t the half of it. Focus too much on that and you’ll miss a beautifully shot, melancholic, slyly funny, and mercifully concise meditation on the slipperiness of time and memory. How mesmerizing it is to follow a ghost that is unstuck in time. Pairs well with Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here.

3. Coco

It’s become a cliche to laud the technical advances in film animation, especially from Pixar. But damn: this is a resplendent piece of work, and one that elicited a rare theater-cry from me. With music, family, memory, and a young boy playing a stringed instrument at the center, this makes a great companion to 2016 favorite Kubo and the Two Strings. The soundtrack is available on Hoopla for free with your library card.

4. The Lego Batman Movie

Holy Joke Density, Batman! Like The Lego Movie, every moment is packed with something: action, humor, meta-humor, color, or heart. How is it that an animated superhero movie accomplishes this way better than most human ones? I suppose I should be annoyed by another [Insert Brand Name Here] Cinematic Universe, but I’ll revisit this one any day. After all, friends are family you can choose.

5. Get Out

I don’t like watching horror films, so I was planning on skipping this until the universal acclaim compelled me otherwise. So glad I did because there’s a lot more going on than cheap scares. Speaking of scary: if this is writer-director Jordan Peele’s debut work, what does he have in store for the future?

6. Columbus (review)

Another debut, from film essayist Kogonada, this gorgeous film calls enough attention to its subjects—the modernist architecture of Columbus, IN, and the two sudden companions who take it in—to captivate viewers, but keeps enough distance to inspire pursuit. That’s usually a good formula for great cinema. Bonus points for the library references.

7. Wonder Woman (review)

The only movie I saw twice in theaters this year. What I found powerful about the now iconic No Man’s Land sequence, beyond the single-minded drive and badassery Diana shows in battle, was how it was the culmination of a day’s worth of her being told No over and over again, and choosing to ignore it each time. No, you can’t dress like that. No, you can’t go to the front. No, you can’t brandish your sword. No, you can’t enter this men’s-only room, or that other men’s-only room. No, you can’t stop to help people on the way to the front. No, you can’t go into No Man’s Land. Nevertheless, she persisted.

8. Dunkirk

In a film that’s so short and efficient (by Christopher Nolan standards), Nolan still captures the full scope of war: from the smallest stories of individual soldiers trying to survive and do their duty to the haunting grandness of thousands of soldiers trapped on a beach awaiting their doom. The interweaving timelines from the air, land, and sea might confound at first, but a second viewing confirms they fit snugly together, and build dramatically towards (78-year spoiler alert) the successful evacuation, or Miracle On Sand as I’m calling it.

9. Obit (review)

An eloquent, observant, and superbly crafted documentary by Vanessa Gould on the New York Times obituary writers and the people they cover. It’s the rare instance of the writing process being just as interesting as the writing itself. Now how about a documentary just on Jeff Roth and the Morgue (pictured above)?

10. California Typewriter (review)

Doug Nichol, a commercial and music video cinematographer, finds lots of lovingly framed images and scenes in this documentary about the “People’s Machine” and the people who love them. Between talking heads of famous typers and a reading of the Typewriter Insurgency Manifesto, Nichol’s best decision was picking a subject that is already damn photogenic.

Just missed the cut: I, Tonya, Wind River, mother!, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, A Quiet Passion, and Lady Bird.

I also liked: The Big Sick, Landline, Thor: Ragnarok, Spider-Man: Homecoming, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Haven’t seen yet: The Post, Phantom Thread, The Square.

January 3, 2018 4 Comments

Wonder Woman

I recently began reading The Iliad for the first time. Having that in mind when I saw Wonder Woman was helpful in my appreciation of both works. The way Ares interacts with humanity in Patty Jenkins’s excellent film—first subtly, then catastrophically—mirrors that of the gods of The Iliad, who bounce in and out of the affairs of men, sometimes at whim and sometimes with purpose.

The other lens through which I tried to watch Wonder Woman was as through the eyes of women. In this way several images from the movie stuck with me. Steve, the drowning dude in distress, seeing Diana standing atop his wrecked plane before she rescues him. Diana’s glasses, thrust upon her in a winking attempt to de-glamorize her in Edwardian London, quickly and symbolically crushed during a back alley brawl. Steve’s commanding officer, despite being handed the intelligence coup of Dr. Poison’s stolen notebook, caring much more about—God forbid—a woman in the war room.

Not to mention the now iconic No Man’s Land sequence, which I later learned brought many women to tears. What I found powerful about it, beyond the single-minded drive and badassery Diana shows in battle, was how it was the culmination of a day’s worth of her being told No over and over again, and choosing to ignore it each time. No, you can’t dress like that. No, you can’t go to the front. No, you can’t brandish your sword. No, you can’t enter this men’s-only room, or that other men’s-only room. No, you can’t stop to help people on the way to the front. No, you can’t go into No Man’s Land.

And most of this was from her ally Steve! Nevertheless, she persisted. When she finally deployed her powers in full force, all that naysaying seemed silly in retrospect. Of course she was the right person for the job. She was no man, and the better for it.

On top of her combat prowess, she later on develops keen insights about humanity, in spite of (or maybe because of) her outsider status. Her battle with Ares triggers a revelation that speaks to the depth of her inner character: that men are capable of great evil does not disqualify them from her protection; in fact, it seems to make her more resolved to provide it. “It’s not about deserve,” she tells Ares. “It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love.” It’s an extraordinary thing for a superhero to say, especially within the bleak Zach Synder DC Universe.

(Her compassionate spirit, her dedication to doing the right thing, and compulsion to tackle challenges head-on reminded me of Chris Evans’ Captain America. Both are alienated from their times—one due to cryogenic preservation and the other by her magical hidden island—and also are the rare superheroes to cry on film. It’s a shame we won’t see those two characters fight together anytime soon, but I’d be all for it.)

That it was a female superhero who brought love into the superhero’s creedal calculus will no doubt rankle those who wish for Diana to upend the sexist assumptions of what a female should believe. (She still upends plenty.) But I didn’t see it as the hokey platitude it is on the surface. I see it as an acknowledgement of love’s deep meaning and the impact it makes upon us. However short her time was with Steve, it made an indelible impression on her and subsequently her worldview as a superhero. Pairing this experience with her incessant drive to do something when faced with injustice makes her a potent force for good in man’s fallen world, and in the larger world of superhero movies.

June 17, 2017 3 Comments

The ‘Rite’ Of The Male Gaze

Published in the North Central Chronicle on September 28, 2007.

Imagine: John Q. Student is sitting on a bench outside the Science Center with his friend Billy. John spots a voluptuous, scantily-clad young woman walking their way and takes a long look at her behind his sunglasses. He says to Billy: “Dude, check out that chick’s…personality.”

You mean you’ve never heard that before? Well, replace “personality” with a part of the female anatomy and you’ve got what is commonly referred to as the “male gaze.”

The male gaze, according to Dr. Jonathan Schroeder, “signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.”

It’s about having “the power” to look a woman up and down, see what we want to see, and then move on. Century upon century of male superiority has made this act commonplace and even encouraged. It’s considered a badge of honor within the Brotherhood of Man. But that doesn’t make it right. In fact, it’s something that needs to be changed.

Perpetual use of the male gaze degrades women to mere objects of a man’s desire – pieces of meat, essentially. When we as males check a girl out, be it mindfully or not, we’re saying to the woman: “You are only worth what I’m looking at right now.” That’s quite a message to be sending to a fellow human being.

The male gaze has in a way become a rite of passage into modern manhood. In order to impress our buddies, we have to talk about how hot a girl is or how nice her breasts are. Ladies, odds are you’ve never heard this talk before, but it’s very real. It can happen as soon as you pass a group of rambunctious guys, or as soon as you leave the room at a party, or even right before your eyes. Think Glenn Gulia in The Wedding Singer: “that’s Grade-A top-choice meat.”

The fact that the male gaze has been accepted as normal male behavior disturbs me greatly. Take a typical beer commercial for example: A man is caught checking out a good-looking woman by his girlfriend, but he just shrugs it off. His girlfriend is then forced to surrender to the notion that it’s “just a guy thing.” He will continue to size women up, and she will continue to feel powerless and undesirable. How painful.

A big reason why men utilize the Gaze is because we know women like being desired. The depth of the desire isn’t important so long as it’s desire. That could be a gross generalization, but I know for a fact that many women eat up the attention. Trust me; that attention is fleeting. Your self-esteem cannot survive on lustful looks you absorb from the guy across the room. Do you really want all the good things about you ignored simply because they’re hidden from view?

You are worth more than the looks you receive. Put your self-worth somewhere else, somewhere worthwhile. Guys are admittedly very easy to bait, but I’m challenging you to give us something more than a mini-skirt to value about you. There’s a part in every one of you that deserves to be shared with the world; I dare you to show us that part. Be a mystery that we men have to solve. Flaunt your gifts, not your G-string.

I issued a challenge the women, so I will issue one to my fellow men as well: It’s time to clean up our act. No matter how we try to justify it, the male gaze is just not cool. Just imagine seeing another guy check out your sister, or your mom. That’s no different from what you just did with that girl sitting next to you in class. The women we’re ogling are sisters and mothers as well, so let’s treat them as such. They deserve nothing less.

September 21, 2007 Add Comment

the fall

Ever since The Fall, we’ve been in denial of our true purpose. As men, we were brought into this world as the likeness of God, made to make and lead. But ever since The Fall, we’ve doubted ourselves in that task. We think, I can’t lead. I’m not strong enough. I’m afraid of being exposed as the fraud I am.

Then women, also created in the likeness of God as a companion and nurturer, fall into doubt. They think, I’m not good enough. He doesn’t value me.

Where does this get us? I guess we can’t get any farther away from God, so why now pursue him?

August 30, 2007 Add Comment

Desirable

This is the artistic version of the previous post. It’s a writing project I had to do for Creative Writing last year. The objective was to write a story/opinion piece/whatever in the perspective of the opposite sex. My attempt got the top prize for realism. See what you ladies think.

Sometimes I wish I were a guy. They don’t worry about their appearance as much as girls do. I hate myself for hating myself. I see the supermodels and hot actresses in perfect condition and wish I could be that attractive. It seems like I’m always too fat or too ugly to get any attention from guys. I want to be beautiful. When a guy does hit on me, even if I know it’s for the wrong reasons, I eat it up. It means he thinks I’m attractive enough, and I love that. I know it’s so shallow, but if there is one thing that can bring me out of the dumps, it’s a compliment. But sometimes I want something beyond the average compliment; I want to be called beautiful. Not ‘hot’, not ‘fine’, not even ‘sexy’. Beautiful. When you say that, you’re saying that I am desirable on a level beyond my weight, my bra size, or how good or bad I could ever perform in the bedroom. You’re saying that I am more attractive on so many more levels than any supermodel could seem to be. I want to feel desirable. I want to be the only thing you can’t stop thinking about throughout your day, the only thing in the world you want to be with.

A simple phrase can change everything. If you love me, say it. Tell me everything about me that you find desirable. As guys want to feel respected and admired, girls want to feel loved and adored. If you like the way my hair looks today, say it. Being told by a boyfriend or even a boy friend that there is something about me that he enjoys or adores lifts my self-esteem to unimaginable levels. People wonder why so many women suffer from eating disorders and the intense desire to be skinny, but I know it’s because they feel inadequate. You never know if I had just been cut down by a friend and so needed a compliment by someone who cares about me. If you love me, tell your friends about me, and do it when she’s not around. This shows that you aren’t being superficial when you’re around her and that you care for her enough to risk being sentimental around your macho buddies.

All in all I just want to be loved. I want to feel safe when I’m around you, knowing that you care enough about me to protect me. I want to be a woman worth fighting for, whose heart you are willing to risk all to defend. Your eyes should be the only mirror I will ever need.

I want to be desirable.

October 4, 2006 Add Comment