User blog:EvergreenFir/Dipper vs Maturity, not Manliness

I have mixed feelings about Dipper vs. Manliness and thought I would share them. Before I get into my critiques and praises, most of you know I am a graduate student. I primarily study gender (the social differences between men, women, and everything in between). I will try to explain things so they are understandable. The main thing I want to note is that I am referring to social things, not biological ones. Men are not born to be aggressive or, as Dipper put it, "aggro". Women are not born to be nurturing. We are socialized (taught by our parents and peers) to be that way.

I was happy that Dipper was able to come to terms with his version masculinity. As the episode points out, we are too often bombarded with these hyper-aggressive, unrealistic versions of masculinity. We are taught that a man should be strong, in control, aggressive, dominating, self-reliant, and even crude. Think of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. However, this limits the way boys and men can be masculine. If we hold everyone to a single standard of some Hercules-like man, we deny boys and men the chance to be a different kind of masculine. What if someone wants to be masculine like the Multi-Bear; they listen to pop music, but still consider themselves masculine or men. You can be like Cute Biker if you want! You can even be feminine if you want! You can watch My Little Pony or enjoy sewing. That does not make you a non-man. So cheers to Dipper for accepting his own form of masculinity.

What I did not like was that this episode was about "being a man". First, it's hard to imagine a show where it's "Mabel vs Femininity". Second, and more importantly, many of the qualities that were described as "being a man" were really about being mature. Grunkle Stan says that, "You were your own man and you stood up for yourself. You did what was right even though no one agreed with you". But this applies to everyone, not just men. There is a history of our society saying that women are childish; femininity = childishness/immaturity. In that sense, I'm disappointed that the show reinforced this idea.

In all, I think the episode had a good message, but it fumbled a chance to apply this lesson to all viewers, not just boys.