the case for the soft man
From Adam Brody to Love Is Blind's Freddie, we're finally seeing some emotionally available men on our screens.
If you know me outside of this newsletter, you’ll know for the last decade I’ve covered a lot of reality TV, particularly dating shows. During that time I’ve had a very interesting relationship with my work and building boundaries and expectations around it.
I used to throw everything into the coverage, watching episodes multiple times to not miss little details for recaps, and I shudder to think how many hours of Married At First Sight I’ve actually watched in this lifetime. While people think it’s fun to be paid to watch TV, it’s also ruined a lot of my attention span and ability to watch and engage with other shows without everything just feeling like work. And admittedly, sometimes watching these shows has had a negative impact on how I see dating and relationships.
After a really bad breakup, watching toxic men on shows like MAFS became a trigger every episode. The extremely toxic 2020 season of MAFS was the final catalyst to my eventual burnout, new therapist, and learning how to consume TV without making it personal. When you’re watching dating shows and toxic situations play out, while some people can see it solely as entertainment, a lot of the time I was seeing it as a very accurate representation of the relationships I had been in, and what it’s like to be single and dating out in the modern world. I’d love to say I was grossed out every time a man lied, cheated, or gaslit his partner on the show, but instead for me it was just a dull resignation and acceptance that this is how it goes.
When I started this newsletter, it was to just poke fun at the shit people (cough, men, cough) were saying on the apps, but over the years it’s become a real eye-opener as I chat to both men and women about being single and navigating dating. I often think (heterosexual) millennials are on the interesting cusp of generational change when it comes to dating. I know men who are still quite traditionalist, who still believe in provider roles, who while not openly disrespecting women, tend to still have outdated opinions on gender dynamics. They then struggle to understand their emotions because they’ve grown up repressing them in order to “be a man”. We’re all victims of the same patriarchy at the end of the day and a lot of that stuff is ingrained in different TV shows: whether it’s badly behaving grooms on MAFS, men (and women) with attachment issues on Love Is Blind or The Ultimatum, or even fictional shows like Grey’s Anatomy showing us male characters with god-like complexes that treat the women in their life as inferior.
The case for the sensitive man
Right now, ICYMI, the internet is in love with Adam Brody again after his portrayal of the hot Rabbi Noah on Netflix’s Nobody Wants This. Why has this got so many het women turning into melting puddles of heart-eyed emojis? Simply because Brody’s Rabbi is emotionally intelligent, expressive, and soft. He’s not toxic, he’s not aggressively masculine, and he communicates with his love interest with curiousity and openness. It’s not to say he’s perfect — there’s a certain level of dialogue and scenes on the show that are unrealistic but it’s also a fictional interpretation of a real-life love story, so take it with a grain of salt.
Some people are focusing heavily on the fact that Noah does have flaws and isn’t perfect, as a way to trump the people who are praising seeing a more non-toxic male on screens. “But he is toxic,” people are saying. “He’s putting pressure on her to convert. He moved on too soon from his ex. He handles things too well and that’s not sustainable.”
While all of the above are accurate points, I don’t think it derives from the point that we were due to see a softer portrayal of a heterosexual man on our TV screens. Whether it’s unattainable or not in real life, it’s been a nice break to watch a realistic love story play out about flawed characters who meet later in life, and communicate their wants and needs in a relatively healthy enough fashion. While some people may be sitting there slamming the characters and saying the bar is low (which it obviously is) it’s still representative enough of the struggles of modern-day dating.
Because yes, the bar is low. If a whole collective of millennial women are swooning over the fact Brody’s character said he could “handle” Kristen Bell’s character’s avoidance and quirks and insecurities, of course that is disastrous proof that the bar is low. Shouting about the bar being low isn’t going to fix it — but seeing a healthier representation of well-rounded masculinity on our TVs may help ease the burden.
After a few years of being glued to Love Is Blind, the UK version was released this year and was a welcome relief from the previous US seasons before it. While it’s unlikely we’ll see an Australian version any time soon (Aussies are far too emotionally repressed for a show like this, let’s be real) the introduction of males like Freddie and Bobby on Love Is Blind was another step in the right direction.
From Bobby’s calm and sensitive approach to to Jasmine’s past trauma and her mum’s overbearing nature, to Freddie’s close relationship with his siblings and his empathy and compassion for his job as a funeral director, even in the face of people making fun of his career path, watching these types of male portrayals has been far more enjoyable and needed than it has been previously when we’ve seen the more grating characters like Sam from the UK version, or superficial people like Shake from the US series.
I often say that heterosexuality is a prison, which it is — it’s not to shit on just men but it’s to open the dialogue on how we all got to this place of bare minimum effort, emotional repression, and toxic dating behaviours.
For a lot of single people out there now who have been in the trenches of dating and failed relationships, it’s scary to be vulnerable. It’s easier to have one foot out the door at all times. It’s harder than ever to imagine meeting someone compatible who you can make it work with, so instead it’s easier to bury yourself in work, life and other distractions.
So if watching a character like Adam Brody’s Noah gives people some hope, while showing a representation of a man that a lot of people would actually love to fall for, I don’t think there’s any need to discredit that for others. Maybe it’s just the start of helping raise the bar for everyone after it’s been buried six-feet under for so long.
Parting words…
