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The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
Harper
September 2008
On Sale: August 26, 2008
352 pages
ISBN: 0060831340
EAN: 9780060831349
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Why do so many guys seem stuck between adolescence and
adulthood? Why do so many of them fail to launch? Just what
is going on with America's young men? The passage from adolescence to adulthood was once clear,
coherent, and relatively secure: in their late teenage years
and early twenties, guys "put away childish things" and
entered their futures as responsible adults. Today growing
up has become more complex and confusing as young men drift
casually through college and beyond—hanging out, partying,
playing with tech toys, watching sports. But beneath the
appearance of a simple extended boyhood, a more dangerous
social world has developed, far away from the traditional
signposts and cultural signals that once helped boys
navigate their way to manhood. The average young American man today is moving through a new
stage of development, a buddy culture unfazed by the demands
of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and other nuisances of
adult life. Sociologist and gender studies authority Michael
Kimmel has identified this territory as "Guyland," a place
that is both a stage of life and a new social arena. Guyland is the locker room writ large: the world where young
men both test and prove themselves as men and develop the
defining attitudes and self-images they will carry into
adulthood. Kimmel has interviewed hundreds of young men ages
sixteen to twenty-six in high schools and college fraternity
houses, military academies and sports bars, to better
understand Guyland's rules and restrictions, its layers of
peer pressure and gender policing, its features and
artifacts—from the ordinary (video games, sports, and music)
to the extreme (violent fraternity initiations, sexual
predation). In mapping the social world where tomorrow's men are made,
Kimmel offers a view into the minds and times of America's
sons, brothers, and boyfriends, and works toward redefining
what it means to be a man today—and tomorrow. Only by
understanding this world and this life stage can we enable
young men to chart their own paths, to stay true to
themselves, and to travel safely through Guyland, emerging
as responsible and fully formed men of integrity and honor.
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