Of course none of this, in itself, makes Faludi's book irrelevant. But I gotta wonder about her grasp of the subject if she sees this as a wholly new thing (oddly, it began about the same time she started research for her book!). It may have different slightly different impetuses and manifestations, but as far as I can tell it's been around awhile.
Eric
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How about forever?
Who hasn't had to square up the contradictions between what is given as concrete (short, fat, ugly, and stupid) and what is ideal (tall, thin, handsome, and bright)? And, who hasn't had to come to terms with those contradictions through out a conscious life--say from nine to ninety? Masculinity isn't like eye color. It is an operational definition (social construction) and exists as such and is or should be (moral imperative) continuously defined as an expression in a stance in the world. I would call it a theme, one of many. A theme, which in my view isn't necessarily attached to the genitals--although, ideally these provide a magnificent display. Women obviously have their own themes on masculinity as expressed as what they expect from their brothers, fathers, sons, lovers, husbands--as well as what they expect of themselves weaving their concepts of masculinity in relation to their own themes on feminity.
Of course masculinity as a continual theme (not continually in crisis) is given in expression only in relation to other themes and events, forces, pressures and relationships. Masculinity in relation to a son as a toddler, has a different configuration, than say masculinity in relation to a wife, and both are different in relation to a lover. Masculinity in relation to men is obviously different than in relation to women and so on.
So the idea that there is a crisis of masculinity because of the decline in relative income to some traditionally assumed socio-economic ideal is only a crisis for those men (and women) who have appropriated that particular theme of masculinity--that is made of it a center piece. If you never bought that blow job in the first place, then there is no crisis--hence, Faludi elides to fellatio (sorry, Kelley, it just had too good a sound to pass up).
The question of whether the breadwinner theme was or should be a center piece to masculinity was strongly contested during the period I was growing up (say '55 to '65, or 12 to 22yrs). There is no doubt that these contestations issued from the socio-economic shifts in work and family and were driven by material changes in existing conditions--by history. How could they not be?
On the other hand, it takes a certain amount of reflection to separate masculinity from one of its traditional expressions as breadwinner.
In pop culture, this separation was played out by James Dean in "Rebel without a Cause" and "East of Eden". In Rebel, Dean was in revolt against everything--that is everything traditionally expected of a young man. Dean was supposed to grow up, get married to dear-heart Natalie Wood, get a job, and become a responsible citizen (like Dad, Jim Backus). He didn't want to--big conflict--the separation of masculinity from its traditional all-american expressions (the hapless and ineffectual Backus plays the contrapuntal truth--the ideal is already dead, just as dead as the meaner spirited Raymond Massey as Dad in Steinbeck's East of Eden). Dean was a bad boy, morally suspect, criminal, an anti-hero--and, also, an instant icon to the queer culture of the period. Above ground, he was the heart throb to high school girls (at least at my HS)--the criminal, anti-hero, was the pop icon expression of masculinity--masculinity in revolt. For boys this read as revolt against teachers, parents, police, and military--the world of masculine authority and the establishment in general. For girls, I am not sure how it read at the time--no doubt the same masculine targets of revolt, but in relation to their own nascent feminity.
Checking on some details here, I did a quick search on Dean:
http://www.jamesdean.com/bio/bio.html#
Looking at him after forty years is pretty stunning--certainly not breadwinner material.
And then just read this from Ted on the same post from Eric Beck:
"...--and this is what a few people in this thread have touched on--there's no monolithic 'masculinity': expressions of it vary generationally, regionally, in terms of class, race, ethnicity, orientation, education, etc. within these variations are 'themes,' one could say. of course these themes--which are 'constitutive'--tend to repeat and modu-late over time: that's how culture works."
Chuck Grimes