Masculinity and the Crisis of the New Economy

I was amazed to read there exists a connection between the evolution of our current service economy and the growing radicalism of the right-wing movement.

Globalization, so heavily promoted by right-wing capitalists, impacts our society far beyond mere economics. It has created a gender-identity crisis in white, heterosexual, working-class males. No longer is a man's sense of 'self' defined by manual labor. As our economy shifted from manufacturing to services, traditional male 'blue-color' roles were replaced by androgynous 'pink color' jobs. The qualities entrenched in manual labor, aggressiveness, athleticism, self-interest, and egoism, were no longer valued in the service sector. The 'metrosexual' became the new-millenium masculine ideal.

In their article Capitalism and Loneliness: Why Pornography is a Multi-billion Dollar Industry Harriet Fraad and Tess Fraad Wolff report that there are only four refuges left "for men who cling to male hegemony and stereotyped masculinity. They are: the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun culture; the military; the Christian right; and pornography. Of these four misogynist refuges, pornography is the most prevalent, profitable and expanding. The heterosexual Internet pornography industry has exploited heterosexual men's loneliness and contributed to changing the face of the most intimate connections." In short, the service economy has altered not only the economic face but also the emotional soul of the United States.

Fraad and Wolff are not the first persons to document this connection, nor is it isolated to the United States. British researchers and writers have examined the economic effects of the service economy on unskilled, white male youth in that country. Linda McDowell appraises the situation in her 2003 anthology Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth. Darren Nixon also investigates the detachment of low-skilled, unemployed men from society in his 2009 article, "I Can't Put a Smiley Face On: Working-Class Masculinity, Emotional Labour and Service Work in the New Economy."

'Working class' values have become an anachronism. White, heterosexual, working class males are being forced by the service society to abandon their concept of masculinity and recast, remodel, and renovate their id, ego, and super-ego to align with the new economy. These gender-role refugees now seek solace in right-wing religions, politics, organizations, and by reverting to fantasy in pornography, video-games, and other indulgent masculine 'virtual worlds.'

Dreaming of Marion

After graduating from Central Washington University in 1990 with a worthless degree in Business Administration, I found myself $40 from destitution (and prostitution) and in desperate need of an income. Scouring the want ads for an appropriate casting of my talents, yet mindful of my economic exigence, I, like so many poor college graduates before me, took a job in a department store, Seattle's venerable Bon Marché.

Department stores were just beginning their downward slide into obsolescence. The Bon Marché had within its walls the items you still find in the remaining stores of its stature, but also services and products that were throwbacks to the heyday of the elephantine emporiums. You could still shop for a couture gown in the Northwest Room, have your wig set in the salon, dine on shrimp salad in the Azalea Room, mail a letter from the post office, consult a decorator in fine furnishings, personalize a crystal ornament at the engravers, order a basket of chocolates at the confectionery, view an original Jacob Lawrence in the gallery, examine a bombe chest in antiques, fill a prescription in the pharmacy, pick up a bottle of Old Turkey in the liquor store, sample smoked oysters in gourmet foods, indulge in a mazarin tart at the bakery, and have it all delivered (free of charge within the downtown Seattle area) before you ever returned home.

After roving through departments as an unassigned sales associate (the penance you perform for being a retail rookie), I found myself rolling in the sheets, as it were. Bed Linens was occupied by a company of post-baccalaureate characters marking time in the way-station between job and career: some had been there a few weeks, others several years. There were four former Art majors, a Communications major, a Business major (me), plus a part-time drag queen, a misplaced Jersey girl, and a Ghanaian princess, to round out the troupe.

One October day, clustered around the cash registers like corralled cattle, the apathy of existential acquiescence overtaking our ambition, I glanced up to notice a familiar looking face purchasing a pile of Allen Solly sheets from another mercantile âme damnée.

"Miss Marion Ross!" I exclaimed.

My incognizant co-workers looked up with dumbfounded attention as the celebrity smiled, her covert shopping expedition exposed. I came around the counter, offering help with her bags and inquiring as to her presence in the Emerald City.

A few days later, I found myself a habitué of "Happy Days'" own Mrs. C, Marion Ross, as she emoted in Eugene O'Neill's lengthy opus to addiction, "Long Day's Journey Into Night" on Stage 2 at the Seattle Repertory Theater. I would squire Miss Ross around town over the course of the next few weeks as her play performed its run and later be a guest at "Happy Days" farm, Miss Ross' home in Woodland Hills, CA.

The other morning I awoke from a dream in which I found myself being chauffeured through Griffith Park by Josh's Aunt Cathy and Uncle Don. Driving past a picnic shelter, I noticed Marion Ross inaudibly exhorting to a group of ragtag revelers. Like Sister Aimee, Miss Ross animatedly directed them to follow her. I watched as she led them down a stone path toward a cave-like bunker. Frantic to catch her, I asked Uncle Don to stop the car and I hurriedly exited, pursuing the formation through a steal door into the crypt. The interior was a slovenly maze of Barcaloungers, each one occupied by a mangy member lying in state. Center stage was Marion Ross. I approached her and asked if she recognized me. She gave me a blank stare then opened a grotesquely exaggerated mouth that was all horsehair and wire like the innards of an antique chair...

Gingrich Salutes Lindsay Lohan

On a domestic flight from Chicago to Boston, flight attendant Angel Salazar was shocked to discover Presidential hopeful and serial adulterer, Newt Gingrich, masturbating to Lindsay Lohan's nude photos in the current issue of Playboy.

"I was coming from the forward galley," began Salazar, "and Mr. Gingrich was in seat 3D, in the rear of the first class section. I heard this quiet slapping noise and looked over the seat to see him [Gingrich] playing with himself. He [Gingrich] glanced up at me, smirked, and quickly covered himself with the magazine." Salazar immediately reported the incident to the flight crew.

Standard procedure for most domestic flight disturbances is to contact the arrival airport's FBI airport liaison agent, who would then be waiting for the alleged perpetrator upon disembarkation. However, flight 882's captain, Dominick Rideout of Centennial, CO, chose not to report the incident because of Gingrich's celebrity and Rideout's personal political affiliations. Rideout was unavailable for comment but his co-pilot, Deborah Kiley, stated that Rideout was recently reprimanded for wearing a Rick Perry button pinned to his uniform. Kiley confirmed that Salazar reported the instance and Rideout's neglect to forward the information. "Rideout," Kiley opined, "is the closest thing to an airborne fascist since Goering swallowed the cyanide."

According to Salazar, the first-class section was almost empty except for Gingrich and a few of his staffers. Gingrich was flying from Chicago, IL to Boston, MA where a motorcade was waiting to drive Gingrich to a Londonderry, NH, campaign stop tomorrow. Gingrich began his day in Des Moines, IA, after last night's Republican debate.

Phone calls to Gingrich campaign headquarters went unanswered.

Hollywood 1965: The Way We Lived Then

Documentary filmmaker Luke Sacher, son of director Carole Langer and grandson of actor/director Abner Biberman, is working on a documentary surrounding the year 1965 titled "Hollywood 1965: The Way We Lived Then."

1965 was a pivotal, transitional year in world history. It was the year Buddhist monks immolated themselves in Vietnam, President Johnson signed the Great Society into being, Watts erupted in flames, Voshkods and Geminis orbited the earth, and Courrèges costumed the go-go getters.

Sacher's documentary doesn't delve into world problems but, simply and simplistically, the scuttling of the studio system and the stars cast adrift in the Hollywood sea.

A few years ago, in an old self-indulgent webpage, I wrote regarding the period:

Social scientists classify 1964 as the last year of the baby boom: any child born after December 31, 1964 is arbitrarily designated a member of Generation X.

I was born in the ninth month of 1964.

Whatever label historians place on that particular moment in time, my mother insists that when I came along it ushered in a whole "new breed." She never fully explained what she meant, but I'll take it as a general comment on the era.

America was in a period of rapid transformation between the years 1963 and 1967. The delicate balance between naïveté and sophistication, modesty and vulgarity, sentimentality and ruthlessness became overwhelmingly weighted until the entire scale toppled over from the burden of post-WWII self-indulgence, pleasure seeking, and consumerism.

The center of the universe became a tract of ranch-style homes nestled between faults in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. Self-worth was measured by the make of car in the driveway. And the ideals of masculinity and femininity were embodied in Sean Connery's James Bond and the many "Bond girls" whom he seduced...

And I arrived in the middle of it.

Postscript to Lorna Lax

Obituary, March 21, 2003:

LAX, John Stephen - February, 10, 1918 to March 17, 2003. Born in Seattle, WA, decorated Air Force Colonel, John Lax leaves behind his beloved wife, Carla, his loving daughter, Maryann, his granddaughter Lora Nazarian of Novato, grandsons Dale Camden of Larkspur, John Camden of Phoenix, and Sean Camden of Novato. He also leaves six great-grand children, Katja and Aimee Nazarian, Erica and Ashley Camden, and Dayna and Russell Camden. His first wife Amy and his daughter Lorna preceded him in death by many years. John's family arrived in San Francisco in 1925 right in the middle of the Prohibition Era. He attended Mission High. He and his two brothers Will and Ernie owned a paint store on Irving Street in San Francisco and worked in the painting and decorating business all their lives. John's profitable hobby of restoring Porsche totals kept his yard on Kent Avenue filled with cars and friends from across the world. With the tragic death of his youngest daughter,Lorna in 1959, John retired from painting and turned to buying and selling property. He successfully lived by his motto of "Just get up and do something!" until several weeks before he passed. He will be missed. Arrangements handled by KEATON'S MORTUARY in San Rafael. 415-453-0571

Also: Sheriff Louis Mountanos, in this article dated August 4, 1960, states that "kids' tree houses are dens of iniquity." Of course, Lorna Lax and her infamous "fort" can't be far from his mind. Sheriff Mountanos died in 2001 at the age of 74.

The American Woman: 1962

Follow the busy woman of 1962 and the daily choices she makes to balance budget constraints with wants and needs. Funny, in 1962 everyone was white and lived in a television stage-set decorated by Pennsylvania House.

Jon-Erik Hexum (1957-1984)

A couple of helpings of corn served up by Joan Collins and Jon-Erik Hexum in a made-for-TV movie capitalizing on the burgeoning beefcake movement of the early 1980s. Was this objectification of the male physical ideal the effect of feminism or the influence of homosexual power-brokers in Hollywood? My nod goes to the gay elite...

Kay Dillon (Collins): “See…what it all adds up to is a return of that good old American commodity known as lust. Only this time, it’s turned around…with the accent on you men.”

Tyler Burnett (Hexum): “Lust.”

Kay Dillon: “Mmmhmmm…low-down but high-tone; heated but harmless. Lust.”

Jon-Erik Hexum went on to star as a Green Beret turned model in the CBS drama "Cover Up" with Jennifer O'Neill about a fashion photographer who uses her troupe of models as a front for espionage.