How To Be A Man In 2019

A modest proposal

- Lindsay Pereira

Here’s a confession that ought not to bother me, but does: I have never thought about what it means to be a man. I don’t speak for others, obviously, but can’t think of friends or relatives who have thought about this either. Or maybe they do in the wee hours, but don’t discuss it in public. Either way, it makes me feel like the norm rather than the exception.

I did think about it for a few hours though, and arrived at the conclusion that this is the sort of question I only imagine a rugged, denimclad person asking himself during a cigarette break, between work shifts that involve heavy machinery. As a slim-waisted, laptop-toting figure with a name that traditionally belongs to Caucasian women, it sits incongruously on my shoulders. I’m still going to try and answer it, if only because one of the side effects of getting older is that even mundane queries now trigger prolonged periods of introspection.