The Performative Male: Double Standard or Warning Sign?
In a world where reading and drinking matcha is considered a bad thing if you identify as a man, does it apply to women? And if so, when you read outside while you drink your matcha, are you also being performative, or are you just trying to “romanticize” your school work? If these look the same, are they interchangeable or exclusive to your gender? As a feminist myself, where do we draw the line of double standards? Are we weaponizing the term “performative” uniquely to men? And if so, are we doing so out of a need to protect our peace, or have we mislabeled a type of guy with whom we could actually have a meaningful conversation?
Double standard or warning sign?
I asked myself this same question while I picked a fig to make my own oat milk matcha (because I can’t afford store-bought), reading Plato (for class) while listening to music on my wired earbuds (my AirPods were out of battery) outside. Am I performing for everyone walking past me? Or am I romanticizing my philosophy reading for a class that I thought would be easy? This question can only be answered if we look at what the words “performative” and “romanticization” have transformed into in the last year.
Gen Z has characterized, specifically men, who read feminist literature or philosophy, wear baggy pants, have an iced matcha latte in hand and a self-painted tote bag draped over their muscular shoulder, while Clairo blasts into their wired earbuds as people who are only reading, wearing, drinking, and listening to these things for the sole purpose that women will like them more. Will women like them more? Studies (my girlfriends) show that this is false advertising, a bait and switch ploy, concocted by the devious minds of men to trick women into thinking that they are in touch with their emotions and understand the feminine experience. When in reality, they will leave you as soon as you tell them one of your problems.
So if this is the case for men, does this performance follow women, too, or are they living authentically and trying to “romanticize” their monotonous lives? Romanticization has also emerged from Gen Z lingo as a coping mechanism for everyday life. Mostly, people identifying as women have come to the realization that making everything that you do aesthetic will increase your productivity, mental health, and overall happiness in life. This, I’ve come to realize, looks very similar to the “performative male.” We both read, drinking whatever seasonal beverage, outside, listening to music in a cute outfit. Does this similarity mean that we are exclusively making men a degraded “performative” person for doing the same things we are doing?
The difference is presented through intention. These men are doing these things to actively pick up women; women are participating in romanticization so that they can make themselves smarter, healthier, and happier. But what if we are misinterpreting some of these men? What if they have always been reading, or truly want to start reading, and we have created this demoralization of anyone who does this, increasing men who don’t read or understand the human condition at all? Does this double standard help women steer clear of men who are misleading them, or have we created a stigma around men who read and stay caffeinated, and will they steer clear of things women actually do find attractive?