Testosterone, fatherhood, nurturing

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

I have a brief blog post up at Good Men Project on the new fathers-and-testosterone study: Hardwired to Nurture: What the New Testosterone Study Really Says About Men. Excerpt:

One of our great enduring myths about males is that we are biologically hardwired for violence and promiscuity, and that any attempt to encourage us to take on a nurturing, tender role is destined to end in failure. The “Caveman Cult” crowd, which includes a great many popular writers on gender, suggests that female physiology is optimized for caregiving while male physiology is optimized for conquest. And when pressed to cite the chief factor in this supposed male inability to care for children, these defenders of traditional gender roles almost invariably cite the overarching influence of testosterone.

What this exciting new study shows is that men are far more biologically malleable than we had previously realized. Our male bodies are not obstacles to empathy or tenderness. Indeed, once we make the commitment to become active fathers to our children, it seems our hormones naturally shift to help sustain us in this all-important work of caregiving.

A More Inclusive Spectrum of Beauty: Thinking about Plus-Size Modeling and the American Apparel Contest

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Note: This is my personal post on the American Apparel controversy. For the “official editorial” I penned for Healthy is the New Skinny on the story, go here.

American Apparel’s “XL Model Contest” has concluded, and we await the company’s announcement of a winner. As of the close of voting last week, the leading contestant for the spot as AA’s first plus-size model was Nancy Upton, whose photo entries seemed cleverly designed to satirize the sexualized, over-exposed aesthetic for which the Los Angeles-based clothing company is notorious. (The CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney, has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment.)

While we wait to find out if Upton will be declared the winner, the media coverage of the contest (and the guerrilla campaign to undermine its intent) has been intense. Lost in the discussion, however, are the voices of professional plus-size models — all of whom had long been openly spurned by American Apparel – at least until the sudden contest offer. (It’s not much of an offer, of course: just a trip to L.A. and a photoshoot. No guarantee of an actual contract.)

(As co-founder of the Perfectly Unperfected Project and a director of the Healthy is the New Skinny program I work closely with the plus-size modeling community. I serve as an adviser to Natural Models LA, a new agency that not only represents straight-size and plus-size models but also pushes for more opportunities for “talent” in the industry’s “no woman’s land” — too small for plus, too “big” for straight-size. Natural just put out a new promo video featuring several of our L.A. based team members.)

Many professional plus-size models did make the decision to enter the contest, despite the fat-shaming language AA chose to use in their promotions (like invitations to send in photos of “you and your junk”). As of the close of the contest, two good friends of the Healthy is the New Skinny campaign, Erin Tinsley and Hillary Officer, were trailing just behind Upton. Unlike the apparent winner, Tinsley and Officer took the contest seriously, overcoming real misgivings about American Apparel’s deserved reputation in order to enter.

Why would professional plus-size models enter a contest in which there’s little chance of a payout? For publicity, sure, but also because the plus-size modeling community is eager to expose the American (and global) public to a more inclusive spectrum of what is beautiful. In an industry where so many models are unhealthily thin (though to be fair, not every size two model is unhealthy), plus-size models want to offer a vision that is both more attainable and more realistic while still retaining glamor.

But this attempt to broaden the spectrum of beauty regularly meets with ridicule, anger, and pushback. The ridicule comes from some of the more reactionary wings of the industry, including the organizers of last year’s New York Fashion Week who told plus-size denim designer Jessica Svoboda that they “didn’t want to see a bunch of elephants stomping on our runway.” The anger comes, with no small degree of justification, from many women who are horrified that plus-size models are still so, well, small. Working with Healthy is the New Skinny, I often hear comments like this: “This makes me feel so bad. I’m a size 18 and if even the larger plus-size models are smaller than me, what does that make me? A whale?” Or: “I expect plus-size models to represent real women and girls. We all know that high fashion models are much thinner than normal, and that they have unattainable bodies for most of us. But plus-size models should look more like the average. If size 8 or even 10 is plus-size, that’s just wrong.”

And the pushback comes from those who are critical of the notion that the modeling industry can be redeemed. For many of my feminist allies, for example, broadening the beauty standard is putting lipstick on the proverbial pig. Meghan Murphy writes this week:

While I think it is true that there is a very limited version of beauty in our culture, particularly when we look to mainstream media, and that this impacts the self-esteem of many women, young and old, I don’t think that the solution lies in sexualizing and objectifying ‘curvaceous bods’. I mean, it’s not as though bigger women aren’t objectified and sexualized anyway in our culture. It’s not as though bigger women aren’t raped or treated as sexual objects just as skinny women are. I don’t think there is any reason at all to cheer for this contest (even if a pretty awesome lady won the contest by subverting and mocking it)…

In other words, the fashion and modeling industries are so fundamentally at odds with women’s real liberation and happiness that any attempt to try to transform these businesses will either meet with failure or be slickly co-opted. Best not to try.

I’ve never liked American Apparel’s clothing, and honestly, find Dov Charney to be the creep de résistance of the rag trade. I don’t like the way the XL campaign was promoted, and I admit to admiring the clever and creative way in which Nancy Upton satirized the whole process. Despite that, I also stand in strong support of the individual professionals like Erin and Hillary who entered the contest seriously. Modeling is, after all, a profession like any other; it requires skill as well as beauty. (AA would have done best to reach out directly to an agency that books plus-size models.)

I also remain passionately committed to the principle of incremental transformation. Organizational or personal change happens through a combination of external pressure and internal reflection. The campaigns I’m involved in work both within and without the modeling and fashion industries, pushing relentlessly, creatively, and to some, frustratingly gradually for a more inclusive, healthier, more sustainable (and attainable) vision of beauty. To the extent that the conversation around the AA campaign moves us closer to achieving that vision by broadening opportunities for women to model outside of the traditional size-range, this is real progress.

Tell Your Daughter She’s Not Too Much to Love

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Today’s column at the Good Men Project has a slightly misleading title: Loving Your Daughter Doesn’t Make You a Pedophile. Excerpt:

Just as so many men (often deliberately) misread a young woman’s façade of sexual sophistication, many more are intimidated by the sullen displays of exasperation that are so common among girls in their early-to-mid teens. Teen girls can seem like such a different species—even to their fathers—that many dads find it easier to withdraw. “Everything I do annoys my daughter”, one guy told me recently, “it’s just easier to give her the space she seems to want.” But just as a miniskirt on a 15-year-old isn’t a sexual invitation, neither are her angry assertions of independence proof that she doesn’t need and want her father—or, perhaps, another safe and reliable older man—to be active in her life.

…

One of the greatest fears with which we raise young women is that they are “too much” for the men in their lives. Over and over again, teen girls are told that they are too demanding, too idealistic, too sexual, too ambitious, too hungry, too loud. In countless ways, well-meaning adults push girls to lower their expectations, to disguise how deeply they feel and how badly they want. In particular, they’re told that too much candor and raw emotion will scare off men—all of whom are supposedly all too easily intimidated by strong female emotion.

Young women need fathers and father figures with the courage and the discernment to engage with them, to mentor them, to love them. Our daughters need men strong enough to stand up to what is often an unhealthy culture of suspicion, and they need safe adult men who aren’t intimidated by the intensity of their emotions and their wants. That’s neither too much to expect, nor too much for which to ask.

Hugo on the Deb Colitti Show

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

I did an interview last week with Deb Colitti, who runs a great radio show in New York City. We started by talking about infidelity and whether monogamy is natural; we moved on to the myth of male weakness, Ashley Madison, the courage to communicate, and my new book with Carré Otis.

The link to the audio file of the show is here; we have a conversation that runs for some 20 minutes and it flows along very nicely. I’m not the first guest; I come on at 26:00.

I reference “playing the tape to the end”; here’s the piece I wrote on that strategy for coping with fantasy.

On sowing “wild” oats

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

This post originally appeared in September, 2006.

I was talking last week with a young woman who works as an aide to a colleague of mine. She’s 19, and has a boyfriend the same age. “He cheated on me”, she blurted out to my colleague and me yesterday; “We broke up.” We made vaguely soothing noises, and listened to her story as best we could. One part in particular struck me:

“He told me he can’t be faithful right now. He’s got too many ‘wild oats’ to sow.”

And this made me realize I’ve never posted about “wild oats.” Doing five minutes of quick Internet research reveals that the expression “sowing wild oats” to refer to reckless, usually promiscuous behavior on the part of young men, goes back to at least the 17th century. And while many old-fashioned phrases have vanished from the idiom of today’s college-age population, most of them are quite familiar with the “wild oats” notion.

The popular “wild oats” thesis is basically this: young men (usually in their late teens and twenties), have an enormous amount of sexual and creative energy. (Depending on whom you talk to, this is attributed to their “essential masculine nature” or “testosterone” or the “Y chromosome”.) It is natural and good and right for men in this age bracket to be a bit wild, a bit irresponsible, and to be unwilling to make enduring commitments. Those who love them — and are wounded by the carelessness of young oat sowers –are given the cold comfort of being told “Sooner or later, they grow out of it. They just have to get them (the oats?) out of their system.”

I’ve noticed that the “wild oats” theory is closely linked to the “get it all out of your system” idea. The latter notion is that we men have a finite amount of “wildness” within us. After we’ve sown our oats for three years, or five, or ten, we’ll be “done.” After we’ve slept with 5 women, or 25, or 250, we’ll presumably be “all out of oats” and ready to settle down into monogamy and responsibility.

There are a couple of things I loathe about this theory. One, women rarely get to use the “wild oats” excuse. Teenage and twenty-something women who exhibit reckless or sexually adventurous behavior get shamed as sluts. Since we all “know” that “women don’t really have wild oats”, a woman who behaves as if she does is “unnatural”, “perverse”, a “whore.”

Now, I spent a fair amount of time on a ranch growing up. I know a bit about oats. (Like the fact that if they were really “wild”, we wouldn’t sow them in the first place. But “he needs to sow his domesticated oats” lacks a certain ring.) Men don’t have them, women don’t have them — be they wild or genetically modified, oats are not found in the human body unless they enter through the mouth and get processed through the digestive tract. Now, both men and women — particularly when young — have adventurous spirits. Both men and women have strong sex drives, though we tend to want to deny that women’s libidos make much of an appearance before 32. But nobody got no “oats” no how.

The other great problem with the wild oats theory is more subtle. It suggests that if we indulge irresponsible and reckless male sexual behavior for a given period of time, young men will just “grow out of it.” Remember, the implication is that the number of oats inside each lad is finite. Once he’s sown them, he’ll be “done” and be ready for settling down. Clearly, this isn’t an accurate description of how most of us work! When we do something pleasurable and exciting, the more we want to do it. Rather than getting rid of our wild oats, we become more and more accustomed to the lifestyle of sowing them. If there are oats inside young men, and I don’t think there are, then the better understanding would be to say that the more we sow, the more oats we grow.

We all know many men who have prolonged their adolescence into their thirties, forties, and beyond. Some fellas out there have been sowing their oats fairly consistently since the early days of disco, and their internal barn shows no sign of being depleted any time soon. Pity the poor woman who waited years and years for Johnny to finally “get it out of his system.” I can think of half a dozen male friends of mine, all well my senior, whose “systems” keep right on producing the urge to be irresponsible and commitment-phobic.

We learn to do things by practicing them. If we practice recklessness, we become more reckless, not less. If we practice dishonesty, it becomes easier to lie — not harder. It’s bad psychology to suggest that engaging repeatedly in a pleasurable activity will ever get it “out of one’s system”. Rather, the more one does it, the harder it will be to change in the future.

When I was in college, I was encouraged to “sow my wild oats.” I sowed them. I enjoyed sowing them. And then I tried to transition seamlessly into my first marriage. I found that, whoops, I still had more oats. So that marriage ended. Back to sowing, in the hopes of getting rid of the last little clusters still lurking. I got married a second time. Wouldn’t you know it? The dang oats were still there! Second divorce (not yet thirty). I went on a wild oats rampage for a couple of years, ending only with a dramatic series of events that led to my complete emotional collapse and spiritual conversion. Trying to get “done” and get all the oats out nearly killed me, and it broke the hearts of quite a few other people in the process!

Years ago, not long before my final collapse, I had a particularly spectacular “oats sowing” experience involving a coke-and-Ecstasy-fueled menage a trois. After all was concluded, I walked one woman to her car, a woman I had only met hours earlier. As we made the kind of awkward small talk that often seems to follow these sorts of encounters, I looked into her eyes and said “You know, I can’t keep doing this.” “Why?”, she asked. “Because I want to be a father someday, and when you’re a Dad, you can’t do this sort of thing.” The gal took a step back as if I had slapped her. Her eyes welled up, and she stared into the distance. She shuddered once, and then looked back at me with a firm gaze, saying with great intensity: “No, you can’t keep doing this. Not if you want that.” She kissed me on the cheek (an odd thing to do, considering what had just happened between us) and climbed into her car. I never spoke to her again.

I don’t know why I said what I did. It wasn’t because I felt “done” with my oats-sowing. But I knew that as much fun as I was having, it was slowly killing me. Having the same experience over and over again with different people was as fun as ever — but it was making me progressively more and more miserable. I had just assumed, you see, that I would “grow out of it” naturally. But at the time I said this to this young woman, I was over thirty and showing no signs of “slowing down.” If my life changed, it would have to be because of grace — and, of at least equal importance, my commitment to changing my behavior despite the enduring desire to “sow oats” until the cows came home. (The cows, in my experience, never came home.)

So the point of this rambling, personal essay is simple: we do a great disservice to both young men and women when we encourage and indulge the reckless sowing of wild oats. While adolescents and twenty-somethings should have new and interesting experiences, we make a mistake in assuming that all of them will inevitably outgrow the desire to behave wildly. Put another way, if there are wild oats inside us, then it’s pretty clear that a lot of young women have them too. And it’s pretty clear that some of us have an inexhaustible supply, one that is endlessly replenished. What we practice at 19, I’ve found, becomes what we still want to do at 29, 39, 49, and beyond. That may not be true for all, but it’s true for enough to make the “just let him sow his oats” remark a very dangerous bit of advice indeed.

Witnessing together: handling 9/11 in the classroom

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

As we hit the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I’ll share this quick memory of how I handled that Tuesday morning with my students.

I was scheduled to teach four classes that day, the first one beginning at 7:30AM Pacific Time. I had woken up just before 6:00AM, and turned on CNN (something I do most mornings) just after the second plane had gone into the towers. I watched TV until it was time to leave for school; the first tower collapsed while I was in the car on the way to school, the second just as I walked into my first class.

We had a television in the classroom, and I made the decision to turn it on. I told the students who hadn’t heard (a surprising number had made it to school that morning unaware), and we sat and watched coverage together. I told them I was available to talk, and I sat with them all morning as we watched the local NBC affiliate (the only station that came in clearly). I did the same thing with all of my classes that day — sitting in the classroom, television on, inviting students to sit with me. If they wanted to go home, I let them go. If they wanted to step into the hall and chat, we did (only a few wanted to talk). If they wanted to sit and watch the towers fall, over and over again, they could do that with me nearby.

The only other time I’ve ever interrupted class to turn on the TV for a live news event was in October 1995, when the OJ Simpson verdict was read aloud. That was a planned event (we’d heard about the time of the jury announcement the day before), and though my students were stunned (and divided), that was a very different occasion. Both then and on 9/11, I sat with my students who wanted to talk and “process” their feelings about what had occurred. It had been a lot more fun with OJ.

One key side effect of this: I was so focused on how my students were feeling, I didn’t really think about how I felt. My own emotional response was delayed until I watched the memorial service the following Friday from the National Cathedral; when the military choir sang the terrible and beautiful “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, I finally cried. But I was alone.

Did I handle 9/11 the right way? I don’t know. Some of my colleagues kept right on teaching, some canceled classes and themselves went home. I couldn’t teach, but I didn’t want to leave the students who might want a comforting presence there to watch with them. Having someone to witness with matters, and that’s the best I could provide that day.

An Open Letter to a Sixteen Year-old Girl: “Your Body is Never the Problem”

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Though I originally published this piece at Scarleteen, Healthy is the New Skinny reprints today my Letter to a Teenage Girl. Excerpt:

It’s important too to note that however much skin you are revealing, you are never responsible for another person’s inappropriate behavior. Save for the blind, we are all visual people. We notice each other. There is no right not to be seen. But there is a right not to be stared at with a penetrating gaze of the sort that makes you feel deeply uncomfortable. While it may seem that you get those leers more often when you’re showing more skin, you’ve probably noticed that you get those creepy stares at other times as well. And the key thing you need to know is that men can control their eyes — they really can — and women can control their judgment. Your body is not so powerful that it can drive others to distraction. (And yes, if we’re honest, sometimes we wish that our bodies were that powerful, particularly if it meant drawing the attention of someone to whom we are attracted!) If some men choose to be distracted by you, that is their choice, a decision for which they (not you) are solely responsible. No matter what anyone tells you, you need to remember that.

It is not inconsistent to want to be seen and not be stared at. You know the difference, I suspect, between an “appreciative look” (which can feel very validating) and the “penetrating stare” that leaves you feeling like crawling into a hole. While people are not required to give you the former, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to avoid giving you the latter. It’s also not unreasonable to want guys your age to be interested in you, and want the creepy old ones to leave you alone. Remember, it’s not hypocrisy or naïveté on your part to dress in a way that you hope will get you that positive attention you want without also bringing the negative attention you fear and loathe.

A niche or a ghetto? On Women Only Spaces in Publishing

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

This summer, the Huffington Post added a “Women’s” section. This caused a fair amount of consternation; in the digital era, does it make sense to still do gender-based niche publishing like this?

Nicole Rodgers of Role/Reboot and I recently shared some thoughts on the topic; our conversation appears both at that site and at the Good Men Project today. Excerpt:

NICOLE: It’s interesting that you say that men do read women’s magazines, sites, etc. My boyfriend tells me he had a stealthy male roommate in college who worked in entertainment and used to take home stacks of women’s magazines because he wanted insight into what women were thinking. I guess I tend to assume those men are aberrations, but maybe reading or watching content marketed to women is just one of those things men don’t talk about out of fear of being emasculated? So assuming that’s true, then here’s a thought experiment for you: what is a “women’s issue”?

HUGO: The intent is to refer to a problem or a concept that disproportionately impacts one sex. Reproductive justice matters to everyone, but since only women get pregnant, women have more “skin in the game” as it were. But the fact that women are biologically more invested in issues around pregnancy and childbirth and contraception doesn’t mean that men aren’t interested and shouldn’t be concerned. Like women’s history month (of which I’ve never been a fan), I think this tactic of creating a separate space for talking about women’s issues can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows people to start conversations that often don’t happen elsewhere; on the other, it allows some very important issues to be marginalized by the assumption that they only appeal to a select group.

Learning to be a Husband, Not a Son

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My first post with this brand-new blog format is a link to this morning’s column at The Good Men Project: Learning to be a Husband, Not a Son. Excerpt:

In three previous marriages and a handful of other long-term relationships (I haven’t been single for long since I was 16), I found myself—like so many men—taking on the parts of the “naughty boy” and the “helpless child.” Time and again, I turned wives and girlfriends into mother-figures, and the result was inevitably disastrous.

I know that I’m not the only man who found “courtship” easier than “relationship.” Over and over again, I devoted time and energy to “getting the girl”, and when I succeeded, soon felt vaguely let down and confused about my role. Like so many men, I was good at the chase, and lousy at maintaining the relationship I’d worked so hard to get started. After I’d been dating someone new for a few months, I invariably began to become increasingly childlike. I figured out that most of my partners were students of my emotions (it’s what we raise women to do), and most of them were eager to make the relationship work. So they were the ones who took over the “feeling work” of the relationship while I settled into amiable uxoriousness.

More erotic capital, and healthy is hot

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Role/Reboot reprints my piece on the misuse and abuse of erotic capital, and my column at Healthy is the New Skinny is up: Healthy is Hot.

Excerpt from the latter:

But for many younger women, the problem with promoting health isn’t the fear that exercise will ruin hair, or even lack of time. The root problem is that “healthy” has become a code word for heavier-than-the-ideal. Ask a teenage girl how she’d feel if someone looked at her, smiled, and said “Gosh, Ashley, you’re looking really healthy!” Chances are, she won’t hear it as a compliment. As one of my students said, “When I hear ‘healthy’ I think of someone way bigger than I’d like to be. Healthy isn’t hot.”

It doesn’t do any good to promote health to teens without addressing this serious misconception. Telling a young woman that extreme dieting can damage her heart is rarely an effective strategy. (Telling a teen guy that steroids will hurt his health long-term is equally unlikely to succeed.) Trying to minimize the importance of looks in young people’s lives is pointless. What we need instead is to find ways to promote health as a key to beauty.