Sunday, July 18, 2010

My Reaction

I agree with Kimmel that there is a distinct time in everyone's lives when you aren't a child or an adult. Currently, I and pretty much all of my friends are in this in between stage so I can relate to what Kimmel is talking about. I don't really consider myself an adult in any way because, despite the fact I have moved out of the house, my dad still pays for my schooling, food, car, housing, etc. I worked for a while in high school, but I only worked to have money for concerts and silly stuff, nothing to try to live on. I really don't think I'll consider myself an adult until I don't have to have my dad pay for everything in my life. I also greatly agree with his ideas about why adolescence is starting earlier and ending later. When I was younger everyone would tell me to act like an adult, or grow up, or stop acting so childish, so I was forced to act older. In college now I'm still forced to act like an adult in the way that I interact with my professors and other students in class, but I still feel like a child because I'm not allowed to go out with the majority of them due to my age and my dad is still paying for everything.
This article posted in Newsweek in 2008 gives another interesting take on Kimmel's Guyland (the entire book). The man writing the article is about to get married, too young according to his friends. He is ready for the "happy family man" life, and his friends, those still stuck in Guyland, don't see that this is even a possibility. His explanation of his situation gives another interesting take on Guyland.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

What makes an adult?

In the article, Kimmel poses the question: When does someone actually become and adult? His answer was one that I don't think anyone could disagree with: "They become adults when they feel like adults." He explains this idea by saying that there is no one telling you where to go or what to do after college. You don't have professors or parents guiding your way and you really are required to just make your own path. Typically, this is when a person which actually become an adult. They go out on their own, they buy a house, get married, and have a whole new group of people dependent on them, as they were once dependent on their family. This website looks further into what an adult is and what benchmarks must be reached before someone can be considered an adult. In my opinion, as soon as you're responsible for yourself and can have people depend on you is when you're truly adult. Just because you have a kid or attend school doesn't mean you're ready for that point in your life.

Delayed Gratification

"I feel like my whole life has been one long exercise in delayed gratification"
-Matt

I can't imagine there's a kid in school at Georgia Tech who hasn't had this feeling. For me, I feel like it's especially true. My parent's put me in a private school in kindergarden so that I would be fed into a good high school (not the public one down the street from our house). I needed to go to a good high school so that I would get into a good college. But to get into that college I actually had to do well in high school. I finally make it out of high school and end up in college working as hard, if not harder, than before -- and still no reward. Even after I graduate here, I'll have to work a bunch of mediocre jobs before I can move on to (hopefully, someday) my dream job. In the text, Matt experiences almost the same thing. One upside though? This webMD site claims that the ability to handle delayed gratification is a sign of intelligence! At least there's something going for it. Bruce Springsteen's "Better Days" seems to capture this feeling of never quite reaching you reward perfectly in this video:


Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Genders in Guyland

"Girls live in Guyland--not the other way around." This is said as a side-note in the actual article, but I think that it's an important point to discuss. For the same reason as why we call a group of people 'guys' or why the generic term for the human race is 'mankind', girls don't live in guyland. Personally, I've found this to be almost entirely true. For example, look at the picture on the left. Nothing looks overly weird right? That's because it's just a girl wearing guy's clothes. Now take a look at the picture on the right. Something seem a little off? It's natural for a woman to be able to cross the gender line, to like sports, dress a little guy-ish, etc. As soon as a man crosses that like though, he looses all masculinity.

"Thirty is the New Twenty"?

Many movies have based their entire plot on making a joke about a male who refuses to grow up. In Van Wilder, he refuses to graduate and move on into the real world. Similarly, in Stepbrothers, the two 'kids' are actually over 30 year old men who refuse to move out and get a real job. Although we watch these movies only to get a good life, they pose a good point about our society, also brought up by Kimmel in Guyland: our society is entering adulthood later and later. Staying in school longer is necessary to get a good degree, but now that getting a job is harder to do, a lot of time it's required to move back in with the parents. In this website they discuss how to set rules with your adult living in the house. They talk about how to keep rules and basically how to deal with a child who just wont grow up. If you google 'adults living at home' there are thousands of other sites like this one. Obviously, Kimmel must be correct if this many parents are looking for help with their adults.

Guyland: A summary

Michal Kimmel defines Guyland as "both a social space and a stage of life." Guyland is the time for a male between being a child and being an adult, also commonly known as tweens, twixters, or adolescents. Initially, the article discusses how Guyland has changed over time; in present time, boys enter adolescence earlier and leave it later, marrying later, moving out of their parent's houses later, having kids later, etc. Guyland is a confusing time for most males because traditionally it is a time to 'find yourself' but the idea of not being secure and strong is a crime to anyone striving to be masculine. Boys rebel in this time to try to preserve their masculinity which is why education and parents seem irrelevant . By their late twenties though, most men eventually drift out of Guyland, entering the world of adulthood.