There’s lots of stories about women succeeding at traditionally male things (e.g. Mulan, Legally Blonde) but almost none about men succeeding at traditionally female things. When a woman does male things, it’s “she’s a woman but she’s awesome enough to live up to male standards”, but when a man does female things, it’s treated as a joke at his expense.
We need more stories about “he’s a man but he’s awesome enough to live up to female standards”.
I imagine you don’t count, like, Mrs. Doubtfire?
While I can see how Mrs. Doubtfire is sort of about a man learning to succeed at femininity, I find it deeply unsatisfying for two reasons. First, Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams’s character) only attempts to learn feminine skills in order to pass as a woman. This reinforces the idea that femininity is a female thing. Second, at the end of the movie, I feel that he’s presenting as a more-well-rounded masculine, rather than simply feminine. The message seems to be “it’s okay to cook and clean and spend time with your kids, because it doesn’t compromise your masculinity”. I want a message of “it’s okay to not be masculine”. I’m vaguely reminded of countersignaling; I get the feeling that Daniel Hillard is allowed to have feminine traits because he manages to not let them overshadow his masculinity.
By contrast, consider Kanahe Tomohisa, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. He’s a stay-at-home husband who wears an apron and takes care of the housework, his build is slim and his demeanor submissive, and this is (at least in the episodes I’ve seen so far) not remarked upon at all or treated as a source of either drama or humor. It’s treated as perfectly normal, natural, ordinary, healthy, unremarkable that he should tend the home and the children while his wife earns the family income as a career businesswoman. The show isn’t really about him, he’s only a supporting character; but he’s the sort of character that would be a natural consequence of the shows I want to see.
I feel like the fact that Elle didn’t compromise her femininity was a big part of Legally Blonde, though. Do the two movies do this differently or am I just completely misunderstanding what you’re saying? (I haven’t actually seen Mrs. Doubtfire. I’m just going off what you say)
I’ve actually only seen a couple of scenes from Legally Blonde, but I got the impression that, while she’s femme in a shoes-and-lipstick kind of way, she’s also characterized as having qualities that are necessary to success specifically in classically male endeavors: proactive, academically gifted, a take-no-shit attitude, etc. She’s undeniably girly, but I don’t think she could be characterized as soft and vulnerable. What I know of Legally Blonde gives me a “women can be strong too” vibe, as opposed to the “it’s okay not to be strong” that I’m looking for.
popular culture cannot bear the sight of a weak man.
Can the median neurotypical cishet woman?
I think that’s a lot of where this really comes from. That kind of man isn’t really seen as desirable, and that isn’t going to change soon outside of atypical women, which in some ways is fine because we can’t demand they change their preferences, but on the other hand there are a lot of side effects and it isn’t just evil masculinity that’s the cause of them.