As an on-again-off-again teaching assistant I hate papers that go, “If you look up the word in the dictionary, it means…” Or, “Google this concept and you’ll see…” It’s a good way to add to the word count but it’s a bit lazy.

So when the article “Lumbersexuals and White Heteromasculine Pageantry” relies on urbandictionary to define lumbersexuals I know it’s going to be bad.

The authors claim that lumbersexuals are white, straight, men of privilege who enjoy dressing like woodsmen. I’ll agree with that.

What I don’t agree with is this: “Hybrid configurations of masculinity, like the lumbersexual…enable young, straight, class-privileged, white men to discursively distance themselves from what they might perceive as something akin to the stigma of privilege.” (The bold/italics are mine)

So straight, white, privileged men think they are pretty clever, don’t they? Those cunning sneaks! But tell me, why do these lumbersexuals carry around iPhones and sip at Americanos? Why do they scribble tattoo ideas down in their Moleskins? Why do they wait in line at Ramen restaurants? The fools! Don’t they realize they are blowing their elaborate cover?

Lumbersexuals are in no way trying to look like they mop school hallways for a living. They are, instead, signaling to the world that they have a creative job where goofy beards and unwashed jeans are tolerated. They are slyly suggesting that they have an artistic life when in fact they probably hold down normal, 9-to-5, jobs.

The article also wants to suggest that lumbersexuals are trying to fill an “emptiness” and are “playing with gender.” Now, I have grown a beard before and I did it–I hope–because I thought it was cool. Was I really, subconsciously, thinking that this beard would solve my growing unease with my place in the universe? Was I hoping to cultivate a new toy by which I could “play” with gender? If that was the plan then my beard did a terrible job. It just itched so I shaved it off.

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Lastly, those who write about lumbersexuals like to point out with a smirk that the whole lumberjack image was manufactured to begin with. “The archetypal lumberjack—the Paul Bunyanesque hipster naturalist–” Willa Brown of The Atlantic writes “–was an invention of urban journalists and advertisers.”

Stupid, white, straight, privileged males! They might as well dress up like Disney characters.

But don’t people who wear yoga pants, sneakers, and swishy jackets like to believe in the fiction they are healthy and can touch their toes?

Fashion is one big game of dress up. Let lumbersexuals play, but don’t think they are playing with gender, hiding privilege, or any other such rot.