Real men get help when it’s needed – as it so often is
By Tom Krattenmaker
Americans are having an overdue conversation about what it means to be a man, just in time for the gladiatorial spectacle that might best represent old-school masculinity: the Super Bowl.
In the midst of a cultural revolution elevating more women to center stage and seats of power, and alongside very recent arguments about Gillette’s TV commercial against toxic masculinity, pro basketball star Kevin Love and a handful of other famous male athletes are trying to reclaim “locker room talk.”
It’s refreshing to hear sports giants opening up about anxiety, depression and other struggles. They are part of many men’s lives but are kept, for the most part, hidden in closets while generation after generation of boys and men is trained to stalk life with hard shells on their bodies, masks on their faces and chips on their shoulders.
What better symbol than the Super Bowl?
Sunday’s clash between the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots is not only a championship football game but also a celebration of rugged masculine values. Upwards of 100 million people will watch massive, battle-clad warriors crashing into each other to control territory, impose their will, and knock their opponents to the ground. Except for the surnames on the backs of their jerseys, they appear largely anonymous on the field, concealed by their pads and helmets and the bars of their face masks.
A few will get injured, maybe so badly they’ll need to be carted off the field. Most will feel pain — but not so much that they can’t grit their teeth and carry on. The coaches and fans expect nothing less. How would you feel as a fan if your team’s key player sat out the crucial fourth quarter because his knee hurt?
In locker rooms as on the field, it’s the players who are strong, stoic and invincible — those who “play through pain” — who win the respect of their coaches and teammates. But what happens if an injury is not a strained hamstring but a mental health wound like anxiety or depression?
His willingness to brave the stigma is what makes Kevin Love’s campaign to reclaim “locker room talk” so surprising and impressive. This five-time NBA All-Star, through a series of video interviews with fellow male athletes and a much discussed article in The Players’ Tribune, is challenging what he calls the “playbook.”
Talking openly about inner struggles is first step
“Growing up, you figure out really quickly how a boy is supposed to act,” Love writes. “You learn what it takes to ‘be a man.’ It’s like a playbook: Be strong. Don’t talk about your feelings. Get through it on your own. So for 29 years of my life, I followed that playbook. … These values about men and toughness are so ordinary that they’re everywhere … and invisible at the same time, surrounding us like air or water. They’re a lot like depression or anxiety in that way.”
During a timeout in a game last season, Love felt his heart racing and struggled to catch his breath. The arena was spinning; he could only dimly make out what the coach was saying. Instead of re-entering the game, he ran in panic to the locker room, where he lay on his back and struggled to breathe.
After a trip to the hospital and learning what felled him, Love was relieved to know that he was physically OK — and that virtually no one knew what caused his exit from the game. But then he asked himself: Why was he so intent on keeping his panic attack secret?
Since then, he has been talking openly and publicly about the experience, along with the depression and anxiety that have followed him his whole life. He has been encouraging other men to do the same.
Trump gave us locker room talk at its worst
This work to reclaim locker room talk deserves to go much further — to locker rooms throughout colleges, high schools and youth sports, and to the locker room talk that happens every day well beyond the confines of actual locker rooms.
Credit our president for highlighting locker room talk at its worst. You will recall what candidate Trump said to justify the “Access Hollywood” tape that captured him bragging about grabbing women by the genitals. Mere “locker room banter,” he shrugged.
If that’s locker room talk, then it’s time to reform locker room talk. Same for locker room talk at schools and workplaces, or on social media that prizes impressive feats of competitive striving and awesome accomplishments while shaming confessions of struggle and disappointment.
Suffer-in-silence, show-no-weakness masculinity is increasingly revealed as a bad play. Check the stat sheets. There you’ll see alarmingly high rates of depression and suicide among men, not to mention declining life expectancy.
No more masks and fake invulnerability. No more suffering pain in silence. No more oversize attempts at demonstrating superiority over women and less athletic men. No more joining in or laughing along with grab-’em-by-the-sex-parts brag fests.
Healthy masculinity in the 21st century revolves around the truth that strength is found in openness about our struggles, and that real men ask for help when it’s needed. As it so often is.
Tom Krattenmaker, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, directs communications at Yale Divinity School. His latest book is “Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower.” Follow him on Twitter: @TKrattenmaker.