A few weeks ago I saw Norah Vincent on a local TV talk show. She was there to plug her new book, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again, and she did a great job of it. I got online immediately and reserved the book at my library.
If you've been around here for awhile, you probably already know I'm not much of a reader. I am, however, about ten minutes away from finishing this book. It can easily be read in a day with time left over. This is the way I prefer to read a book. If I'm interrupted I lose the thread, which really spoils the fun of it for me. I rarely finish a book that I've had to put down for more than a day or two.
I did get interrupted about three-fourths of the way through this nonfiction account of Ms. Vincent's experiences during an eighteen-month period of time in which she dressed, acted, and passed as a man. Her experiences as "Ned" included forming friendships with teammates in a men's bowling league, getting lap dances at strip clubs, dating women who believed she was a man, a three-week retreat in a monastery, employment, and finally extended participation in an Iron John-inspired men's group.
Ms. Vincent shares the details of how she developed her physical disguise, which was interesting in itself. But the real stuff of the book is not only about how the world treated her differently as a man, but also about how she learned what was expected of her as a man in terms of even the most subtle behaviors, such as how men look at each other (or avoid looking at each other) so as not to end up having to kick each other's ass.
Despite a two-week interruption and my resulting loss of the thread of this book, I made a point of returning to it to finish reading. It's a really fascinating look at how deeply we are our gender, like it or not, and how the other gender differs. I think readers of either persuasion will probably find Ms. Vincent's observations interesting, fair, and worth a few hours of their time.
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