(p. 77). He movingly describes how ‘[t] o put on a dress was to don a suit of lights’ (p. 52) which leads him to claim that clothes have transformational… Click to show full abstract
(p. 77). He movingly describes how ‘[t] o put on a dress was to don a suit of lights’ (p. 52) which leads him to claim that clothes have transformational potential as ‘one of the key drivers of change’ (p. 71). Perry has written an engaging and accessible book drawing on his own experience of masculinity but his arguments about gender rely on the idea of woman as the much admired Other. Women possess the ‘collective emotional intelligence’ (ibid., p. 27) that leads to ‘behaviours that are sensible, life-enhancing and planet-saving’ (ibid., p. 4). In other words, women provide the ideal for what a progressive model of masculinity should be. He claims that Default Man’s days ‘may be numbered’ but why? (p. 26). Maybe the world would be a better place if men were more self-aware and willing to model themselves on women. Is raised consciousness achieved just by asking the right questions? Addressed to whom? A socio-economic system based on competition and division is working perfectly well for Default Man so the book is an invitation to those who have no investment in such change. Masculinity does need to be redefined. As a Default Man himself, Perry is far more effective when he uses his own cultural power as an artist to directly confront his audience with the kind of transformation he is advocating here. His multiple reinventions of Claire embody fluid notions of masculinity and femininity that work to deconstruct traditional manhood and reveal its inherent instability by replacing it with a ‘Typical Man in a Dress’ (Adams, 2017).
               
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