Over spring break, I joined my older brother and his best friend from college for lunch. Over crunchy rolled tacos and spicy salsa verde at the hole-in-the-wall El Toro Taqueria back home in San Diego, I got to sit in on their life updates and recent news.
Bryce is turning 27 at the end of May — he’s also the truest Gemini I know. As long as I can remember, he was always my cool older brother. We grew up on opposite coasts, and I mostly only saw him when he spent his summers in San Diego. I watched him come home each year with new haircuts, witnessed the transition from his transitional glasses to contacts, and always laughed at how tall he had gotten since I had seen him last.
He played water polo in high school, as well as the trumpet, was super into working out, and, most importantly, shared our dad’s love of surfing (hence why he’s Dad’s favorite). He and my twin brother teased me relentlessly, and after growing up with them I can confidently say I’ve never lost a fight (physical or verbal).
We got closer after he moved to San Diego to study at UC San Diego. Those hobbies of his — surfing, weightlifting, staying fit — stuck with him all throughout college and grad school. They only intensified after he graduated from his doctorate of physical therapy program last year and started working in Del Mar at a physical therapy studio.
All this to say, Bryce has always been so boy. He drinks IPAs for fun, has a bachelor pad at our grandpops’ house, and has no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about a half double crochet stitch in relation to my newest project.
I’ve known his best friend Jason since Bryce brought him home for family dinner their freshman year of college and he had shaved his head for his rowing team.
Sitting at lunch with them, I was startled and pleasantly surprised at their conversation topics. They bounced around a lot, but what stuck with me the most was their discussion of the hobbies they had recently picked up.
In addition to their typical masculine pastimes that bored me to tears (seriously — I don’t care how much you bench pressed last week, or that you’re sore from leg day yesterday), I was surprised to learn Bryce goes to CorePower once a week and Jason enjoys Lagree reformer pilates.
Bryce told us about how he’s been getting more into gardening recently, and Jason began gushing over the show Big Little Lies. Back home, while Bryce told us about the pottery class he had taken recently, and how he taught Jason to make an iced latte using the espresso machine he has sitting on the kitchen counter.
It bore a shocking resemblance to the hobbies of my girlfriends and I. Two of my best friends are CorePower instructors, and almost all of my other friends go to various pilates studios throughout the week. I just spent hours over spring break doing research on how best to grow stargazer lilies. Last night, I walked in on my roommates all watching the newest Euphoria episode. My sorority cousin recently showed me pictures of the pottery she made in her class. Two weekends ago, my friends and I all took turns making our lattes with our best friend’s espresso machine, and my best friend from home constantly posts the new latte art she makes at her barista job.
Nothing about these hobbies — pilates, gardening, pottery, psychological drama TV shows, latte art — are inherently feminine. Yet, I’ve only experienced them myself in feminine communities, and I’ve only recently begun to hear about my very masculine brother and his similarly masculine friends also partaking in them.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not complaining. I think it’s an incredible integration into an already healthy disposition. This dabbling in different spheres of entertainment and stimulation characterizes a rejection of a toxic masculinity framing that may criticize pilates or TV dramas.
If anything, it made me realize how arbitrary lines can be when demarcating activities different genders are “supposed” to enjoy and partake in. I realized by sitting at that lunch table that their enjoyment wasn’t performative or ironic.
Bryce enjoys making lattes because he likes the taste (so much so that my twin and I got him a coffee bean subscription service for Christmas) and Jason likes Lagree because it balances out his strength training. They genuinely enjoyed these things, in the same easy, unselfconscious way they talked about wave conditions or their gym split.
It wasn’t until I pointed out their “girly” tendencies that they laughed and agreed. In this situation, I was the one perpetuating negative stereotypes about how people and their gender identities are supposed to perform to be affirmed by societal expectations.
Their shift to understanding and appreciating these activities was casual. It was offhand and genuine, a mere facet of their week that contributes to the rest of their lifestyles. I guess that’s what I appreciated so much. I find I sometimes become so attuned to expectations and parameters that I personally feel subjected to that I can accidentally stigmatize these experiences in the same ways for other people.
For my big brother and his best friend, it’s not about redefining masculinity or loosening it. It’s not even about being in touch with their feminine side. It’s just enjoying fun hobbies for enjoyment’s sake.
Listening to them talk wasn’t my witnessing a profound cultural phenomenon. It was smaller, almost mundane. However, I found that that made it more meaningful. What I found surprising was normal to them.
Honestly, it made me more hopeful. Not because Bryce now shares in all my “girly” hobbies — I may have put him onto Pinterest boards to plan his future house and outfits, but he still doesn’t quite get the hype of embroidery — but because their participation makes me hope that people are doing what they want without worrying about the opinions of others infringing on it.
At the end of lunch, that’s a win for all of us.