Uncertain Masculinities: Is the Modern World Feminising Men?

As a young woman I aim to investigate whether contemporary society is in a sense “feminising” adolescent males.  

Are the old “macho” ways of behaving redundant, and are males now adapting to a “Girls World?”

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Contexts and Concepts

        To help me find out if contemporary society is feminising men I have chosen to look at an article from a popular women’s magazine about men’s changing views to certain aspects of relationships.  This article written by John Arlidge uses a comic approach that appeals to the usual reader of this magazine while the other research material I have also chosen, a book named ‘Uncertain Masculinities’ by Mike O’Donnell and Sue Sharpe gives a more profound and lengthened view of this topic.  

While the book uses many different studies and gives a more serious approach to changing masculinities I feel that the article is more useful as it uses relevant experiences by women and gives a clear distinction of how men have changed from “Mr Commitmentphobe” to “Mr Commitmentphile”, “Mr Beer-Belly” to “Adonis Man” and “Mr Slob” to “Domestic God”.

The introduction says, “men have broken free from the macho traditions of the past and new models have emerged.  They’ve given up curry, larger and sleeping around in favour of getting touchy-feely fit and into Friends.”  Three separate sections then back this up the first one being about Mr Commitment who “wants to marry you and have ‘our baby’ after two weeks and he’s not afraid to tell you.”  Included in these sections are experiences of different women such as Anna a shop manager from Bolton who on a first date overheard a conversation where he was telling his mum he was bringing her home for Christmas to ‘meet the family’