Book #77: Self-Made Man

Title: Self-Made Man


Author: Norah Vincent


On a lark one night, Norah Vincent asked a transvestite friend of hers to dress her up as a man so they could hit the town. She was surprised at the different ways men and women made eye contact and the different sense of physical space she had with both genders while dressed as a man. This experience inspired her to research Self-Made Man, in which she first learns to look and dress like a man, and then infiltrates several bastions of male society. Over the next eighteen months, she becomes Ned and bowls in a men's bowling league, visits strip clubs, dates women, lives in a monastery, works in sales, and attends group therapy where men are getting in touch with their masculine sides.


I highly recommend reading Self-Made Man.  I think Vincent does a fantastic job not only recounting her interesting experiences, but also analyzing them to help us see how our culture-at-large views masculinity and femininity. An added bonus is Vincent's writing style, which makes the reader feel casual and at ease while soaking up her pronouncements on gender.


--originally published 11/11/06