Birth of son inspires man to go on quest for masculinity

Faced with the prospect of raising a son, Joel Stein decided it was time to brush up on his man skills. The experience is the subject of his book “Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity.” (Image courtesy Grand Central Publishing)

Faced with the prospect of raising a son, a father-to-be
described as having an “effete nature,” decided it was
time to brush up on his man skills.

“I wasn’t looking to be the manliest man. I was just
looking to be on par with the rest of America,” said Joel
Stein, TIME columnist and author of “Man Made: A Stupid
Quest for Masculinity,” in an appearance on 770 KTTH’s David Boze Show.

Looking back through the ages, Stein said he’s observed a
marked decline in manliness.

“If you watch Don Draper [of Mad Men], he’s so manly. When
people ask him if he wants to do something, he just says
‘no,’ whereas when people ask me if I want to do something
I don’t want to do, I say, ‘Oh I would love to, but I have
plans with my wife I can’t get out of,’ said Stein.

He said the Mad Men study even shows a sharp decrease in
manliness from one generation to the next. “If you watch
the episodes with his [Don Draper’s] dad, who is coming
home from the mine with his face dirty and he comes home
and just beats his wife and kids, he’s far manlier.”

Stein said as technology advances, he believes men will
continue to lose their masculinity.

“I think if you go back further and further in history,
masculinity is always dying out. It’s mostly technology,”
said Stein. “We gain a lot because we get iPhones, but we
lose a lot too. I think we should try and retain some of
that.”

To retain his own manliness, Stein embarked on his quest,
that involved taking a 24-hour shift with LA firefighters,
going to Army boot camp, rebuilding a house, and other
manly activities, like hunting.

Of all the manly challenges he took on, fighting with a
UFC fighter sounds the most painful.

“I got the UFC to train me and let me go one round with
Randy Couture, which is the stupidest of the stupid things
I did,” said Stein.

But the punches were not for nothing.

“It did teach me that when you get punched in the face,
it hurts, and two seconds later you’re standing back up.
It’s awful, but it’s not that bad,” said Stein.

His lessons weren’t all so tough.

“I had a Lamborghini for three days. That was just pure
fun,” said Stein.

He said he found a ton of his manly experiences valuable,
but the best lesson came from Couture and his father, who
told him:

“You can’t control who your son is. That’s a fool’s
errand, trying to shape him into who you want him to be,”
said Stein.

But he said he will try to teach him some manly things if
he’s open to it.

“I am going to expose him to things that he’s not wholly
objecting to.”

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor