Dude! Why guys aren’t growing up
After interviewing hundreds of 16- to 26-year-olds across the U.S., sociologist and gender studies expert Michael Kimmel found a trend of “guy” culture that is marked by the inability to have healthy relationships with women, murky career goals, and the desire not to grow up. In his new book “Guyland,” Kimmel writes about why many young men are trapped between adolescence and adulthood. An excerpt.
Jeff* is 24, tall and fit, with shaggy brown hair and an easy smile. After graduating from Brown three years ago, with an honors degree in history and anthropology, he moved back home to the Boston suburbs and started looking for a job. After several months, he found one, as a sales representative for a small Internet provider. He stays in touch with friends from college by text message and email, and still heads downtown on weekends to hang out at Boston’s “Brown bars.”
“It’s kinda like I never left college,” he says, with a mixture of resignation and pleasure. “Same friends, same aimlessness.”
Andy is 17, a high-school senior in the San Diego area. Affable, slightly chubby, and wearing glasses, his Chargers jersey signals his interest in sports. At the moment, he’s waiting to hear to which University of California campus he’ll be accepted. Or if he’ll be accepted. Once a reasonably good student, he says he now worries that he’s spent so much time playing video games and hanging out in online communities that he hasn’t studied hard enough and that his grades have suffered. “I just get kinda lost in there, you know?” he says. “My parents think I’m doing homework all the time, so I sorta keep it a secret.”
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http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26317942/?GT1=43001
