I saw an article on this book today. I think it should have been called Boyland, because I think guys stuck in this stage are like boys, not like guys, but they are certainly not men. I found the excerpts very interesting, and some of them actually explain what I have been wondering for so long. Boys -- when do they become Men? The men I need to meet and date, where do I find them? Well, the book doesn't talk about that so much as where boys in Guyland do hang out. The premise of this book is the author interviewed a bunch of guys ages 16 to 26 to find out what Guyland was all about. Who was a part of it, who wasn't, and everything in between. What he found seems interesting.
"In another era, these guys would undoubtedly be poised to take their place in the adult world, taking the first steps toward becoming the nation’s future professionals, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. They would be engaged to be married, thinking about settling down with a family, preparing for futures as civic leaders and Little League dads. Not today.
"Today, many of these young men, poised between adolescence and adulthood, are more likely to feel anxious and uncertain. In college, they party hard but are soft on studying. They slip through the academic cracks, another face in a large lecture hall, getting by with little effort and less commitment. After graduation, they drift aimlessly from one dead-end job to another, spend more time online playing video games and gambling than they do on dates (and probably spend more money too), “hook up” occasionally with a “friend with benefits,” go out with their buddies, drink too much, and save too little. After college, they perpetuate that experience and move home or live in group apartments in major cities, with several other guys from their dorm or fraternity. They watch a lot of sports. They have grandiose visions for their futures and not a clue how to get from here to there. When they do try and articulate this amorphous uncertainty, they’re likely to paper over it with a simple “it’s all good.” "
I think we all know guys like this. Now I realize that this could be a phase, and although some guys may never truly grow out of it, most can with time. I suppose this is a necessary step of manhood, and eventually finding a man worthy of my time means that they must transition through "Guyland."
"Guyland is the world in which young men live. It is both a stage of life, a liminal undefined time span between adolescence and adulthood that can often stretch for a decade or more, and a place, or, rather, a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life. In this topsy-turvy, Peter-Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood, while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men despite all evidence to the contrary."
You see, it should have been called Boyland, because they are fixated on Boyhood. Everytime I have a run-in with a guy and he turns out to be a jackass, I call him a Boy. A little boy who needs to take his head out of his ass and grow up. I guess maybe some guys just aren't ready for that yet.
"Guyland is not some esoteric planet inhabited only by alien creatures — despite how alien our teenage and 20-something sons might seem at times. It’s the world of everyday “guys.” Nor is it a state of arrested development, a case of prolonged adolescence among a cadre of slackers. It has become a stage of life, a “demographic,” that is now pretty much the norm. Without fixed age boundaries, young men typically enter Guyland before they turn 16, and they begin to leave in their mid to late 20s. This period now has a definable shape and texture, a topography that can be mapped and explored. A kind of suspended animation between boyhood and manhood, Guyland lies between the dependency and lack of autonomy of boyhood and the sacrifice and responsibility of manhood. Wherever they are living, whatever they are doing, and whomever they are hooking up with, Guyland is a dramatically new stage of development with its own rules and limitations."
I've always been a little skiddish of guys older than 30. I have a hard time wanting to date someone much older than me, which means I am DOOMED to be single until I am 30, according to this book. So I guess this is a wake-up call to branch out and give men over 30 a chance because they have entered Manland. I think that once you enter Manland, only a mid-life crisis will transport you back to Guy(Boy)land.
"In some respects, Guyland can be defined by what guys do for fun. It’s the “boyhood” side of the continuum they’re so reluctant to leave. It’s drinking, sex, and video games. It’s watching sports, reading about sports, listening to sports on the radio. It’s television — cartoons, reality shows, music videos, shoot-em-up movies, sports, and porn — pizza, and beer. It’s all the behavior that makes the real grownups in their lives roll their eyes and wonder, “When will he grow up?!” There are some parts of Guyland that are quite positive. The advancing age of marriage, for example, benefits both women and men, who have more time to explore career opportunities, not to mention establishing their identities, before committing to home and family. And much of what qualifies as fun in Guyland is relatively harmless. Guys grow out of a lot of the sophomoric humor — if not after their “sophomore” year, then at least by their mid–twenties."
This almost sounds like me, actually (I'll get to that in a bit). This is the stereotypical guy, it's what I believe men do, and must do to be men. Do guys actually grow out of this stuff, and if so, do I want them to? I mean, I don't see myself ever growing out of some of this stuff. I'm not sure I ever want to, either. I think there may be facets of Guyland that I would never want to go away, but at the same time, can these things exist in Manland? I agree with the advancing age thing, actually. Although I would like to have a guy to "play" with, I don't necessarily see myself getting married anytime soon.
"What about girls? Guys love girls — all that homosociality might become suspect if they didn’t! It’s women they can’t stand. Guyland is the more grownup version of the clubhouse on The Little Rascals — the “He-Man Woman Haters Club.”
Women demand responsibility an respectability, the antitheses of Guyland. Girls are fun and sexy, even friends, as long as they respect the centrality of guys’ commitment to the band of brothers. And when girls are allowed in, they have to play by guy rules — or they don’t get to play at all. Girls contend daily with Guyland — the constant stream of pornographic humor in college dorms or libraries, or at countless work stations in offices across the country; the constant pressure to shape their bodies into idealized hyper-Barbies.
Guyland sets the terms under which girls try to claim their own agency, develop their own senses of self. Guyland sets the terms of friendship, of sexual activity, of who is “in” and who is decidedly “out.” Girls can even be guys — if they know something about sports (but not too much), enjoy casual banter about sex (but not too actively), and dress and act in ways that are pleasantly unthreatening to boys’ fragile sense of masculinity."
This section really hits home. I'm not quite sure I am a woman, but I certainly have the demands of one. And really, it almost doesn't seem fair to have the demands of a woman when I haven't quite reached that point yet. I'm stuck in "Chickland", but expect to find a guy who has transcended into Manland. I suppose I could be in Guyland as well. I mean, I love sports, sex, beer, etc. Pretty much every typical boy activity, I enjoy it on some level. So where do I fit in this puzzle?
I'm not sure I fit anywhere because now I realize, after reading these sections, that my expectations have been way too high, for a number of reasons. One, I want a guy close to my age but couldn't see that most guys close to my age are stuck in Boyland. Two, I have the desires of a woman but haven't quite transcended into Womanland yet. Three, I'm most likely stuck in Boyland and don't see myself leaving anytime soon. Four, I'm not sure I ever want to fully "grow up" because that would mean mega responsibility. I've chosen not to have children because the responsiblity would kill me, and I think that's okay. Society says marry a man and have babies, but I say, find a man who you can have fun with, maybe marry him, and say no to babies.
Maybe this whole book reveals more than just these small sections. But in the end, everyone is different, and I suppose each guy will transcend into Manland eventually. Although, I hope that the guy I find keeps some of his Boyland habits, like watching football and drinking beer on a Sunday afternoon ... and sex, lots of sex.
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