The Masculine Runner
What is a Masculine runner? What is masculine?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, what does it mean to be a man? We are living through a time where the masculine ideal is changing in real time; where things that used to be associated with being a “girly man” are now accepted as a cultural norm. Even though the cultural winds are changing the “toxic masculinity” era will follow us around because it affected us at our most vulnerable time. However, that shouldn’t stop us from trying to make a better and more accepting world for our sons and daughters to grow up living in.
For example, why do running shorts make us so self conscious about ourselves? As a young runner I was very self conscious as to the length of my shorts running around in South St. Louis, it was not beyond the realm of possibilities to be called a faggot by at least one south side idiot a month. Maybe it’s just that we feel self conscious in that awkward stage as we grow into our acceptance of what it takes to be comfortable running at a higher level but look at any high school cross country race and see the amount of kids wearing sliders under their 3" split shorts. However, I have also had many guys, getting into running, tell me that 5/7" shorts are too short for them…
Why are we uncomfortable in our own skin? We need to be able to wear clothing that allows us to perform to the best of our abilities. There’s nothing wrong with showing some leg.
Tan lines should be the battle cry of a well trained runner.
We need to stop letting society dictate what we can wear, we need to stop letting the possibility of being seen as less than the manly ideal deny us comfort in training.
In today’s masculinity we need to think of it as not being afraid to be ourselves, to love ourselves and to help each other reach higher heights then we could alone. I think I’ve hit it pretty hard in my articles before but we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about our feelings. Growing up society tries to teach us to keep our feeling inside and that being open leaves us vulnerable to be hurt. What I want to leave future generations with: it is ok to hurt, it is ok to feel sad, anxious, disappointed but we need to be able to talk about that — we need to be able to be vulnerable.
Toxic Masculinity occurs when we don’t hold our fellow men accountable… but when we do hold each other accountable we can grow as men and grow as a society.
What about running culture do your struggle with? What are you struggling with right now in general?
-Justin
