Despite what I was told by my father, who was told by my grandfather, who was told by my grandfather's father, women don't need (and likely never needed) a man to provide for them; they want one to. And though the difference between need and want may be convoluted on paper, the distinction could not be any more clear for men living in the modern day. We know we're a nice-to-have and it's sent us into an identity crisis. We're lost. There's no map showing us the path to our purpose, no compass helping us navigate the ever-changing landscape of society, and no North Star of manhood leading by example. If not the providers we were generationally reinforced to be, what are we as men living in 2023?
We're failed men. We're men without role models. We're men of culture, not family. We're men so starved for purpose, we've confused what we consume with our identity. We're men who've packaged our most palatable interests to be re-consumed by other men, only furthering the problem. We're the Patagonia-repping, sandal-wearing, church-on-wednesday-going men. We're the Tesla-driving, Kanye-West-rapping, golf-course-deal-closing men. We're the beer-loving-but-bud-light-hating, girl-chasing, flip-between-games-on-Saturday men. We're one dimensional, one note, and one color. We're monochrome men.
And it's damn easy being a monochrome man. You don't have to strip away the distraction of the world to unearth your authentic self, by yourself, you just have to consume and consume and consume. And the more you do, the sooner a pseudo-identity emerges, one that helps you know yourself and society know you. You have an identity -- no matter how superficial — to fall back on and give you a sense of belonging, and society has an identity that's simple, typical, and digestible to understand (because who doesn't want to eat off a silver platter?). Being a monochrome man feeds our primal need for internal and external validation, but is that what we want for ourselves?
No.
Great men are not average, nor palatable, nor in search of validation. They're atypical, abrasive, and sure of themselves. They're multi-dimensional, nuanced, and colorful. They're blue and red and green all at once. They're monochrome men. Full of only color, not one color. That's the kind of man I want to be. I want to stop being needed, so I can be wanted. I want to have opinions and not be afraid to share them. I want to discover what I don't know and question what I know to be true. I want to talk about things I find fascinating, even if you don't. I want to consume, but do so on my own terms. The Monochrome Man will be my outlet to do just that. I'll drop an article a week about random shit I think is cool — it could be about sports, technology, politics or pop culture. I'll cover the mainstream headlines through a non-mainstream lens and delve into the obscure stories that get buried in the news cycle. I'll take a departure from traditional news writing, embracing conversationalism over professionalism, as if it's two buddies catching up over a beer. And I'll hope it'll give us the chance to evaluate what we allow to form our identity and the opportunity to build a new, better, more colorful one.
In pursuit of living a life only in color,
The Monochrome Man