Oh good, another lamentation for the decline of buff-chested masculinity.

And what an entirely original set of complaints and proposed remedies in the replies. https://twitter.com/ardeamus/status/1357234786406858754

Proper masculinity is in decline. No argument about that. Not least because we don’t even have a commonly agreed definition, much less a checklist of requisite attributes.

Men are less well physically built, and especially fatter. Less chivalrous. Less focused on marriage as a priority. Less politically conscious (beyond what their favourite ‘slebs parrot). Less courteous. Less stoic amidst hardship. Less religious.

Some of these are supported by any number of teams of data, others more anecdotal. Some apply to both men and women of course.

Physical strength is a good thing, as are health and beauty norms supporting this. I’m decidedly inadequate as far as this is concerned so I can resolve to improve this.

But if your answer if the old chestnut of PE, you’re every bit as lazy as the slobs you want to do away with.

Lengthy walks, hours-long bike rides, running if you’re so minded: these will keep you at least lean. A few hours of enforced thrashing about in a school yard every week won’t help.

Also, why are these people often so taken by shirtlessness? We see it in the thumbnail, as well as in memes about 80s fighters being icons of masculinity.

Convinced that many of these just relish the idea of the disciplinarian role over skimpily dressed teens.

Frankly, we need to be getting rid of communal changing areas (except voluntary ones at gyms etc. for weirdos who like that sort of thing).

No doubt some insist on this ridiculous practice as a cornerstone of masculinity.

Physical strength only gets you so far anyway. Except perhaps for the discipline needed to maintain it, it has nothing to do with character.

Plenty of grunting extroverts with lots of muscle but just as much propensity to yell and swear midway through an ethanolic bender.

OF COURSE kpop came up. Alright, the earrings, the makeup, some of the choreographies - a bit feminine, sure.

If you want to talk physical strength, not to endorse immodesty, but take a look. They’re invariably well toned, not least because their choreographies demand it.

Watch a clip of a kpop outfit (BTS a good example) at an interview. They ask permission to sit (live on air), defer to their ‘leader’ and each other, bow, render complete courtesy with no off colour remark or blue language in sight/earshot.

You want masculinity? There’s a start.

‘ThEy LoKk LiKe GiRlS’

WayV (all Chinese subgroup of NCT) beg to differ. You’re that desperate for PE? Get this taught in schools.

Then there are the intense tours, unforgiving routines, practically enforced celibacy from their management companies, immense stress - a total culture of perfectionism.

Mentally, these guys are hard as nails.

Which is, y’know, important. And it’s where the ‘toxic masculinity’ brigade do hit upon a problem.

You’ve surely heard that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45. Well jolly well hear it again, because it’s important.

Actually men having a place, of a person, in which or to whom to dispense their anxieties is good. Occasionally a guy will break, maybe have a weepy meltdown in a Starbucks because the grad scheme he’d pinned his hopes on rejected him. It happens.

On another level, stoicism is also a good thing. Quite where the line is drawn, I don’t know. Expression of feelings should be for the purpose of mental wellbeing rather than pure vanity, though that is of course a crude binary.

You want to know, for example, why so many young men were drawn to Milo Yiannopoulos? He spoke to many young men’s struggles in a world that seemed to equate masculinity with every progressive fashion going. Not all were die-hard MAGA types or even that right wing either.

Reminder also that the Chinese government is a Godless mega-bureaucracy and if you’re trying to copy its top-down recipes for authentic masculinity you’re a moron.

TRUE masculinity - in love, conduct, self-sacrifice, endurance (mental and physical) - is found in Christ.

fin