Unfortunately, this hasn’t just been the year of the short king. It’s also been a year of increased media coverage and public awareness of incels – online communities of “involuntarily celibate” men whose self-loathing manifests in derogatory, in some cases
extremely violent, behavior towards women, and a pathological obsession with
altering their appearance to fit a narrow definition of brawny masculine beauty.
The dismaying presence of incels prompts a complicated question: how do we talk about bolstering men’s self-esteem at a time when society is interrogating the injustices of male privilege, and the connection between masculine insecurity and violence?
The answer may lay in a reconceptualization of manhood.
“I think it’s an interesting time,” says Brendan Steven, a 27-year-old, 5ft 5in writer from Ontario. “Many of us sense that our ideas of the masculine and feminine that we grew up with are too constraining. But at the same time, there are such things as masculine and feminine traits and we value them to some extent.”
Like many short men, Steven recalls an adolescence spent believing masculinity was defined by a set of immutable characteristics – like being tall and imposing – and that by not fitting that ideal he was “kind of cursed.”
