This article contains sexualized fashion photos.
Nineteen-year-old Noah Beck is the quintessential Gen Z heartthrob with his rock solid abs, a sparkling smile, and 25.8 million TikTok followers. Zoomer celebrities and role models are social media stars; which is maybe why you haven’t heard of Beck, but I guarantee your children or grandchildren have.
Last week, Beck posed for a cover feature in VMan magazine wearing layered fishnet tights under cuffed black Calvin Klein jeans, patent leather 4-inch stiletto pumps, thick black winged eyeliner, and a glittering Breton-style hat to top it off.
View this post on Instagram
What was the purpose of this feminine photoshoot for a straight male who usually just makes shirtless thirst trap videos for 14-year-old fangirls? Photographer Nicola Formichetti let us know in the comments of Beck’s Instagram post.
“THANK U to noah for being able to break gender norms it’s incredible…” she wrote.
Similar praises were awarded to Harry Styles in November after he was featured on the cover of Vogue Magazine wearing a dress. Of course, anyone who dared to criticize the photoshoot was met with severe pushback.
"There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.": Read our full December cover story starring @Harry_Styles here: https://t.co/1yc11Lb4rP pic.twitter.com/QCESy2WrDg
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) November 15, 2020
British actress Jameela Jamil wrote on Twitter: “Harry Styles is plenty manly, because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic dickheads decided it was hundreds of years ago. He’s 104% perfect.”
Harry Styles is plenty manly, because manly is whatever you want it to be, not what some insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic dickheads decided it was hundreds of years ago. He’s 104% perfect. 🤘🏽
— ❤️ Jameela Jamil ❤️ She/Her ❤️ (@jameelajamil) November 16, 2020
The tweet is a warning to anyone who doesn’t necessarily consider a man in a dress manly or even attractive: You are an “insecure, toxic, woman-hating, homophobic dickhead.”
What is so painfully obvious from photographers describing their vision in these “break-the-gender-norms” photoshoots and from the over-the-top offense taken from the Twitter mob, is that the Beck and Styles photoshoots are not about fashion at all. They are about activism.
The left’s solution to “toxic masculinity” is not to encourage virtuous men, but to make men more like women. Instead of embracing all the good qualities of masculinity (things like providing, defending, being assertive, and physically strong), they want the next generation of men to suppress their masculinity. And what better way to do that than by wearing a fluffy dress and high heels?
A frequent argument for why Styles’s and Beck’s feminine looks should go unquestioned is that men in the past or in other cultures (think Scottish kilts) wore dresses or skirts and weren’t considered unmanly. Jamil made this point in defense of Styles, writing on Twitter that men wore “Wigs, make up, tights, [and] frills” in the 16th century.
Ben Shapiro pointed out the hypocrisy in the idea that wearing a dress is in any way manly because in the United States, as in virtually all cultures, there is a distinction between male and female clothing. Dresses in American culture are feminine and do not indicate masculinity.
This holds true whether men wear kilts and women wear the earasaid, or whether men wear pants and women wear dresses (the argument that men in Scotland wear kilts, so men in America wearing dresses isn't feminine is particularly stupid).
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 16, 2020
In fact, Vogue even admitted that the point of the photoshoot was to feminize masculinity. So, they don’t even believe that a dress is masculine.
Olivia Wilde, another adamant defender of Styles, said she hopes the “brand of confidence as a male that Harry has — truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity — is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world.” Wilde adds, “It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”
Meanwhile, research continues to demonstrate that women are attracted to masculinity. In terms of features, women prefer stubble, taller height, a deep voice, and a strong chest and arms. A man’s level of testosterone influences his level of “masculine” features in addition to indicating his health. This is not a social construct; it is biology.
The left doesn’t care that women are attracted to manly men. Reality and reason contradict their pursuit of gender deconstruction, so they do their best to dismantle gender itself.
Beck is a regular 19-year-old boy. He became famous for showing off his abs, not his eyeliner. Beck has not stated he agreed to the photo shoot because he wants to challenge gender norms. I suspect Beck did the shoot to garner more attention from his adoring female fans. And why shouldn’t he think that? Every time men like Styles and Beck do a stunt like this, Twitter and Instagram are replete with fawning women.
The feminist pursuit to destroy “toxic masculinity” is actually about destroying masculinity altogether. Instead of encouraging men to be better, they tell them to be something they biologically are not. Of course, in the end, it is bad for women.
America does have a masculinity crisis. Over the past 30 years, men’s testosterone levels have been steadily decreasing. “Our testosterone levels are under siege,” said Craig Cooper of HuffPo, citing a 2007 study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Following testosterone levels from 1987 to 2004, the study found that average levels of testosterone in males had dropped by 1 percent each year, even after controlling for the usual suspects known to decrease T counts.
The average sixty-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels that were 17 percent lower than did an average sixty-year-old man in 1987. “There are, quite literally, generational gaps in testosterone levels that are not the product of increased age (a natural and predictable driver of declining testosterone levels),” writes Erielle Davidson in The Federalist.
It should be no surprise that a study in the Journal of Hand Therapy found grip strength of college men between 1985 and 2016 had declined significantly, from 117 pounds of force to 98.
A perfect example of declining masculinity is “The Try Guys,” a group of straight, woke millennial men who became famous on Buzzfeed for trying on women’s clothing. The group has been “tearing down gender norms” left and right since 2014.
In 2017, not one of The Try Guy “men” met the 617 ng/dL average T-score for a Buzzfeed experiment on male attractiveness. All of them tested below the level of a typical 85-year-old male (376 ng/dL). Shocker.
The example Styles gave to Beck and Beck is giving to other young men via the encouragement of misguided women will end up frustrating young women, who actually desire masculine and protective men. We should not be shaming boys and men for who they biologically are. We should be lifting them up and encouraging them to be the best they can. These are our brothers, fathers, boyfriends, or husbands. Let’s stop lying to men and lying to ourselves.
