Depp Defines Manliness
posted by Trish Bennett 10:09 AM
FortWayne.com cites Johnny Depp as the standard of qualities considered 'manly' in today's society.
Johnny Depp, king of the wrist décor, may well be a barometer for what it means to be manly anymore. He’s happy to bend the gender role freely, but what’s more important – swish or swagger?It's an interesting article about the ever-changing roles of males and females in society and the struggle of young men trying to find their identity. In the end, though, it all comes back to Johnny:
Maybe Depp is teaching us that it’s not swish or swagger; it’s both.
19 Comments:
Well..Well..i dont believe it..so a man wears tokens or a bead or two then hes well on the other side..what a load of rubbish..men have been wearing embellisments for years..the victorians..the red indians..the hippy flower people of the sixties...countless other people of different walks of life...god my hubby when i meet him moons ago had his hair dyed and wore shell necklaces(1980),he doesnt bat for the other side...i believe this was not a JD fan who doesnt know why he wears them..or might have watched the MTV awards where he picked out the GUYS..any way which ever side..i dont care..still the most HOTTEST man alive...jo.uk
Surprised this hasn't been addressed much before. In generations past men might get a kick out of wearing women's clothes or playing Barbies with their daughters, but they wouldn't admit it in public. The great thing about Johnny is his unapologetic disregard for artificial boundaries in general. He's a great role model in that he seems to grasp that gender and identity are all about performance--it's all about how you portray yourself every day, as opposed to sexuality, which is a matter of biology. By bending, blurring, or just ignoring gender stereotypes he gives people permission, even requires them, to look beyond appearances to the complexities underneath--something we desperately need in our culture. No wonder people love him--women and men, both gay and straight--by expressing his own personality and not using his appearance or image to manipulate others he shows us that we don't have to inhabit categories defined by others. It also makes us wonder why the heck others choose to seek refuge in conformity and what that says about them. If I were a man anxious over what it means to be a "man," he would be a tremendously liberating influence. He'd probably hate being called a role model, because that usually means having others copy you, but in Johnny's case you can't just copy him without considering what it means to be yourself. Here's to strong men raised by strong women! ...men who redefine what it is to be strong. His mom must be a great woman.
of course she is a great woman, depp himself said that he loves his mother and she is the coolest mom. Depp is a mature man who is not afraid to express his fellings and be comftable in his own skin thats why a lot of people likes him, people who be able to see beyond the fisrt impression. depp is absolutely handsome and manly. sexy.
Anybody who has seen and delved into "Ed Wood" KNOWS Johnny is content to be exactly what we see. It is not what the outside appears,he exhuberates his identity from the inside,and that's warmth,generosity,sex appeal,(assuming everyone has a male and female mix of hormones),he is just the right balance. HE'S A HAPPY CAMPER!! Thus why wouldn't he enjoy playing Barbies with his Lily-Rose, he's a perfect mix for fatherhood. And as much as he might not like to hear it, YES A VERY AUDACIOUS ROLE MODEL FOR THE MALES IN THIS WORLD!
44 AND FOUR ON THE FLOOR, JOHNNY ROCKS!!
I see nothing wrong the way he dress.I look what is on the inside of him.Loving, caring,kind, and faithful to his families,friends,and fans instead of how he dress.
Heck yeah; he sure does define manliness! Johnny is one heck of a manly man, if I ever saw one...
What does it mean to be a "manly" man anyway?! Societies need to get over their stereotypes!
I mean look at Johnny... Though he long wasn't comfortable in his own skin (as he so often said), he found his way in to being someone who now knows what is truly important in his life and finds ways to show his appreciation for the people he loves in the way he accessorizes (tattoos including) - how hot is that?
Show me a man who isn't afraid to wear a pink bead bracelet (that his daughter made for him) to a black tie event, and I will show you a "manly" man.
He doesn't give a crap about what others choose to say about the way he portrays himself, and that is probably one of the things that I love about him the most. He never tries to be the GORGEOUS man that he truly is, by instead choosing to scruff up his looks or hiding behind his hair (you're not fooling anyone Johnny lol).
The way I see it, Johnny Depp is classic manliness, they way manliness should be perceived!
Johnny, HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2007...LOVE YOU since "Edward Scissorhands"...ringring form Hong Kong.
Anonymous, to me the author of the article doesn't mean that wearing beads around your wrist is manly.
What I take from it, is that he states that being completely ok with things like wearing beads arounds your wrist is manly.
There is a difference between those two...
After all...
Why should a man be ashamed of wearing a bracelet of plastic heart-shaped beads that his little girl made for him?
Is "a real man" with "a real man's ego" not strong enough to take that?
Same goes for changing diapers, crying, loving his mommy, admitting to be insecure from time to time (who isn't)?
A male friend said to me, years ago: "..... I felt very vulnerable but I didn't show it, I did not want to appear weak."
I asked him: "So being vulnerable to you is the same as being weak?"
He confirmed that.
I asked him another question.
"What sort of man can allow himself to be vulnerable, showing his doubts and his fears in public? A strong man or a weak man?"
That became an eye-opener to him.
And exactly that is one of the things I love so much about Johnny Depp: his strength.
Changing diapers, being an inamorated Papa, playing Barbies with his daughter, sharing about the doubts he has about himself, admitting the mistakes he made?
No problem for Johnny.
He is strong enough to do so; and right in front of the camera's too.
And I like strong men :-) .
Strong women too, by the way.
For decades, men were raised with pretty daft ideas about how "real men" should behave.
Big boys don't cry...
No, big boys don't cry.
But men do.
Maybe we are finally approaching an era, in which we realize that bragging and boasting is not the same as being strong.
An era, in which men can allow themselves to be of normal human size.
To me, Johnny Depp is a great ambassador of that idea.
Strong and gentle at the same time.
Humble instead of humbug.
Hurray to him.
It's so refreshing.
Elke
The Netherlands
Unyielding Deppfan throughout all those years of splendid tops and flops.
What's the big deal? Lots of rock personalities wear considerablely more "swag" than Johnny and not nearly in as good of taste! Is the new necklace a magnifing glass? We noticed he had it alone on at the MTV awards. I'll bet zillions will sell like it! Did anyone else notice that Johnnys bottom lip was cut up in the premiere pictures of the 19th? I was wondering what happened?
I don't understand, what "swish" or "swagger" means (I'm from Denmark) - Is it something bad?
would it be very bad, if our Johnny was that?
Please enlighten me!
And dear Elke!
You rock!!!
Marielou, that "swish or swagger" means something like: the choice between being the sensitive guy or the macho guy.
Utter bullshit of course.
Because the point is: men are filled up with testosteron up till their eyebrows, which gives them their macho moments from time to time.
But men are human beings with doubts, fears, needs and all kinds of gentle feelings too.
Therefore, the choice between swish or swagger does simply not exist at all.
It's both.
It's just that some men seem to think that they should opress their softer side to appear manly.
And these days there are even guys that seem to think that they should opress their natural, hormonally fuelled male behaviour to be good guys.
*Sigh*.
Again Johnny gives the good example.
Gentle, vulnerable, yes, but he seems to know how to stand his ground very well.
"Our" happy Barbie-playing sweetie can be though enough...ask some of the "better dressed people" of Disney, for instance; some of them are probably still getting a little pale in the face when hearing the name Johnny Depp...
And what about those London paparazzi that were pestering him and Vanessa; those blokes were suddenly facing a snapped and subsequently VERY angry Johnny with a piece of wood in his hands...(hee hee hee, still makes me laugh, that)
Same bullshit as " swish or swagger": the term "metrosexual".
That term seems to indicate, that men who don't have any problems with being gentle are sort of weird, off-beat, not "normal" men, a bit in between man and woman.
The term is probably meant well, but to me it's just repeating the same old shit: women are sensitive, men are macho, and a sensitive man is therefore "metrosexual".
To me it is the compulsary bragger, the never-anything-but-macho-guy who is the peculiar one.
He is the one that thinks a man has to opress perfectly normal human behaviour and feelings in order to appear manly.
And thanks for the "rock", Marielou!
What defines manliness and what is a manly man ??? a lumberjack, a wrestler, a boxer, a football player, a cop, a construction worker, a biker? (remember the group the Village People?)..Johnny is an artist and expresses his talents in different ways...look at his movie roles, they go from A to Z...Crane in Sleepy Hollow, Bon Bon, Donny Brasco, and let's not forget the Greatest Lover Don Juan De Marco, just to name a few...and as far as his personal life he seems to be a good father and family man, and if he enjoys playing dolls with his daughter more power to him... there should be more fathers like that, he is secure enough to do that and enjoy his kids and talks about it with no shame...I think that's very commendable ... and how good must Lilly Rose feel seeing her daddy wearing the bracelets she made for him... Johnny Depp is not a cookie cutter movie star, he is very much an individual and does not mind wearing his "vintage-homeless-chic" clothing to an award show while everyone else is wearing suits and tuxedos...he is willing to miss an award show so he can go to Florida on Jan 28 and jam with his old friends from The Kids and be there for his friend Bruce Witkin paying tribute to his mom Sheila Witkin...
...that's a man and an unselfish human being...
....what he does in his private life is none of our business
Thankyou Elke!
I would like to say something abour our Johnny, but I think, you have said it all just beautifully!
Instead I will say something about his mother...
I am sure, that Johnny loves his mother; his first tatoo was her name on a red heart across his shoulder.
She and his father were fighting all through their marriage. Johnny was the youngest of 4 siblings, and he was 16 when their father left them. Johnny has said, that an era of violence was over, when he left.
His mother has put up with a violent man for - I don't know - about 20 years or so!
How cool is that?
I think, Johnny must be a very strong person, that he has come through all that and has become a great husbond and a loving father -his own father sure didn't show him how!!
Johnny, stay true to yourself and dont listen to all those stupid journalists that dont give a crap about you! Your fans love you for who you are...and that includes what you wear...crystal(ca)
@ Anonymous:
I agree that the private life of Johnny (and other public figures) is none of our business.
With one exeption, and that is: what they choose to share about themselves in the media.
Of course one has to be extremely cautious with believing what the media write about public figures, because they are producing more crap than all the Dutch cows and sheep together (and that is a whole lot).
Johnny seems to be especially prone to this crap-inventing of the media, probably because he is quite reticent, so the media don't have a constant flow of new tits and bits to write about.
But some statements of him keep coming back in different interviews.
One of those things became very important to me.
An eye-opener of Olympic proportions, for which I will probably be in his debt for the rest of my life.
Before this happened, Johnny Depp was just an interesting actor to me.
My mouth already fell open when I was watching Edward Scissorhands; I thought that was absolutely stunning, though he was only twenty-something at that time; basically a rookie.
From there, he kept surprising me at a regular basis with his work.
Only years later, he became important to me because of something personal he shared in an interview in Rolling Stone.
He stated: "Alcohol was never recreational for me, I was just anesthesizing myself".
In my head, something went *DING*.
Do you know these moments, a moment of perfect integrity and self-responsibility, and at this exactly right moment, exactly the right person is saying exactly the right thing?
*DINGGGG*!
Though I was not an alcoholic but obese, I asked myself: right lady...and what exactly are YOU "anesthesizing"?
That moment of awareness set me out on a journey, during which I handled the enormous shitpile of anger and sorrow I was carrying with me since my early youth.
I was convinced, that I was a total failure, a waste of space, jinxed, a walking bad omen, unwanted, to blame for my parents' divorce, and that it wouldn't matter if I was dead.
I changed my mind about that, became friends with myself and eventually even learned to be proud of myself.
Concluding that it did matter wheter I was alive or not, I managed to change my life-threathening obese behaviour for the better - and for good.
Along the way it became clear, that apart from trying to eat my troubles away, I suffer from a heriditary condition called lipoedema, for which I am being medically treated now.
Doctors can not do very much about it, but every little bit they can do is helpful.
I know.
I did it myself.
But I had this little first push, because of that candour and open sharing Johnny did about himself.
"Every journey begins with the first step", Buddha says, and the first step I made was one with a push in my back of Johnny Depp.
And so, Johnny Depp became my "one way friend", as I call him.
Mind you: I don't call people "friend" very lightly.
He doesn't know anything about this.
I'm not trying to make contact or something.
To people as reticent as he seems to be, probably the best way to express my gratitude is to respect his privacy.
Well, I'm not blind.
I can clearly see how handsome he is.
But because of this priceless "push in the back", I couldn't have possibly loved him more, had I been blind.
When he decides to take cosmetic surgery and change himself into the Monster of Frankenstein, I will hold him high just as much as I do now.
You see Anonymous...sometimes the private lives of outstanding public figures like Johnny Depp can be damned important to members of the audience.
They can make a difference.
In that respect their private lives do matter.
But again: only when it was shared by them voluntarily.
@ Marielou: I never heard of Johnný's dad being violent.
I read a whole lot of interviews, and the only thing I understood from those, that his parents didn't get along very well and divorced when he was 15.
This is a quote from a Playboy interview (reknowned for the great interviews, hee hee hee).
His parents' divorce, when Johnny was 15, was both inevitable and traumatic. "It had been coming for quite a long time," Johnny told PLAYBOY. "I"m surprised they lasted that long, bless their hearts. I think they tried to keep it together for the kids, and then they couldn't anymore."
No indications of violence whatsoever...
Be careful with putting info on the internet, Marielou.
Neither Johnny, nor his parents, nor anybody in fact, can stop rumours on the internet.
It's a powerful medium, but very volatile too.
Dear Elke!
I got the quote from "A kind of Illusion"; a biography by Denis Meikle. I can recommend it, though it has its shortcommings. The exact quote is: "When he did go, it was a relief. A cloud of violince was lifted". He was supposed to have said it in an interwiew in Metro - Denis Meikle doesn't say when. Of course, it could be a rumour - I wasn't actually there, when he said it - if he said it - and I don't think Denis Meikle was there either.
So I apologize; it's not a very nice thing to say about his parents is it? - I will be more careful, what I write.
Anyway -
that Johnny has become such a strong, perfect, loving, caring person is not because of his parents, but because of himself.
As a psychologist I know how important the childhood is, - and what it means, when ones parents are too busy fighting eachother to give their children the love and attention, they need. One tend to believe, that you are not worth loving.
That man is a mirackle - and so are you Elke, bless you (as Johnny would have said).
I read your story, and it moved me very much.
You must be quite a lady - being able to shake off your demons like that.
So you owe it to Johnny, - but most all you owe it to yourself. You did it yourself.
I don't know what lipoedema is, but I will pray for you to get better.
it's not whathe wears i think it's how he wears it he could wear anything and still look good.it's his confidence that stands out.
People talk bad about how Johnny wear his hair,and clothes and they judge him.They think since he wear the clothes that he is wearing, and hair. I don't care how his hair is or clothes I have learn not to judge people they have feelings like everyone else because one day I almost lost a friend from drunk driver.
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