Essay On Masculinity In America

Masculinity in America: The legacy of the self-made man

According to Kimmel, the earliest embodiments of American manhood were landowners, independent artisans, shopkeepers, and farmers. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution started to influence the way, American men thought of themselves. Manhood was now defined as through the man’s economic success. This was the origin of the “Self-Made Man” ideology and the new concept of manhood that was more exciting, and potentially more rewarding for men themselves. The image of the Self-Made Man has far reaching effects on the notion of masculinity in America. Thus, the emergence of the Self-Made Man put men under pressure. As Kimmel states,

American men’s political, social and economic identity was no longer fixed. If social order, permanence could no longer be taken for granted and a man could rise as high as he aspired, then his sense of himself as a man was in constant need of demonstration. Everything became a test- his relationship to work, to women, to nature, and to other men. (43)

According to Kimmel, men’s reactions to the new situations were self-control, exclusion or escape- themes that continue to characterize American masculinity still

today. As Kimmel notes, “Separate spheres allowed insecure middle-class men to feel like men, both in the homosocial workplace, and when they returned to their homes” (52).
The separation of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sphere was also a consequence of the men’s need for control.

The workplace became masculinized, and the home feminized. By the separation of the masculine and feminine spheres that had been promoted, men and women now lived in separate worlds. By the turn of the twentieth century, men realized that their exclusion from the domestic sphere was, in fact, harmful to them: It left men “unable to experience the love, nurture and repose that the home supposedly represented” (Kimmel 158). Men were also worried at the “feminization” that potentially threatened their sons: men feared that women, who had the main responsibility for the upbringing of the children, would make the sons into

‘sissies’.
By the 1960’s, the feeling of powerlessness, and alienation has significantly increased among American men, mainly because of the stress, and frustration they experienced in the working life. Along with the rise of feminism, men’s liberation movement emerged in the 1970’s, critiquing the image of success-driven, and self-made man as the source of men’s happiness.
Even though the ideals of masculinity in Indian and American society are different in many respects, one may also find some tendencies that are reminiscent of each other. The division between the public (masculine) and the private (feminine) sphere has been characteristic of both India and America. Although it, certainly, has been drastic in India. Control also seems to have been a central theme in the pursuit of “real” masculinity. And finally, the rise of feminist movements have led to masculine backlashes among both Indian and American men.