Reality TV’s man problem
Married at First Sight: Australia shows toxic masculinity at its worst and it is all too easy to be sucked in by it
AWHILE back in the beforetimes, I woke up from an impromptu one-nightstand with an ex-girlfriend. “The thing is,” she said, as we discussed what went wrong, “I wanted you, but got tired of waiting for you to read the signals and take the lead.” And then the clincher: “Why didn’t you just rip my clothes off… be more of the man?”
I recall her words almost a decade later; as I binge episodes of the cult reality show Married at First Sight: Australia (or MAFSA), which pits hopefuls on an extreme, nuptial version of Blind Date. Of all the frustrating matchups, satisfying bust-ups, and finger-pointing, gender-roles comes up more often than in, say, First Dates. One question it asks is: what does it mean to be “the man” in a straight relationship?
Dino is a soft-spoken, spiritual bloke from Perth. Paired with Melissa, who talks about not having had sex since Basshunter topped the charts, he squirms as the participants tell him to get on with it. She wants to get laid and that’s his problem. Get on with it, Dino.
“Why can’t he just make the move, already?” I blurt to the screen, like everyone else on the show. Once he finally caves, he distances and shrinks within himself. His marriage falls apart. If the roles were reversed, Dino would be a sex pest and Melissa a victim. It’s an unspoken double-standard. Another we see between shy virgin Matt (mentioned so often, I thought “virgin” was his job) and
Loz. After taking Matt’s virginity, Loz admits that something isn’t working. She tells us that she wants Matt to throw her on the bed and rip her clothes off. She asks him what he thinks about swinger parties.
Matt and Dino blame themselves for being unable to accommodate their partners’ urges. You can see it in their faces: an insecurity, a sense of impotency, surfacing. Matt asks whether there’s “something wrong” with him.
There is nothing wrong with Matt. For a lot of men, a deeply coded instinct to “man up” in bed stems from fear of disappointment. I recall a house party where a girl took me upstairs. As I spoke, near-vomiting, drunk, “I don’t think I can, I feel rough...” she carried on lifting off my shirt. When I ought to have left, a devil-on-the-shoulder kept muttering, “Do it... or she’ll think you’re a wimp.”
There’s a nagging implication that Dino and Matt are less manly, wimpish, or something is wrong with them for not wanting to sleep with their wives. Men are so often discussed as being “dominant’ in the bedroom, it seems off when we refrain from sex. We struggle to communicate these feelings, fearing that it might end in emasculation (or mockery). Like barista Billy, when he’s told to “man up”. Billy is a nice guy. The problem Billy has is that he’s paired with Susie, who doesn’t want a nice guy. Billy’s lack of assertiveness gets on Susie’s nerves. So, she tells him to “put on his big boy pants” and “grow some balls”.
If he asked Susie to play the traditional housewife while he enacted a sort of growling, macho Stanley Kowalski, he’d be cancelled. But instead, he becomes a joke. And when he cries, she laughs. Sometimes, we laugh too. We want Billy to get a grip; we want him to be more of a man. In 2021, the man might have changed, but what’s expected of him hasn’t. #MeToo made giant steps, but with its triumph came an awkward, temporary rift. Since 2016, men have been trying to figure out what part traditional masculinity plays in a progressive culture. With gender-fluidity having a more mainstream role in society, masculinity is accepted to have become somewhat malleable.
It’s what a lot of straight men like me try to keep up with. Stuck between a time when we were taught to take the lead, approach women, pay for meals and make the first move; to an era where any of that can be deemed inappropriate or toxic.
Even if society expects men to be better, to play a less dominant role, when it comes to who we love, the expectations we and our partners may have for ourselves are much the same. So, when women on MAFSA talk about a “real man”, whether it’s 1991 or 2021, you know exactly who, and what, they mean.
And it isn’t Billy. Or Matt. Or Dino. But perhaps next time it should be.