My son and I were just at Dick’s Sporting Goods at the mall up the road. As we left the store, a family—dad, mom, a few little kids, maybe another relative—paused in front of the door to put their winter wear back on before stepping outside. As the double doors opened, the mom said, “Oh, my God, that’s cold!”

Dad, dressed only in jeans and a tee-shirt, dismissed her, saying, “It’s not that cold.”

It was 18 degrees Fahrenheit, today’s high.

We have long lived in a world where a lot of men, regardless of specific culture or nationality, feel they must perform a version of masculinity utterly divorced from reality. A masculinity impervious to weather, to sickness, to pain, both physical or mental. We train each generation of young men to ignore the evidence of their senses, their logical minds, and their feelings. By “we” I mean every last one of us. Not just dads.

Moms, too. Every type of relative. Friends and peers. Boys and girls, and women. Smart people and stupid people. Educated and uneducated. From the far-right to the far-left and on around back to the far-right again.

It’s ingrained and thoughtless. It takes conscious work to break out of the habit. This is worth doing, because there may be no greater source of psychological pain for men than falling short of this ridiculous image of a “real man.”

Personally, I think the present moment has been particularly egregious in this respect. When I was growing up, it felt very much like these hoary old stereotypes were being broken down, that what it meant to be a man or a woman was loosening up, and it was okay to be what you were, rather than what someone told you you were supposed to be. This doesn’t feel so true anymore.

It’s what insidious and depressing about otherwise purely hilarious and campy shit like this, also seen at the mall:

It’s a little difficult to even un(ten-)pack this level of camp. Is it deliberate camp, the lesser form of camp, according to Susan Sontag? Or is it accidental camp, the purer form? Is this image, on some level, attractive to anyone or admirable or an object of wish fulfillment? Does anyone actually think this is what a “real man” would be?