History of Masculinity

It's a scientifically proven fact, that heels actually make women look more appealing. We all know dresses are meant for girls and that a muscular man looks more attractive. Prof. David Perrett, of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience says, ""That is, we seem to have learned that, for example, being tall is associated with a more elongated face shape. If presented with the faces of two equally tall men, and one of them has a slightly longer face than the other, we will be likely to think that the man with the longer face is also taller." These are just examples of strong opinions that all of us have when it comes to what is feminine or masculine.

How many times have you heard someone call a girl a tomboy or a guy girly? (which often changes to gay) Quite a lot of times, right? What if I told you that there is no such thing as girlish or guyish? What if I told you that what we think and believe is pure luck and not logical at all? Today, guys might have been wearing skirts and loving the colour pink - infact I know a guy who was obsessed with pink water bottles! Basically, I guess we feel something is favoured for a particular gender just because it happened to turn out that way!

For instance, cheerleading was originally exclusively a men's sport. In fact, it was taken pretty seriously in the 1600s and involved quite a lot of gymnastics and formations! Idk how the transition happened, but now you'd rarely find men associated with it. Cheerleading is mostly associated with 'a-bit-more-on-the-stupid-side' women screaming away. The stupidity being another stereotype altogether, but lets not talk about that.

Another thing that you might find amusing is that men were the first people to wear heels. Yes, those painful yet elegent looking thinks that women obsess about - heels. The story goes something like this. The high class men began wearing them, as it made them feel more masculine. Women, felt left out, and began wearing them as well (to look masculine) - they'd done the same thing with hats. Soon, men began feeling that heels tainted their power as a status symbol for men (the same thing happened for cheerleading), and they were stopped all together when practical footwear was emphasized upon. So how did heels make an appearance all over again? It was in pornography.

The idea of clothing has varied as well. There was a time when kings took pictures in dresses. Trousers originally defined being a male. But now, since half a century, women have adopted the same culture. There is nothing masculine or feminine about it.

Is anything at all intrinsically masculine or feminine? Or is it just in our head as we keep changing its definition generation after generation? For all we know, what people have stereotyped as gay today, might have actually been manly at one point of time.

Thanks for reading!

Kanksha :)