November 19th: International Men’s Day

Today is International Men’s Day, the theme being “celebrating men and boys”. A theme for the year, which is not particularly prescriptive, but nonetheless lets us explore all the weirdest and best bits of manhood. It’s not just about being a bloke, it’s about positive role models, men’s health, wellbeing, and any of the wacky and wonderful things that make the men in our life’s men.

It’s hard to think about International Men’s Day without thinking about dads – the primary source of developmental influence for most young men. My dad has taught me about being caring and thoughtful, driven and determined, reasonable and rational, fit and active, as well as delivering shockingly bad jokes with chest and pushing the limits of taking the mick. In that way, he’s quintessentially dad. As many of us grow older, we begin to see that there’s bits of our dads in most of what we do, from making those around us groan with low-quality quips to being the best that we can be. I even see some of my friends doing ‘dad’ things, even if it’s not something their dad did. Perhaps the most poignant example of this is grilling – many of my friends, who have no children, absolutely relish the opportunity to be a ‘grill dad’, hawkishly peering over their grills at barbecues, taking immense pleasure in grillmarks and perfectly cooked cuts of meat. I love to see it, and I can’t wait for it to evolve into debates about gas versus charcoal, and snide remarks about poor temperature zone control.

Appropriately, International Men’s day is in Movember, a time where we’ve got a momentary pass to experiment with awful facial hair. I was always terrified of growing a moustache, but when Movember rolled around in 2021, I decided to take the plunge. What became of my upper lip by the end of the month was nightmarish, an eldritch horror complete with tendrils that was only tamed when I first trimmed it in December. What was originally a bit of fun at my own expense has become a part of who I am, as I’ve kept the moustache ever since, and neither myself nor those around me can imagine me without it. Every time Movember rolls around, I love to look around in public and see other men who are also taking the plunge and having a haphazard first voyage of discovery, seeing where their moustache takes them. It’s a funny and harmless thing unique to being a man that I think should be celebrated; it safely takes us out of our comfort zone and helps some of us to find a piece of ourselves in a weird and particular way that only men can.

This has been a fairly superficial window into the world of men; lord knows that there’s all manner of men-related things where attention might have been better placed, namely men’s mental health and suicide being the biggest killer of men under 50. Nonetheless I thought it may be better here to take a light-hearted approach and touch on things blokes do that may bring a smirk to one’s face. Pierre de Fermat, referencing Fermat’s Last Theorem, wrote in his book ‘Arithmetica’ “I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain” – it would take another 350 years and 129 pages of maths for Andrew Wiles to prove his theory correct. In that spirit, here’s a non-exhaustive list of strange, stereotypical things men do, which this blog post is too narrow to contain, that we may also like to celebrate today:

• Refuse to follow instructions when building flat-pack furniture
• Completely forego interior design in favour of functional minimalism
• Say absolutely nothing on a long car ride
• Insisting on carrying in all of the shopping from the car in one trip
• Perfectly manicuring a garden
• Taking turns to bring up names of random retired sportsmen
• Quoting increasingly abstract and dated sports stats
• Having obsessive interest in hobbies like Warhammer
• Watching war documentaries