Is there such a thing as a real man? I doubt it. Once upon a time, the movie actor John Wayne was seen as the personification of the real man. But this strutting, swaggering, fist-swinging character was made up for the movies.
Even Wayne, who referred to himself as Duke Morrison, the name he grew up with, declared he made his living out of being John Wayne but would never be like him.
Actually, men in general don’t want to be John Wayne – and I’m using John Wayne here simply as a stand-in for the “real man”.
Some US research on men in advertising suggests that we are sceptical of John Wayne types though some feel inadequate when they view them – which suggests they also are not John Wayne types.
A 2008 study of 27,000 men from eight countries (not including Ireland) showed that men see family life, good relationships with their wife or partner and good health as more desirable and important than material gain or sexual activity.
Being in control
In the UK, Italy and Germany being in control of one's own life was seen as the most important aspect of masculinity. In Brazil, France, Spain, Mexico and the US, the most important aspect was to be honourable.
The problem with the “real man” idea is that it keeps on changing. In John Wayne’s day you couldn’t be gay and be seen as a real man. That has changed in today’s world, at least in some Western countries.
Similarly a real man wouldn’t want to have a woman boss unless she was somebody like Catherine the Great of whom there was only one and who was dead anyway.
Today, with women on the way to taking over several professions, and proving themselves to be just as tough bosses as their male counterparts, that idea has gone out the window. And what real man would want to get into a fight with Katie Taylor?
Today you hear more about hard drinking by women than by men. And women, it seems, are more likely than men to drink spirits with the resulting extra risk of damage to their livers.
What a change from the day when it was the man who went and sat in the bar and who might send a bottle of orange to his wife while she waited like a bloody fool in the car – or when a woman would venture no further into the pub than the snug where she might have a small sherry.
Changing place of women
So ideas of masculinity are being upended not only by the experience of men themselves but also by the changing place of women in the world.
When we look at the fragile mental health of many men, as evidenced by the numbers who take their own lives, we can see that the tough guy is, increasingly, a fiction.
I said “increasingly” but perhaps it has always been like that. Most of the men I knew when growing up were quite gentle even if they were stubborn as mules.
If they bought the John Wayne image it was probably with a certain degree of amusement.
In Italy, the culture of “mammone”, young men who remain mammy’s boys until and after their marriage, is still going so strong that one of Berlusconi’s ministers was prompted to complain, in 2010, about “the culture of mummy’s boys and big babies”. But most of the world would not see Italian men as unmanly.
We are left with the fact that all attempts to define what a man is must founder against a reality. That reality is that men, like women, differ so widely in personality types – a mixture of tough, sensitive, outgoing, inward-looking – that you cannot sum us up in a way that stands scrutiny.
And yet we human beings seem programmed to categorise, classify, and produce one-size-fits-all definitions of everything.
That’s why we will probably always have the idea of the real man. Remember, though, that doesn’t mean a thing.
How to be a Man is a series exploring masculinity and the challenges men face in Ireland today. If you would like to add your voice to this series, email howtobeaman@irishtimes.com Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@yahoo.com) is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.