Review

Culture

Masculinity

19 September 2023

5 min read

Well, what about men? Caitlin Moran’s love letter to masculinity

Gender writing that’s gracious and full of hope. Krish Kandiah reviews Caitlin Moran’s What about Men? Part of the Problem with Men series.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Four men stand silhoutted against a sunset, One stands apart on their phone.

Meilisa Dwi Nurdiyanti on Unsplash.

The first time I met the award-winning Times columnist Caitlin Moran, it was in her home, and she cooked me soup. She couldn’t have been more hospitable, which was particularly appreciated as we had met to talk about advocacy and hospitality for refugees. I found her personable, funny, helpful, and extremely well-connected.

Despite my deep respect and appreciation for Moran and her writing, I have to admit to being sceptical about her latest book What about Men? published by Ebury Press. It’s a brave thing for a woman to write a book about men. As a married Asian man I wouldn’t dare to even consider writing a book about what it means to be a woman, or white, or single. Yet somehow Moran has done the impossible: she has written a book that is both feminist and masculinist, both refreshing and disturbing, both gracious and frank.

For a start Moran makes no apology for being a woman, or for writing a book aimed squarely for white straight men, or for dropping the “F bomb” on almost every page, or for speaking explicitly and frequently about sex, genitalia and orgasms. She delves into thorny and controversial issues such as toxic masculinity, rape culture, false allegations, and pornography, as well as giving her opinions on men’s health, communication, loneliness, friendships and fear of death. Moran writes with unshockable candour and yet somehow does so with a lightness of touch, humility and generosity.

Moran shows us that we don’t live a zero-sum game: in order for women to win men don’t have to lose and vice-a-versa.

Here are the five main things that I appreciated about this book:

1. It is laugh out-loud funny

There’s no denying it, Caitlin Moran is a brilliant writer. Some of the chapters read like observational comedy resonating rather too accurately with my own experience. Moran has made great use of her large Twitter following and wide male friendship group to provide testimonial and anecdotal evidence for the issue in question, inserting their stories with the perfect comic touch.

2. It is uncannily resonant

Despite being born in Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson has become a national treasure in the UK, writing not just one, but numerous books about the English. His outsider perspective helps us Brits to see ourselves through the eyes of those around. Similarly, Moran’s book about masculinity is so brilliant exactly because she is not a man. She cuts through what others would overlook, asking more interesting questions, and pointing to wholly different ways forward.

3. It makes peace in the gender war

Moran’s honesty and humility offers us a model of how to transcend the culture wars without avoiding the difficult conversations. Her book suggests that men and women can bring the best out of each other by celebrating our differences. Moran shows us that we don’t live a zero-sum game: in order for women to win men don’t have to lose and vice-a-versa. She offers a vision of a different way for men and women to relate to each other. As a firm believer in the power, possibility and pursuit of peace whether in the Russia-Ukraine war or the politically-driven culture war or the subtleties of gender war, I sincerely appreciated her efforts.

4. It celebrates good masculinity

Moran believes our society will be happier and healthier if men and women find ways to celebrate and appreciate one another. It was this line in her book that struck me as a vital perspective:

“There should be no shame in being a man. Being made to feel shame for how you are born is something every other progressive movement is trying to remove and trying to impose it on the one group that didn't until recently feel shame; straight white men, benefits no one.”

5. It is hopeful

It’s been a long time since I have read something about gender which was as full of hope as this book is. Sadly, many books in this field are written in a bid to fight one’s corner, including those coming from the church. Moran’s posture offers us a much-needed challenge. If an outspoken feminist, who claims to have only stepped inside a church once in her life, (apparently for Rev Richard Coles’ last service in his parish) has no fear of showing support to men and their rights, or of promoting a Christian sexual ethic of commitment before sex, or of seeking to find a peaceful resolution to the gender wars, how much more should Christians be willing to do the same?

My one and only issue with the book was when it tended to lapse into stereotypes. Being the sort of man who doesn’t like to fix things (I wish I did and I could), and who doesn’t find it hard to express emotions (have I overshared already?) and who does care about my appearance (check out my latest charity shop find!) I sometimes felt a little misunderstood. Or even worse, unintentionally pigeonholed as not really being Caitlin’s idea of what a man is. This is one of the biggest challenges of anyone writing about gender, how to do so without either reinforcing stereotypes or ignoring genuine difference.

My overall impression is that this book reads like a love letter to masculinity. Take this powerful paragraph from Moran’s last chapter:

“I wish for any man, or boy, everything I have wished for my daughters: that they can be proud of who they were born as; that this will never be a burden to them; that they can appear as they like; that they understand both their own pain, and that of others; that they can love out loud with their whole hearts, because they understand that love is a verb – a doing word; and that they never belittle or destroy what they envy, but recognise it for what it is: almost certainly, a future you wish for yourself.”

That quote reminded me of St Paul’s defining of love in a letter to Corinthians. It sets a high bar, but I believe it is both aspirational and achievable. I would love to see sentiments like this coming out of the church too, with similar books that can transcend the cultural flashpoints and offer great hope to all who need it.

Review

Art

Culture

Music

Romanticism

6 October 2025

5 min read

Taylor Swift’s new album is fine, and that might be the problem

Ego, art, and the quiet tragedy of getting everything you ever wanted

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Taylor Swift, dressed as a showgirl, sips from a glass.

Taylor Swift, showgirl.

Taylorswift.com

Taylor Swift released an album last week and, from what I can see, the world seems to hate it.

Life of a Showgirl was written and recorded while Taylor was on her two-year-long Era’s tour, hence the album’s title. She would fly to Sweden between tour dates to record with the infamous producers, Max Martin and Shellback. This matters. Why? Well, because this means that each song on this album has grown out of the soil of unfathomable success; record-breaking numbers and history-making impact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Era’s tour shifted the landscape of popular culture. Many critics have reflected on this context, citing ‘burnout’ and ‘frazzle’ as reasons why this album sits far below Taylor’s usual standard.

They implore Taylor to take a day off: put her feet up, recuperate, and re-gather her musical senses.

Then there are the critics who seem to be directing blame toward Taylor’s obvious happiness. If you didn’t know, she’s engaged to American footballer, Travis Kelce – and they, as a couple, are sickly sweet. Honestly, they’re defiantly mushy. They’re cheesy to the point of protest. They’re just happy – and, apparently, therein lies the problem. I’ve heard more than one critic quote Oscar Wilde in their takedown of Swift’s latest offering:

‘In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it’.

This album, they say, is proof that Taylor Swift is victim to the latter kind of tragedy. She’s got everything one could ever want, and the world seems pretty agreed that her music is suffering because of it. We like to keep our artists tortured, thank you.

For the record, I don’t hate the album. But I don’t love it either. I resonate with The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis who writes that it simply ‘floats in one ear and out the other’. There’s nothing to hate about it, which, I guess, also means there’s very little to love about it. I’m not outraged, nor am I enamoured – and I say that gingerly, because I fear that’s the worst review of all.

So, in some ways I’m agreeing with the general consensus – Life of a Showgirl is not Taylor Swift’s best work. I don’t, however, think that her success, nor her happiness, are quite to blame for it. I think those are slightly lazy critiques, they’re shallow scapegoats.

I think, rather, the problem with this album is that Taylor has made herself the biggest thing within it.

When introducing the album on Instagram, she thanked her collaborators for helping her to ‘paint this self-portrait’ – the strange thing is that this ‘self-portrait’ feels considerably less honest or authentic than her previous, more conceptual, albums.

I’ve spent a couple of days wondering why this is and have come up with two theories.

Firstly, we tend to be far more honest to and about ourselves when we’re able to kid ourselves into thinking that it’s not actually our own selves that we’re talking about. For example, I think of Billie Eilish’s Grammy and Academy Award-winning song – What Was I Made For? – which she wrote to accompany Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. In an interview, Billie explained how writing a song about a Barbie somehow allowed her the space and freedom to create the most honest, raw, and revealing song she’d ever written.

We’re self-preserving creatures, you see.

If we’re knowingly speaking of, writing about, painting or in any way presenting ourselves - our ego gets in the way, preferring us to offer the world a shiny, carefully constructed façade.

Taylor, in intentionally painting a ‘self-portrait’, has unknowingly offered us less than herself.

And, now for my second theory. Every good self-portrait is actually about something bigger than its subject; they are able to point toward something more universal than the individual reflected. I think of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits, the way she used her hair to communicate societal expectations, or how she framed herself with wildlife, or the time she painted a necklace of thorns around her own neck – leaving an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of the beholder’s stomach as they think about the nature of pain and liberty. She painted herself, endlessly. Kahlo pointed to herself in order to point through herself – she was never the subject that she was most interested in, she was never the biggest thing in her own self-portrait.

Like I say, the problem with Taylor Swift’s okay-ish album is simply that she is the biggest thing within it. The key ingredient it’s lacking is awe; it leaves nothing to marvel at.

And that’s rare for Taylor.

I’ve often written that she is a Romantic in every sense of the word; concerned with the feelings and experiences that are powerful enough to knock us off our feet: big feelings, big thoughts, big truths, big questions, big mysteries, big language. These things have always been baked into her lyrics.

This album, in comparison, feels small. It doesn’t transcend Taylor Swift’s feelings about – well, Taylor Swift. She hasn’t quite managed to point through herself, she is the sole subject of her own self-portrait.

And therein lies its OK-ness.

Honestly? Therein lies all of our OK-ness. Taylor Swift may be anomalous in many things, but not in this - the presence of ego means that we’re all prone to self-portrait-ise ourselves. Left unchecked we are (or at least, we can be), what Charles Taylor calls, ‘buffered selves’; thinking of ourselves as the maker and subject of all meaning, shielded from awe and wonder.

But the best art will never flow from those who think themselves the biggest and deepest subject. Because, quite simply, we’re not.

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