His name is Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. He was born on February 11，2019. He is a Canadian medical graduate and American football guard for the Kansas City Chiefs of the national Football League. He is the first medical graduate to play in the NFL and the first to win a Super Bowl. He started playing football at age 14 until now. He attended McGil university，and he has achieved a lot in football. He balanced college football with his studies in medicine, prolonging his studies over eight years. In a 2014 article in Sports Illustrated, Joan Nielsen said that he “was practicing just once a week – and he was still the best college player in Canada.

I saw the qualities of hard work, perseverance, courage, persistence, and patience in him. In this article, writer is described“successful in everything they do, especially in sports, work, and sexual ‘conquest’. Powerful men earn respect and admiration of the others.”(Status and Achievements.) Laurent fits every feature perfectly. His success in sports and his position in Canada have been very successful. He completed a highly difficult medical education and succeeded in sports. He is a very good example about this paragraph.

Marshall Mathers, widely known as Eminem, but he started off his career under the pseudonym “Slim Shady”. In this blog post we will be only talking about Slim Shady (referred to from now on as either “Slim” or “Shady”) Marshal’s public personality has changed during the years but when he started off as Shady he was the embodiment of the fourth American masculinity characteristic, as defined by Deborah David and Robert Brannon in their book (1976), “Adventurousness and Aggressiveness”.

In their text, they describe how masculinity is characterized by taking physical risks and becoming violent if necessary to achieve your goal. In the beginning of his hip-hop career, Slim did a lot of rap battles and was affiliated with street gangs, he embodied this masculine ideology with his dangerous behaviour and surrounded himself with the same type of people. As we know, there are many stories about rappers from that area being killed or beaten up just to send a message, even good friends of Shady. Back then, rap wasn’t only their way to express themselves through music, it was about honour and territory, and of course what better way to protect your territory and your friends than with violence? Or so would this particular characteristic of masculinity imply.

Another thing that helps provide a good example of why Shady is the embodiment of “aggressiveness and adventurousness” is the way he used to act in public, in interviews and in his songs/videoclips. Masculinity “discourages respect for authority and rules” (as mentioned in David and Brannon’s book) and this is exactly what Slim Shady did whenever he got the chance, and this is how he gained success. In interviews, he would insult the interviewer, he would say controversial things that weren’t previously discussed and use inappropriate for television slang language. Also, much like the picture shown above, there are lots of images of him from that period in his life making inappropriate hand gestures. His song “Just don’t give a fuck” resumes well the character and his philosophy about life at that period.

The expression “Give ‘em Hell” mentioned in the book is used to refer to the encouragement for male violence and it is interesting that even Slim Shady has used the exact same expression in a few of his songs. For instance “Cleaning out my closet” where in the first few verses he encourages children to “give hell” to their parents. The full verse is “give ‘em hell ‘long as I’m breathing” where he kind of refers to himself as the creator of chaos and authority disrespect, in my opinion.

To conclude, of course Slim Shady was just a stage name and stage character portrayed by Marshall Mathers. His ideologies were purely entertainment and success oriented and even though he had the very difficult life that led him to this path, he in no way encouraged or even wished for any of his fans to become like him. He made sure people knew that with certain passages in songs like “Role Model”, “My Name Is” and many others.

a good counter-exemple of antifeminity is Denis Mukwege

When we think of men, we often think of inexpressiveness and independence (Brannon, David, 1976). Once such movie character that embodies this idea is James Bond. He never needs or seeks help from others, but solves his problems all by himself. Also, when he is put under extreme pressure, he still manages to stay in control, without cracking or showing emotions.

One movie character that shows the opposite behavior of James Bond is Spencer from Jumanji. He is not confident and depends heavily on his friends to solve problems. In fact, when he is “sucked” into the video game, he soon realizes that he must find a way to get out of it. However, he panics and loses control of his emotions and relies on others to solve the problem. Only thanks to the help of his friends does he finally regain composure and confidence.

Ed Sheeran is a singer-songwriter born on February 17th 1991 in the United Kingdom and is known for songs such as “Shape of you” and “thinking out loud” Ed gained popularity on Youtube and released his debut album + in September 2011. His second album, x became the second best selling album worldwide in 2015. Ed is one of the world’s best selling music artists having sold over 150 million records and having two albums in the list of best-selling albums in UK chart history.

Ed is a good counter argument for men being adventurous and aggressive as he does not demonstrate typical aggressive characteristics and is a very kind and gentle person. Ed is from a catholic family and sang in his local church choir from the age of four. He keeps his personal life private and is completely inactive on social media when he is working on new music. He does not try to flaunt his fame and does not make aggressive music. His goal is just to spend time with the people he loves and play music that puts a smile on people faces while remaining humble.

The textbook describes masculinity as “a willingness to take (physical) risks and become violent if necessary”. Ed is the opposite of this as he has never been a violent person. He always stays humble and genuine during interviews and does not yell at paparazzi. His songs are most often calm and about love. He des not write about violence nor act in such a way. For these reasons I believe him to be a good example against aggressive and adventurous masculinity.

References

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Sheeran

https://www.quora.com/How-is-Ed-Sheeran-in-person