Masculinity is having a comeback, but it’s not a return, it’s a re-enactment. A dress-up game played with cowboy hats, double-breasted suits, and workwear jackets that have never seen a day of actual labor. It’s hollow, performative, and almost embarrassing in its lack of depth.
Oh, you didn’t know masculinity was back? I guess we hated it so much for the past decade that we had to silently slip it through the door again.
Oh, you didn’t notice? You missed the sudden resurgence of classic menswear tailoring, the endless parade of ties, the inexplicable boom in leather blazers, stiff collars, and suiting, as if Wall Street had staged a cultural coup.
Oh, you didn’t catch the wild west fever dream that ran rampant across every. single. runway? Cowboys, everywhere. Prada, Louis Vuitton, AMIRI, Margiela, CELINE. A stampede of boots, fringe, and ten-gallon hats, as if fashion had collectively decided that the only way to reintroduce masculinity was through a Western fantasy sequence.
This wasn’t random. This was a tacit, carefully curated reintroduction of the masculine, not through discourse, not through meaning, but through aesthetic nostalgia, spoon-fed to us through design and marketing until we accepted its return without question.
Because here’s the thing, we spent the last decade rejecting masculinity outright, branding it as toxic, unnecessary, and outdated. And now, after starving ourselves of it long enough, it seems we might want it back, but we no longer know what it actually means.
So we’re reviving its corpse instead.
We need to talk about why this happened, what’s really going on, and why the future of masculinity isn’t in the past. It’s in understanding what we lost, what we distorted, and what needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
The Fear of Power: Why Culture is Terrified of Masculinity
Masculinity is inherently powerful. Not just in physicality, but in presence, in restraint, in its ability to lead, protect, and build. And power, especially power that doesn’t apologize for itself, is a cultural landmine.
Modern society thrives on flattening hierarchies, everything must be collaborative, inclusive, neutralized. Power dynamics, when not carefully managed, are viewed as threats. And masculinity, for better or worse, has always been intertwined with power.
But here’s the issue:
Masculinity isn’t just power, it’s the projection of power. It’s what people assume it will do, rather than what it actually does. And that assumption is shaped by centuries of control, conquest, and violence, by histories of patriarchy and oppression, by every moment where masculinity was wielded not as a force of creation, but as a tool of domination.
So, naturally, when society began re-evaluating power structures, masculinity got put on trial. It was deemed dangerous. Suspicious. Something that needed to be neutralized, softened, diluted.
This, in my opinion, led to a massive overcorrection, a cultural impulse to erase masculinity entirely rather than redefine it into something evolved, constructive, and necessary.
Masculinity had to be made harmless to be acceptable. So we castrated it.
We mocked it in media until strong male figures were either villains or jokes.
We reframed traditional masculine traits like ambition, decisiveness, and assertiveness as aggressive, outdated, oppressive.
We encouraged men to be less, to take up less space, to speak less, to lead less, without ever offering an alternative for how masculinity could exist without these things.
And then we wondered why so many men seemed lost, withdrawn, or overcompensating in cartoonish ways.
But here’s the unspoken truth, you cannot erase an intrinsic force without consequences.
And now, because we spent years rejecting masculinity outright, we’ve invited a cheapened, aestheticized version of it back in.
Not as something meaningful. Not as something integrated, useful, or self-aware.
But as a costume, a vibe, a Pinterest mood board of “manhood” that doesn’t actually mean anything.
And that’s why we’re here, playing dress-up instead of dealing with the real thing.
The Pendulum Swings: The Endless Cycle of Rejection, Revival, and the Way We Dress
A Brief History of Dressing Like a Man (or Not)
The 1950s gave us the suit-and-tie patriarch, neatly packaged in pressed wool and pomade. Masculinity was about order, stability, and never letting anyone see you cry. If you were a man, you wore a suit, end of discussion.
Then came the 1960s and 70s, fueled by a cocktail of war protests, hallucinogens, and a deep resentment for everything your father stood for. Masculinity unbuttoned itself, literally. Free love, gender fluidity, bell-bottoms, long hair, and a general disdain for belts. The hippie aesthetic was masculinity rejecting its own stiffness, embracing a softer, more "open-minded" vibe that often smelled like patchouli and questionable decision-making.
But, as always, rebellion doesn’t last forever. The 1980s snapped masculinity back into high-definition with power suits, boardroom dominance, and cocaine budgets disguised as “expense accounts.” The Wall Street wolf archetype took center stage, broad-shouldered and ruthless. If you weren’t trying to crush your enemies and buy a second yacht, were you even a man?
The 1990s hit the brakes, because sincerity is embarrassing and nobody wanted to look like their dad’s finance bro era. Enter grunge, skate culture, and the anti-fashion movement. Masculinity became apathetic, brooding, and dressed in thrift store flannel, rejecting the cold, transactional capitalism of the previous decade.
The 2000s and early 2010s Frankensteined masculinity from whatever scraps were lying around. Slim tailoring came back, streetwear became the new power code, and the Y2K aesthetic turned masculinity into a hyper-consumerist glitch, with oversized jeans, ironic logos, trucker hats, and enough branding to make a gas station look minimalist.
And then, something different happened.
The late 2010s didn’t just reject one version of masculinity, it tried to erase masculinity altogether.
Men’s fashion blurred beyond recognition. Silhouettes softened, tailoring disappeared, and the "men’s" and "women’s" sections merged into one amorphous blob of deconstructed, genderless, capital-F Fashion. And for a while, it seemed like masculinity, at least the way we used to understand it, was on its way to total dissolution.
And now? Now we’re crawling back.
After a decade of being told masculinity was toxic, unnecessary, and outdated, we’ve done what every starving person does when they realize they’ve cut themselves off from essential nutrients, we’ve started binge-eating the past.
But here’s the problem.
We didn’t bring masculinity back, we brought back its aesthetic corpse.
We raided the closets of past generations, scavenging for something, anything, that still felt like masculinity, because we’ve been too culturally timid to create something new.
That’s why we’re drowning in cowboy boots, bolo ties, and raw denim like extras in a Coen brothers film.
That’s why every other dude under 35 looks like he’s auditioning for The Wolf of Wall Street reboot.
That’s why workwear is having a moment, despite the fact that the most "labor" we do is typing aggressively on MacBooks.
This isn’t a revival, it’s a retreat.
We’ve swung so hard away from masculinity that, now that we want it back, we don’t actually know how to reintroduce it in a way that makes sense for the modern world.
So, instead of defining what masculinity should look like today, we’ve dressed up in its old uniforms, because those were the last versions of masculinity that hadn’t been dismantled, mocked, or guilt-tripped into irrelevance.
And that’s why it all feels so forced.
It’s not real masculinity, it’s cosplaying masculinity.
The real question isn’t why masculinity is making a comeback.
The real question is, why does it feel so staged?
Because when something is real, it doesn’t need a costume.
Why We Resurrected Masculinity as Aesthetic Instead of Meaning
Because meaning is dangerous.
Because redefining masculinity requires confronting uncomfortable truths, about power, about gender, about what we actually want from men but are too afraid to say out loud.
Because it’s easier to wear masculinity than to live it.
Think about it. If we had a real conversation about masculinity, we’d have to admit some inconvenient things,
That masculinity was never purely toxic, but that reducing it to toxicity made it easier to discard.
That masculinity was always an evolving force, but that we decided to freeze it in outdated archetypes and burn the whole thing down instead of letting it adapt.
That masculinity never actually disappeared, it just got repackaged into safer, more socially acceptable forms, silenced in public, performed in private.
A real conversation about masculinity would mean reckoning with the damage we did by treating it as something disposable, and frankly, no one wanted to take that risk.
So instead, we did what we always do when we’re too afraid to confront something head-on,
We trivialized it, we commodified it, we turned it into a product, a moodboard, a lookbook.
Because you can’t cancel a leather jacket, you can’t accuse a pair of cowboy boots of being problematic.
So masculinity came back not as a conversation, but as a consumer choice, a controlled demolition of meaning, where all the depth, responsibility, and purpose of masculinity was stripped away, leaving behind just enough aesthetic nostalgia to sell back to us.
This is why the revival feels so hollow.
It wasn’t about men reclaiming their place in the world, it was about making masculinity palatable again, by reducing it to something purely decorative.
No real discussion, no real substance, just a well-marketed rebrand, spoon-fed back to us in carefully curated Instagram feeds.
We brought masculinity back this way because it was the safest, easiest way to do it.
Because meaning is dangerous.
And we haven’t yet decided if we’re ready to handle that.
The Commercialization of Masculinity: Why Brands Are Selling You a Hollow Image
Since we brought masculinity back as an aesthetic rather than a lived experience, brands wasted no time turning it into a product, not a presence. They didn’t ask what masculinity actually means today, they just dusted off its old uniforms, adjusted the fit, and slapped a premium price tag on them.
And because no one bothered to redefine masculinity beyond its aesthetic, we’re left with a closet full of symbols and absolutely no substance to fill them.
Masculinity for Sale: Symbols Over Substance
Brands saw the cultural hunger for masculinity and did what brands do best, they exploited it. Instead of engaging with masculinity as something to be understood, evolved, or embodied, they flattened it into a moodboard and started selling tickets to the performance.
Want to feel like a rugged, self-reliant man? Buy some raw denim and a trucker jacket.
Want to radiate old-money power? Here’s a double-breasted suit and a pair of loafers.
Want to tap into outlaw masculinity? Here’s a cowboy hat and some overpriced Western boots.
But that’s all it is, costume design for a character no one is actually playing.
We’ve resurrected masculinity the same way we resurrect long-dead trends, not because they serve us, but because they remind us of a time when we weren’t so lost.
Brands aren’t selling masculinity, they’re selling nostalgia, the comforting illusion of a time when men had a defined role, a clear purpose, and an identity that wasn’t up for debate.
Except, none of it actually functions.
The guy in $1,300 workwear boots has never stepped foot on a job site.
The guy in a three-piece suit barely knows how to hold a conversation without looking at his phone.
The guy in a cowboy hat wouldn’t last five minutes on a ranch.
We’re wearing masculinity, but we aren’t living it.
Why It All Feels So Forced
The reason these aesthetics feel costumey, disconnected, and designed for Instagram more than real life is because they exist in a vacuum. They are floating signifiers, stripped of the world that once gave them meaning.
The cowboy meant something when masculinity was tied to survival, self-reliance, and frontier independence.
The banker meant something when finance was the gateway to status, ambition, and social dominance.
The tradesman meant something when masculinity was defined by competence, skill, and physicality.
Now? These aesthetics aren’t attached to anything, they’re just empty gestures, aesthetic souvenirs from an era we don’t actually understand.
That’s why the revival feels disingenuous, like a masculinity LARP with good lighting and luxury price points. It’s not about stepping into a real, modern vision of masculinity, it’s about wearing an easily recognizable facsimile of one.
And that’s exactly how brands like it.
Because if masculinity ever became real again, if men actually lived it instead of just dressing for the part, they wouldn’t need brands to tell them who they are.
And there’s nothing more dangerous to an industry built on selling identity than a generation of men who no longer need to buy one.
Masculinity in Media: The Villain & The Buffoon
If brands gutted masculinity and sold back its hollowed-out corpse, media ensured there was nothing left to resurrect.
For the past few decades, masculinity has been squeezed into a binary so absurd it would be comical if it weren’t so culturally catastrophic. It’s either a threat or a joke, there’s no in-between.
You know the script.
The Villain: The Toxic Tyrant
This is masculinity as a power-hungry, emotionally stunted, borderline sociopathic oppressor. The CEO who steps on throats for sport, the brute with a clenched jaw and zero empathy, the guy whose only mode of communication is a menacing grunt. He’s cold, cruel, and hell-bent on domination. If he’s not actively destroying people, he’s looming in the shadows, waiting for his chance to strike.
He exists to be hated, feared, dismantled.
The Buffoon: The Neutered Fool
Then there’s the other option, the emasculated punchline, the guy who doesn’t know how to open a jar without his wife’s help. The clueless dad, the bumbling husband, the “nice guy” whose backbone dissolved somewhere between his therapist’s office and the Whole Foods checkout line. He’s infantilized, aimless, and barely functioning.
He exists to be pitied, ridiculed, ignored.
These are your choices. Cartoonish aggression or spineless incompetence, predator or punchline.
What’s missing?
The actual men, the ones who balance strength with intelligence, presence with restraint, ambition with wisdom. The ones who can lead without controlling, dominate without oppressing. The ones who stand firm in who they are without needing to bulldoze or apologize for it.
They’ve been erased, or worse, they’ve been rewritten into something unrecognizable.
Masculinity: Deconstructed but Never Rebuilt
Media has spent decades dissecting, critiquing, and tearing masculinity apart, but it never bothered to put it back together. We were told everything masculinity shouldn’t be, but no one ever defined what it should be.
It’s been mocked, vilified, diminished, but never reimagined in a way that makes sense for the modern world.
We were told traditional masculinity was outdated, but were never given a new model.
We were told strength could be toxic, but were never shown how it could also be noble.
We were told men needed to evolve, but were given no vision for what that evolution actually looks like.
So masculinity didn’t disappear, it just became a void. A cultural black hole where an identity should be.
And you know who loves a void? Brands.
Because once something has been stripped of meaning, it’s that much easier to sell back as a commodity.
The moment masculinity became undefined, brands swooped in to define it for us with cowboy boots, Wall Street suits, and workwear jackets that have never seen a day of actual labor.
And we bought it, because what else was there?
This is why the modern man dresses like masculinity instead of embodying it. He’s playing dress-up because he was never given a real script.
And the scariest part?
No one is leading the conversation to fix it.
Masculinity has been deconstructed, commodified, and left to rot. If you want to bring it back in a way that actually means something, you’re going to have to do it yourself.
The Complicity of Men: Silence, Passivity, and the Failure to Push Back
Let’s get one thing straight, masculinity didn’t just get hijacked, gutted, and sold for parts overnight. Men let it happen.
They stood by as masculinity was stripped down to a cultural scapegoat, reduced to either a punchline or a cautionary tale. They watched as media framed them as buffoons and villains, as brands watered them down into hollow archetypes, as their presence became something to apologize for, and they did nothing.
Why? Because speaking up carried risk. Because it was easier to stay quiet than to be labeled "toxic." Because passivity was rewarded, while any attempt to defend or even define masculinity was met with side-eyes and cancellation threats.
So men folded. They chose silence over resistance, letting other people decide what masculinity should be. And, spoiler alert, the people doing the rewriting had either contempt for it, no real understanding of it, or were just looking for a way to monetize it.
And here we are.
Masculinity was put on trial, found guilty of every societal ill, and instead of fighting for its evolution, men responded with one of two losing strategies:
They shrank, made themselves smaller, softer, more palatable, and apologized for taking up space. They mistook erasure for progress.
They overcompensated. Instead of redefining masculinity with intelligence and presence, they clung to its aesthetic husk, growing mustaches, hoarding workwear, and playing cowboy in curated Instagram grids.
Neither option was real. Neither option built anything new.
And that’s the real crime, not that masculinity was attacked, but that men failed to rebuild it.
Instead of leading the conversation, they handed the keys over to media and marketing teams. And what did they do? They turned masculinity into a product, a vibe, a nostalgia trip.
Now here’s the truth, if you don’t define masculinity, someone else will. And so far, the people doing it have either gutted it, misunderstood it, or sold it back to you as a cosplay kit.
So the question is, what are men going to do about it?
No, You Haven’t Redefined Masculinity..You’ve Mocked It, Mutilated It, or Misunderstood It
I can already hear the pushback.
"What do you mean? We’ve been redefining masculinity in fashion for years!"
No. No, you haven’t.
What we’ve seen in fashion isn’t an evolution of masculinity, it’s been a series of bad faith experiments, cheap shots, and clumsy rewrites from people who never understood it in the first place.
The so-called "attempts" to redefine masculinity have been led by:
People who fundamentally misunderstand masculinity. They don’t see it as a presence, a force, or a responsibility, they see it as an aesthetic to be deconstructed, stripped down, and toyed with. Their idea of redefining masculinity isn’t to refine it into something stronger, it’s to dismantle it into something unrecognizable.
Designers who want to rewrite masculinity without first understanding it. They don’t engage with the essence of masculinity, they impose their own narratives onto it. They dress men in irony, fragility, and deliberate subversion, mistaking shock value for insight. They don’t ask, "What does masculinity need to become?" They ask, "How can we make it the opposite of what it was?"
People who hold open contempt for masculinity. Let’s be honest, many of these so-called "redefinitions" weren’t made in good faith. They weren’t explorations, they were digs, jabs, and mockery disguised as innovation. They took masculinity, bent it into something ridiculous, and then sneered when men recoiled. Because that was the point, to frame masculinity as a joke.
The result?
Nothing of substance.
Just a collection of half-hearted, intellectually lazy attempts to approach masculinity without any real creative integrity or honesty.
Not one of these so-called “new masculinities” offers a compelling alternative to what was stripped away.
Not one of these “progressive” takes on masculinity resonates on a deep, visceral level.
Not one of them feels lived, embodied, or real.
Because you can’t redefine something you refuse to respect.
Masculinity wasn’t given space to evolve. It was mocked, dissected, and thrown into a blender, then handed back in the form of gimmicks, caricatures, and performative reinventions that no man actually recognized.
That’s not progress, that’s intellectual dishonesty.
So, what does masculinity actually look like when it isn’t being mocked, commodified, or turned into a cheap joke?
That’s the real question, and it’s the only one that matters now.
No, Masculinity Can’t Be "Anything"..That’s Not How Reality Works
oooooooooo, here it comes, the predictable, flaccid counterargument, "But masculinity can be anything! It’s fluid! It’s whatever you want it to be!"
No it isn’t. That’s not how anything works.
You don’t get to strip something of all meaning, wear its hollowed-out shell like a fashion statement, and then smugly declare that it’s been reinvented. That’s not evolution, that’s intellectual vandalism.
Masculinity isn’t a trend, a stylistic choice, or a blank canvas for self-expression. It’s a force, an energy, an ethos. And like all forces, it has fundamental principles that define its nature. You don’t get to erase those principles just because they make you uncomfortable.
Masculinity Isn’t a Vibe, It’s an Essence
Saying “masculinity can be anything” is like saying fire can be anything. No, it can’t. Fire can take different forms, a roaring bonfire, a flickering candle, the controlled combustion inside an engine, but its essence remains the same. Fire burns, it consumes, it creates energy, it demands respect.
If you try to "reinvent" fire into something cold and wet, guess what? It’s no longer fire.
Masculinity works the same way. It isn’t just a style or a social construct you can remix at will, it has core traits, and if you strip those away, you’re left with something else entirely.
What Happens When You Remove the Essence? You Get Nothing.
This desperate attempt to turn masculinity into an abstract, amorphous concept isn’t progressive, it’s lazy. It’s a rhetorical cop-out designed to avoid engaging with masculinity on its own terms. Because the second you acknowledge that masculinity has a real, intrinsic nature, you have to respect it. And that? That’s terrifying to people who have spent the last decade treating it like an outdated software program that needs to be debugged.
Masculinity can manifest in different ways, sure, but it still has to manifest from the space of masculinity.
You can express masculinity in art, intellect, action, philosophy, leadership, and discipline, but it must still carry its essence, strength, presence, mastery, responsibility, and risk.
What you can’t do is strip masculinity of everything that makes it masculinity, then slap the label on whatever suits your agenda. That’s not expansion, that’s erasure.
Masculinity as a Free-For-All = Cultural Bankruptcy
The belief that masculinity can be "whatever you want" is exactly why we’re stuck in this bizarre state of aesthetic cosplay.
When you refuse to define masculinity, when you refuse to engage with its ethos, you leave a vacuum. And that vacuum doesn’t get filled with thoughtful reinvention, it gets filled with marketing campaigns, costumes, and empty symbolism.
That’s why masculinity has been reduced to a moodboard of cowboy boots, three-piece suits, and workwear jackets with no dirt on them. Because instead of actually understanding masculinity, people have settled for wearing its discarded skins like a desperate ex who can’t move on.
If You Don’t Respect Masculinity, You Can’t Evolve It
Here’s the brutal truth, the only way to expand masculinity is to first understand and respect what it actually is.
And no, this isn’t some delusional, chest-thumping defense of all things testosterone-soaked. Masculinity isn’t exclusively about grit, discipline, or control, it’s also been the birthplace of recklessness, destruction, and misguided dominance. That’s the nature of any force, especially one that has shaped history. But here’s where the conversation goes off the rails, you cannot create something aspirational by only highlighting its worst elements.
Yet, that’s exactly what’s been happening.
The modern “reinvention” of masculinity isn’t an evolution, it’s an exorcism. It strips away everything useful, purposeful, and powerful, leaving behind a caricature of its worst tendencies or a sanitized, apologetic husk that bears no resemblance to what made it desirable in the first place.
Now let’s get to the irony of fashion’s masculine revival, because if you look at the eras we keep resurrecting, you’ll notice a strange pattern.
The cowboy, the banker, the soldier, the workman, the uniforms of past masculine eras weren’t just aesthetic choices. They were uniforms of purpose. These weren’t costumes, they were functional, designed for men who actually did things, men who built, fought, led, and endured.
But what do we do now?
We borrow the look without the life. We dress up in old masculine archetypes while treating masculinity itself as obsolete. We fetishize the aesthetics of men who were in service, to something, to someone, to an ideal, while treating the very concept of masculine service as outdated, oppressive, or unnecessary.
Isn’t that strange?
Isn’t it strange that we romanticize the image of men who had roles, who had a clear function in the world, while telling modern men they should have neither? That the very masculinity that made those uniforms iconic is now seen as a relic to be worn ironically?
Think about it, we don’t keep bringing back the exaggerated peacocking of 18th-century aristocrats or the foppish frills of Victorian dandies. We keep returning to working men, to warriors, to men who had a place, a duty, a reason to exist in their time.
That should tell you something.
Deep down, we still recognize the beauty in masculinity with purpose, we just don’t know what to do with it anymore. So instead of redefining it in a way that makes sense for today, we play dress-up in its corpse.
That’s why this whole revival feels forced. That’s why these aesthetics feel disconnected. That’s why the modern version of masculinity is so flimsy, it’s all costume, no conviction.
And until we stop avoiding masculinity as a lived experience and start treating it as something that needs meaning, direction, and responsibility, we’re going to keep wearing the past like an empty suit, desperately hoping it still fits.
Defining Masculinity in Culture and Fashion for the Future
Masculinity doesn’t need a revival, a rebrand, or a nostalgic costume party. It needs a foundation, one that isn’t built on borrowed aesthetics but on a clear, undeniable ethos.
If masculinity is to have a place in culture and fashion moving forward, it can’t be another hollow aesthetic trend, another fleeting performance of ruggedness and power. It has to be something deeper, something real, something that carries weight beyond the cut of a jacket or the stance of a marketing campaign.
That means masculinity in fashion can no longer be just about symbols, it has to be about substance. Clothes should not be used to compensate for a lack of presence, discipline, or conviction. They should be an extension of those qualities, not a stand-in for them.
The future of masculinity in culture and fashion isn’t about repeating the past, it’s about extracting the essence of what made it resonate in the first place, self-mastery, purpose, resilience, risk, and responsibility, and integrating those qualities into a modern world that has all but forgotten them.
Masculinity, if it is to be meaningful again, cannot be something you simply put on. It must be something you carry, something you embody, something that defines how you move, create, and contribute.
Until that shift happens, we’ll keep dressing like ghosts of a masculinity we don’t understand, performing an identity instead of living it. But the opportunity is there, to define something new, something real, something undeniable.
And the ones who get it right? They won’t just shape fashion, they’ll shape the culture itself.
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