“This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
First, a question for the fellows before we begin.
What defines your manhood? Is it the amount of money you make? Is it your incredible physique? Your sexual prowess? Or is it the relationship you share with your wife, your partner, your kids? Take a second and think about it as we proceed.
In a previous post, I entered into a discussion of musician D’Angelo and his incredible decline since his last and, to date, final CD. Black Women, Blow the Trumpet! (BWBT!) made the very cogent and discerning observation of the deeply flawed notion and detriment of defining masculinity through physicality which D'Angelo essentially did beginning with the marketing campaign of his second CD, Voodoo.
After reading her observation, I recognized the complicity implied by my basically eliding the subject altogether, especially since D’Angelo’s video in which he is featured naked is such a watershed moment in his career. The video worked to fix a certain image of masculinity in the public imagination.
At the time I wrote the post, I did recognize the connection between D’Angelo’s masculinity and his physicality, but since it was outside the scope of the post, I decided to just ignore it. However, at the tacit urging of BWBT!, I will discuss it here.
The D’Angelo featured in that video is not the real D’Angelo; it is but a figment of his record company’s promotional department’s imagination and was meant simply to sell records.
Those who knew D’Angelo from the very beginning invariably describe him as a introverted, pudgy, doughy church boy with tremendous musical talent who wanted most of all to create music. His first CD, Brown Sugar, did well, however, not as well as the record company would have liked, so enter the promotional department.
The promotional departement thought it was best to remake and remarket D'Angelo. As he recorded his second CD, he also worked out with a personal trainer which resulted in the incredible physique we see in the video. The idea behind the video was to reintroduce him and open up new markets for his music, namely women. In other words, sex sells. Let's try it.
At this point D'Angelo's masculinity is literally constructed. Who he was or was to be was dictated to him by the record company. He is no longer himself, but a gross caricature of the original.
D’Angelo expressed a high-level of discomfort about doing the video from the very beginning, but nevertheless, he capitulated. And the video did what it was supposed to do. D’Angelo managed to sell millions of CD’s, making him a very wealthy man, and began to play sold-out concerts around the world. But in the process, he lost himself.
To promote his new CD, D’Angelo embarked on an eight month tour. His shows during that tour are described as nothing less than three hour musical extravaganzas. His performances received rave reviews from everyone except his new fans who came to know him through that video; they only wanted to see the naked video D’Angelo. It’s stated that as soon as the concert started, these new fans began to shower the stage with panties, bras, hotel keys and other unmentionables and screaming for him to take something off.
The further he got into his set, the deeper he got into his groove, the more his new fans were displeased. It was no longer about the music, and this upset him to no end, the effect of which could not truly be known at that time. ?uestlove, drummer for the hip-hop group The Roots, goes on record as stating, “He would get angry and start breaking shit. The audience thinking, ‘Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!’ made him angry.”
Sometime during or after the tour, the downward spiral began. The alcohol and drug abuse increased as did the alienation from his family, friends, and the mothers of his children. Somewhere in the whole scheme of things, he managed to loose himself as well as his art.
Now, let’s return to our earlier question: Through what do you define your manhood, your masculinity? If you stripped away all the layers, if we took away the money, the cars, the sexuality, the physique, the looks—all those things you define your manhood by—what would you find?
When the externals are all stripped away, when you stand butt ass naked with your masculinity fully exposed, what will the world see? What is the real you?
Too often we as men and especially we as African American men add unneeded pressure and stress to an already hectic life because we look outside ourselves to define our manhood, our masculinity, instead of just looking within. We allow others to decide how we should look and behave. And in the process of pursuing this dream, this ideal, we manage to loose ourselves. All the while the real person remains lost inside, naked, cold, and shivering.
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