You’re a bad role model, cross-dressing potter tells adventurer Grylls
A FLAMBOYANT crossdresser and an extreme survival expert were unlikely to be the best of friends.
But artist Grayson Perry has launched a stinging verbal attack on TV presenter Bear Grylls over the issue of masculinity.
Perry, 56, who is often seen in dresses as his alter ego Claire, has branded 41-year- old Grylls a bad role model and described him as a ‘hangover’. He went on to say that the adventurer’s portrayal of what it means to be a man is ‘useless’ in the modern world, as the dilemmas facing young men cannot be solved with bows and arrows.
The 2003 Turner Prize winner, known for his ceramic vases, told Radio Times: ‘ He celebrates a masculinity that is useless. Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an
‘Men are useless at opening up’
affordable flat. I want to see Bear Grylls looking for a decent state school for his child!’
He said it is more important to teach men to open up about their emotions than teach them to fight for survival in hostile conditions, as contestants do on Channel 4 reality show The Island with Bear Grylls. Last night’s episode saw emergency teams being drafted in to evacuate 19-year-old Patrick who fell off a cliff during a hunt for food.
Perry said: ‘ Men might be good at taking the risk of stabbing someone or driving a car very fast, but when it comes to opening up, men are useless.’
So strong are Perry’s opinions on masculinity that he is fronting a three-part Channel 4 series, All Man, dedicated to discussing the issues facing men. It begins on Thursday next week. He said last month: ‘The show is about what it means to be a man, and major issues like 90 per cent of crime is done by men, that men tend to dominate business and men commit suicide six times more than women.’
Asked why he thought those problems existed, he said: ‘Because millennia of conditioning has brought men and boys up and taught them certain behaviours that aren’t helpful any more, such as suppressing your emotions, status-seeking, answering problems with anger and violence.’
The contrast between Grylls in his survival gear and Perry, who regularly goes out in public wearing avant-garde dresses designed by his fashion students at Central Saint Martins, couldn’t be greater.
Perry told the Guardian in 2014 he began wearing more outlandish outfits, such as one inspired by Little Bo Peep, as part of a yearning for femininity. He said: ‘It’s a classic look. I used to call it the crack cocaine of femininity. It’s the furthest from the male macho look you could get. It’s vulnerable, it’s young, it’s humiliating. The fantasy of humiliation is a big drug for many men.’
Grylls has spoken out against technology stifling the traditional hunter-gatherer skills of men. He said in 2014: ‘Men really struggle nowadays with what it means to be a man.
‘In the olden days, it was clear – you use your spear, your brains, your resourcefulness, your courage. All that sort of stuff made a man.’