'The White Lotus' season 3 busted these myths about masculinity

It’s going to take a lot more than a TV show to free men from the idea that there's only one way to be a man.

Praise for Trump’s “manly” tariffs. Calls for more “masculine energy” in corporate America. Worries about the growing political gender gap. Everyone’s talking about masculinity right now.

While the second season of the HBO hit television show The White Lotus centered on men’s confusion about evolving gender norms, this most recent season made more understated arguments against so-called “traditional masculinity.”

Myth #1: Men are naturally and traditionally supposed to be the breadwinner.

Take Timothy Ratliff, the wealthy businessman and father of three played by Jason Isaacs who nearly killed himself and his entire family after coming under federal government investigation for potential fraud.

Ratliff never spoke of the intense pressure many men feel to be their family’s sole provider, but it radiated from every wrinkle in his scowling face.

The truth is most men don’t have to be the breadwinner anymore. Today, the share of American opposite-sex marriages where the husband provides all of the family’s income has dropped to 23 percent, from nearly half in 1972. In some U.S. cities, women are now out-earning their male counterparts.

The breadwinner role isn’t even actually traditional for men. Before the twentieth century, American and European women worked outside the home or shared household tasks alongside men, including raising kids, farming, and even hunting.

During the Industrial Revolution, for example, nearly all working-class women in England were forced to work outside the home, and labor by women was the most profitable for the emerging capitalist class. The historian Maxine Berg writes, “When we talk of industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, we are talking of a largely female workforce.”

This is to say nothing of the numerous indigenous cultures around the world that give women a powerful role in political and economic decision-making.

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Myth #2: Men are naturally and traditionally supposed to focus solely on our career.

There’s also Saxon, Timothy’s son and a shining example of a man believing the myth that we’re naturally meant to care about career success more than anything else. "I don't have any interests,” Saxon said to his father in a riveting scene. “I don't have any hobbies. Okay? If I'm not a success, then I'm nothing."

Many of the men I see in therapy struggle with finding an identity outside of work. They want to be more emotionally available to their partner, less attached to email on their phone, and less stressed about always being productive. But they’re held back by rigid ideas about gender not based on biology or historical fact.

Our culture is awash in messages telling us that domestic labor—cleaning the house, raising kids, caring for aging parents, nurturing social connections—isn’t actual work. It’s “women’s work,” because women are naturally more emotional and caring—even though research has shown that men are just as emotional as women.

This strains relationships, as the average married American woman takes on twice as many hours of this unpaid work per week. It also leaves many men overly reliant on career success and feeling isolated and empty when they come up short or the success doesn’t deliver the attention and happiness they expected.

It’s hard to like Saxon, with his macho posturing at women and meanness toward his siblings, but by the end I felt a shred of compassion for him. He recognized that, to be fully human, he needed something beyond his job.

That something was an emotional relationship with a woman that didn’t involve sex, which brings me to another myth…

Myth #3: Men are naturally and traditionally supposed to be big and muscular.

Saxon’s younger brother Lochlan people-pleases his way into trying to emulate his brother’s desire for a muscular body to attract women.

It’s estimated that around 85 percent of men worry about being muscular enough. Muscle dysmorphia—or “bigorexia”—appears to be increasing in young men and can have a toxic effect on self-esteem. Around one in ten men have experienced suicidal thoughts due to body image issues.

It’s not a coincidence that Lochlan nearly died after gulping down one of his brother’s protein shakes. He seemed to have bought into the stereotype that real men are supposed to look physically strong, so we can get, in Saxon’s words, "Money, freedom, respect, and pussy.”

Unfortunately, The White Lotus isn’t perfect at breaking with stereotypes about masculinity.

The final scene shows the hotel security guard finally achieving his crush’s admiration, but only after he set aside his spiritual belief in non-violence and defended his boss with a gun.

It also doesn’t help that the show’s creator, Mike White, used a misogynistic slur to fire back at the show’s music composer, calling something the composer said in their ongoing feud a “bitch move.”

It’s going to take a lot more than a television show to free men from the harmful, limiting ideas about masculinity that are not only outdated but also never were all that traditional to begin with.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below (or email me: jeremy@mohler.coach). What did you think of the men in this season? What myths busted by the show did I miss?

— Jeremy