I don’t know why but it’s been hard to get away from masculinity the last few posts. I’m enj
oying watching the NFL Draft (sadly, I have a Christmas-like enjoyment of the event) and I look up to the TV as I hear Chris Berman say, “It looks like he’s been selected. He’s crying in the back room.” Crying in a room, huh? Where have I heard that before?
Masculinity in sports is surprisingly contextual. There are things we accept, and places that we accept them, and there are things that we won’t. The Miami Heat players crying in the locker room is, in Brannon’s words, ‘sissy stuff’ but draft picks crying because they have made it to the NFL is okay for the ‘sturdy oak’. Barbosa and Evans holding hands after beating Orlando generates controversy within the NBA but butt-slapping during a football game, or even one time I remember Nate Robinson jumping on Steve Francis’ back and riding him like a horse, are perfectly accepted. Do new members of sporting society know what the rules are? Where the boundaries of their masculinity lie? Or do they get socialized through our reactions and hazing processes—taking them to the line which defines that which is deviant, and not masculine—and then dragging them back?