| A recent newspaper headline reads "Road to manhood getting rougher". In the article, Harvard Medical School researcher William Pollack reports that his survey of high school boys indicates that they are confused and uncertain about what is expected of them as males in contemporary society. Why might this be the case? Why is there, as some people suggest, a "crisis" in masculinity? In addressing this kind of issue, and the broader issues of gender and patriarchy, I explore the structure of western masculinity, the structure of the Boys' World---the world of boys, the world for boys. What are its components? What are males supposed to be, and do, and feel, and think? The Boys' World is constructed through discourse, the overall collection of social knowledge about masculinity and manhood. One portion of that discourse, one arena within which general knowledge about manhood can be found, is popular culture---movies, television, music, video games, magazines, and books. One can learn something about the Boys' World through any of these social documents. The window through which I explore what masculinity is made of is Young Adult literature designed to appeal to adolescent males. By conducting a discourse analysis of the structure of masculinity in these novels, I am able to see at least part of what North American youth are being told about "manhood". Furthermore, by analyzing Young Adult novels from the 1940s to the present, I am able to see if that structure has changed over time. In fact, the results of this research indicate that the portion of the Boys' World contained in Young Adult literature has not changed over this period of time. The components that comprise the structure of masculinity---emotional expression, aggression, collectivity, adventure, athleticism, morality, hierarchy, and competition---as well as the conditions within which masculinity is realized (embodiment, heterosexuality, and No Sissy Stuff), are stable in the novels over the 50 year time period in question. Consequently, at least within some of the discourse, the structure of the Boys' World has remained unchanged for more than a century. These findings have implications for the question of the perceived "crisis" in masculinity, and the larger theoretical issue of the possibility of genderbending. |
