"The Indie Masculinity Crisis", according to Salon

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a Salon book review that's both miserable and kind of funny. here's a quote: "Ryan Bigge [book author] is a man of his times, although as a post-collegiate indie-rocker, he doesn't self-identify as a "man." Rather, he's a "guy," which in his context carries something of an apology for masculinity and a promise against assertiveness."

anyway, read the article and tell me what you think. i don't agree with a lot of it, but it's an entertaining read nonetheless.

― geeta, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

another quote: "Bigge's zine was called "Single Guy," and he published it for six years, during college and after, to impress girls. He even started an indie- rock band to impress girls. All to no avail. Bigge couldn't get a girlfriend. To overuse one of his own locutions:

Ryan was sad."

new answerz!

― geeta, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Gee, maybe he can't get a date because he is whiney and boring? Ya think?

― bnw, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

vomit!
I remember a similarish article I saw recently...oh it was included in my masculinities paper, an article from a mag about certain new men and boys who'd rather cook wonderful meals (or whatever) than play rugby (or whatever): basically not much actual challenge to hegemonic masculinity.
I really don't like the word "guy", and it seems to be coming

― haloist, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think I may have stayed at Bigge's house. Seriously, I stayed with the Adbusters people last time I played Vancouver. His CD collection was okay, but his book sounds terrible. I find the following passage very apt:

Bigge is the kind of writer for whom the term "poetry" is always the same as the term "bad poetry" -- for whom "pseudo-intellectual" means the same thing as "intellectual," and everything that's not self-deprecatingly cynical is "pretentious." He falls into irreverence the way people fall off skateboards: headlong and flailingly, and without much control over where he's going to land.

He sounds like the kind of person Douglas Coupland put through the apocalypse in 'Girlfriend In A Coma'.

― Momus, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Reading that really fouled up my mood. That Bigge "guy" sounds like a real loser and I don't say that frequently. Perhaps he should grow a bit of a backbone and try that whole dating thing again.

Yikes, I'm giving dating advice?!?!?!

― Lindsey B, Thursday, 9 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)