Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunk
When did plain old “friendship” become “bromance”? One of the stupidest words of all time.
|
The article addresses that:
Quote:
A key theme of the bromance, on the other hand, was the freedom to express themselves without judgment, and to engage in emotional intimacy without fear.
The key historical context of the bromance is the recent decline in homophobia, the paper argues. “We contend that the male preference for emotionality between other men, rather than women, has come about due to a significant cultural shift in the structure of masculinity,” reads the paper.
The paper notes that in the late 19th and early 20th century, men posed for photographs together in physically intimate ways, wrote “endearing” letters to each other, and even slept in the same beds in non-sexual contexts.
But the increasing social visibility of homosexuality let to a climate of hysteria and stigma. “To prove that we were not gay, we acted hyper masculine,” White said.
As a result, men began to distance themselves from each other emotionally. The paper quotes one scholar to the effect that men “have not known what it means to love and care for a friend without the shadow of some guilt and fear of peer ridicule.”
|
Again, I can only speak anecdotally but I think I have a much closer group of friends than what my dad's and grandad's generations had.