Modern Masculinity

MARTIN ROBINSON’S NEW BOOK YOU ARE NOT THE MAN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE EXPLORES HOW MENTAL HEALTH AND THE FITNESS INDUSTRY INTERTWINE

An extract from Martin Robinson’s You Are Not the Man You Are Supposed to Be

In his manifesto on modern masculinity, Robinson speaks to big-name sports stars to discuss their own experiences of mental health issues, and how the industry is changing to encourage a more open dialogue. He also heads to the gym with ex-Special Forces Sergeant Jason Fox, who faced a battle with PTSD after leaving the military.

On a more personal level, Robinson pushes through his own initial feelings of inadequacy, to discover that in the gym and out on the pitch, communities are created and connections made.

What follows is an extract from Robinson’s new book...

IN SEARCH OF EMOTION

Over the last ten years the tness industry in the UK has exploded, with the athletic legacy of the 2012 London Olympics, the arrival of advanced tness technology and sel e-a-second social media display, with its attendant ‘gym uencers’, all combining to make it worth an estimated £5 billion. Cycling clubs and parkruns take over weekends, while more extreme challenges like Tough Mudder and ultra marathons provide meaningful life events for thousands.

For the men in this country, changing leisure time activities has led to changed bodies; pubs are disappearing, taking beer bellies with them. It could also show a desire to regain control over our physical states – to at least look like a man, until somebody

gures out what the hell that means nowadays; protein shakes replacing little blue blankets as comforters.

My theory, however, is that there is more to it: that this urge towards training represents an emotional search as much as a physical one.

Men are judged as physical specimens. Not in the same way as women, of whom society, as part of the need to subjugate an Other, reserves the right to be harshly judgemental. For men, physicality is another means of identifying a pecking order. While the support for men addressing their own

tness is admirable, it’s not the whole story. Unless you have the classic ‘ripped’ gure you could nd yourself outside any group support, and no less isolated.

e Male Gaze exists for men as a pressure. Locker rooms are now parade grounds. e rise of penis llers – Brotox, it’s been called – and other enlargement techniques are fuelled by a desire not to

“For men, physicality is another means of identifying a pecking order”

improve sexual performance, but to avoid feeling ashamed when walking to a shower stall. Ab implants, steroid injections, waxing every bit of hair o your body... sure, if you’re heterosexual there’s an element of attracting the opposite sex, but impressing other men comes rst. It is born out of that need to belong to a group, to be accepted, and validated as a man.

Dysfunction can result. Between 2010 and 2018 hospital admissions for adult men with eating disorders more than doubled, but even so, it’s been estimated that less than ten per cent of men living with an eating disorder seek professional help. Up to a million people in Britain use anabolic steroids for aesthetic reasons, not sport.

ere is a dark side to the broadly positive strides of the tness boom, of new pressures bearing down. It doesn’t take a paranoid technophobe to attribute these

developments largely to the social media age, as the gures run in parallel to its rise to ubiquity: we are taking photos constantly, we are the subject of photos constantly, we are put on display for strangers to see constantly. We exist in a state of hyper-self-consciousness. Whose mental health can withstand the wild horses of identity performance pulling you apart? And, no, that’s not a challenge to be met by a thousand Dwayne Johnson wannabes retorting, “Bring it on, bubba...”

ROLE MODELS

Most male role models are de ned by the body, not the mind. Our ideals are physical ideals. Actors and sportsmen with bodies like gods. Again, it is that association with authenticity: popular idols for men need to ‘walk the walk’, and shed blood, sweat and tears. A premium is put on very physical, active forms of leadership. Nothing wrong with that, except to say that body and mind should be valued together.

With boys there is shame attached to improving your mind in a way that there never is when it comes to the body: if you’re clever, you either deny it or hide it, and, as soon as you can, ruin it all with booze. ose that display it proudly, well... best of luck out in the playground. It’s tragic, awful, absurd but true, that intellect is cause for many a young man to be bullied.

e popular role models we point boys towards are generally the sporting types too: the gures on TV, on magazine covers and in advertising campaigns, identi ed as swaggering machines, with no need for brains and above emotions. is is the kind of propaganda which creates dominant male

ctions. Actually, top sportsmen achieve their success because they are trained not just physically but intellectually and, most importantly, emotionally. We are only sold half the story about such people, shown the end result but not the process. e best boxers, for example, spend inordinate amounts of time on their minds – look at Muhammad Ali, whose genius came in outwitting opponents – yet it’s very rare for them to be exhibited as anything other than big hard bastards. is is not to

“e role models we point boys towards are generally the sporting types”

decry sport’s position in male aspiration; in fact, it is to celebrate the opportunity it has a orded in the last few years to expand the parameters of masculinity. Which brings us back to the shape-shifting e ects of social media age: sportsmen have been able to shine a light on their lived realities, the role of friends and family in their training, to reveal the complexities of being a man. is is one of the most promising things to happen to men in the modern age. It’s no accident that the greatest taboo-busters in male mental health are sports stars, because they are both the most visible role models and assumed to have the least going on in their heads, which is far from the truth.

LISTEN UP

Early evening in the grotty basement of an expensive craft beer pub. Luke (Campbell) was seated by me, along with fellow boxer Dave Allen and ex-rugby pro Kearnan Myall.

I wrapped up the panel chat we’d had about mental health and passed the mic to Freddie Flinto , who had come to the stage. I sat back on my stool behind him. Too close behind him. As he began speaking, I slipped through his armpit and into the shadows.

Flinto has the enviable ease of a public gure used to having people listen. He eyed up the room and began:

Every time on a cricket eld I walked about there as if I owned the joint – but at no point did I ever feel like that...

When I was playing, I thought the idea of telling someone about that would’ve been weakness. My view on mental strength is very di erent these days. It is the ability to talk, to tell people how you feel, and probably more importantly to tell the people around you. e relationships I have with my friends now are very di erent...

If you take nothing else from this event, just think about how you talk to people.

ink about your relationship with your family, with your friends. What do you talk about? Do you know your mates really? Do you know what they’re going through? And if not, why not try to nd out?

is kind of talk from national sporting heroes is undoubtedly new. On the eve of the last World Cup a number of England players talked about mental health struggles, fully supported by their manager Gareth Southgate; 20, even ve years ago this would have been unthinkable. But Flinto has headed a breakthrough in how sporting

gures are perceived, backed by campaigns by mental health charities CALM and Heads Together which sporting authorities are bringing into stadiums. ey reveal the frailties of our idols, and how ‘normal’ men may view their own frailties. Once again, the route to publicly expanding masculinity into an emotional dimension has been mental health, and the mental health of our previously impregnable athletic warriors. I ©MARTIN ROBINSON 2021. THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM YOU ARE NOT THE MAN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, PUBLISHED BY BLOOMSBURY CONTINUUM AND PRICED AT £14