Masculinity and Its Discontents (M.A.I.D.) is a collaborative effort between two writer men named Daniel Oppenheimer and Jamie Berger. We’ll be commenting on, well, masculinity (in our lives, in celebrities’ lives, in the wide world), but, we hope, without much of that touchy-feely-Robert-Bly-manlib goo (not that there’s anything wrong with that) that’s usually associated with the M word. We hope to be less self-and-man-liberators than explorers and interpreters. When feeling grandiose, we imagine ourselves along the lines of a Click and Clack [the Car Talk guys] of the manliness circuit, addressing mannish issues large and small, and high and low (culturally speaking), with a wry, winsome, self-effacing humor that can sometimes get on your nerves but you keep tuning in because you can’t help but like us anyway.
We’ll soon be serializing Jamie’s essay “Peep Show," which is among our seminal texts, as well as a follow up essay “After.”
We’ll also be beginning our studies in “menminism” (patent pending); and so very much more.
To catch you up, here are but a sampling of the juicy man-bits upon which we’ve nibbled since September 1:
– Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man and more on the above title (we’ll be addressing that one for a while)
– Michael Berube, Jason Mraz, Larry Gallagher, and Wimpy White Guys with Guitars
– “Masculinity” vs. “Manliness” in university press titles of the early 21st Century
As I always heard it when I was growing up, “It takes two to tangle,” that is, there’s really no point in doing this if readers don’t want to play too. We’re confident you have plethoric insights into manly-splendored things, so we look eagerly forward to your participation!
-Jamie and Dan
