‘What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine…’ So wrote the late Susan Sontag, in her classic 1964 essay ‘Notes on Camp’. It’s a great, persuasive line, but of course entirely and deliciously subjective. I tend to agree… Read More »On Feeling Totally Masculine
Tonight the BBC screens Steve Coogan and John Reilly’s well-received 2019 film ‘Stan & Ollie’, about the most famous comedy duo’s disastrous, almost-posthumous 1953 tour of Britain – and also their love for one another. Or at least, our investment in the idea of it. Back in the no-homo early… Read More »Funny-Peculiar Men: Laurel & Hardy
According to a recent article on male image from DR, the Danish version of the BBC, ‘From Hippie to Sex Symbol‘, the 21st Century belongs to my Rocky Horror-esque creations – the Metrosexual (‘metroseksuelle’) and the Spornosexual (‘spornosexsuelle’). Although I might quibble with some of the things the article says… Read More »Danish Spornosexuality
Mark Simpson totally relates to the author’s 1970s childhood war-fetish, but has to draw the line at Ernest Hemingway. (Independent on Sunday, 31 March 2002) Robert Twigger is a man who wins awards. The jacket of Being a Man… In The Lousy Modern World boasts of the Newdigate Prize for… Read More »Slit-Trenches & Eternal Comradeship
The ‘crisis of masculinity’ is really a form of male emancipation argues Mark Simpson (First appeared in Sweden’s SvD newspaper, 17/06/2017; published here in English with permission) Back in the late 20th Century, when I first began writing about masculinity – which seems an epoch away now – everyone knew what masculinity… Read More »Male Lib is Nothing to Be Scared Of