17 Again

Recently, I re-watched the comedy 17 Again and just realized how men have to endure the overwhelming social pressure to display masculinity. For those that haven’t seen the movie, it is about man who gets a second shot in life by returning to the glorious high school days. Through the lives of Mike in his 30s and 17s, I saw how hegemonic masculinity is defined by being at the top of the game. In high school, being at the top means being in a sport team and dating cheerleaders. Stan, the high school bully, never appears without his basketball for it is a clear indication of strength and status. While he is comfortable asserting violence on the weak, he is intimidated and timid when the ball is taken away by Mark (Mike’s 17 year old version). In the adult world men’s power is measured on the scale of social and economic power. No one at his workplace cares how Mike was a star of the basketball team in high school or how good he was with girls. Power is legitimized by workplace position, which makes Mike as a loser in the adult world when he loses his promotion to a woman.

But the movie raises an interesting approach to male’s presentation of masculinity. Stan, in order to project his masculinity, constantly shows homophobic attitudes and violence; his masculinity is defined by the subordination of socially less-valued types of masculinities. Nonetheless, all of his victims are on the weak side. If he were a true man he would have picked on someone of his own size. As Mark pointed out later that “underneath all those male brovado, there’s an insecure little girl just banging on the closet door trying to get out”. Hence, masculinity is just a product of insecurity, of fear of being recognized as the weak, feminine one in the world of men.

The movie also depicts how women are often seen as burdens to men’s success. For all his failures in life, Mike blame his wife for his lost opportunities, all things that he could have done without her. When his wife told him that he didn’t have to marry her in the first place, Mike answered “Yeah, but I did”, as if marrying her was an act of justice, a favor he did for her. Moreover, it portrays how society limits the rights of women and its skeptical, harsh judgment on them. When Mike’s wife was finally starting out fresh by looking for new man, Mike commented that: “if this was Afghanistan she’d be dragged to the street by goats with her hands cut off for planning on running around with every guy she can get her hands on”. Thus, even though we lived in a developed, civilized society, many of us are still narrow-minded on the subject of gender and equality, and allowing old-fashioned stereotypes and generalizations to be the foundations of our perceptions.