A mellandagsmorgon a few years ago, I was with a friend and froze to death in Bromma. It was so cold that the skin was tight around the skull, and it ached in the scalp and the frost tried to gain a foothold in the nostrils.
But there we stood. He would buy a Xbox and elektronikkedjan had mellandagsrea and I was there with kaffetermos. The queue consisted only of men. And they had been there for a while, a couple of hours, to get half of the price of fryers and tv sets. The words we said to each other came out in misty bubbles in the cold.
And then, the doors opened, the rush started. The sharpened elbows came up. His gaze homing tjackstirrig.
to think of a text by Jan-Olov Johansson, member of the Royal academy of engineering, where he is similar to mellandagsrean at the male hunting and samlarinstinkten where ”the modern-day hunters and collectors rush around to get to find the prey, before grannstammen. Their own tolerance towards others, the viewfinder is then.”
the Same sharpened mansarmbågar also be directed against the women and their consumption. It was discussed on the kultursidor already eleven years ago, in the so-called väskdebatten, how women intressedrivna shopping is seen as superficial and reprehensible, while men certainly hunt and gather (even if the hunting ground is Mediamarkt).
A man is not prylgalen, he is at his height of prylnörd. A real man has a big and expensive car, or a big and expensive watch, or a large and expensive sound system. And these must constantly be replaced with newer models. It is not so much wear-and-throw-shopping as things are thrown away before they are worn in the least. I’m usually amazed by how often my male acquaintances feel that they have to buy new cars. ”Has the old one broken?” I ask and get funny looks in response.
it has long ago ceased to be about to show up being a successful breadwinner of a family – now it’s about to impress other men. Manhood is measured in number of inches on a tv screen or a bilfälg, not in physical strength or potency.
Manhood is measured in number of inches on a tv screen or a bilfälg, not in physical strength or potency.
But I often think of an early mixtejp by the Swedish hiphopgruppen Maze, with this line: ”Today’s rappers only care about shoes and jewelry like a bitch”. It is memorable because it takes hiphopkulturens masculine materialism and blingbesatthet, the adulation of their own riches and success – but equating it with something so silly female like to go shopping and to be vain.
It is a throwback to the old-time masculinity in which A Real Man does not claim his manhood by buying things, but by making them – to bring about or produce.
if the bead, crackle modern masculinity, ”of the Standard. The betrayal of the man,” writes Susan Faludi about how this identitetsförvirringen can be harmful: ”It has often been observed how society’s economic transformation from industry to service or from production to consumption, was a symbolic move from the masculine to the traditional feminine. But in genustermer is the movement much more than a simple gender correction treatments, and so much more traumatic for men than we can imagine,” she writes.
the double standard is hard to live with: to belong to a masculine culture that condemned the vanity, spegelstirrande and shopping – and then try to embrace all that sudden male attributes.
the rest of us have to suffer for the men’s compulsion to fill the hole in the soul with the new fryers. A report from the national Consumer agency in december shows that middle-aged men have the hardest time with environmental consumption, and men’s consumption is more energy intensive and damaging to the environment than women’s.
the Only way for men to continue shopping must be to fully embrace his female side: to begin to act consciously. Or so, it becomes köpstopp all the way.
Read more texts by Kristofer Ahlström , for example, about the many racist and sexist jullåtarna we listen to every year .
