This morning my fellow teachers had a bit of a joke at my expense concerning getting a mud mask from one of our students, claiming that one of the guy students did the same thing himself. I found this drily amusing, because even though I do not have a reputation of being one of those particularly insecure macho sort of guys, I still have a fairly strong sort of idea about what kind of conduct is proper for a guy and what kind of conduct is not proper, and I’m not someone who is generally a metrosexual, as they are often termed. Being, therefore, a bemused watcher of human character, I often enjoy looking at the way in which manhood is different in different parts of the world.

In many ways, there is no question that the students I teach are men’s men. One of them has killed wild animals and worked for years in the jade mines, and they are all physically strong and able to do buffalo work very easily, even joke about it. They can clear out jungle without a great deal of trouble and work skillfully in farms and gardens without any difficulty at all. Athletically, nearly all of them are capable of playing sports like football and takraw with ease, and their natural athletic ability is far above my own rather modest allotment. On the surface, these students are clearly very manly men.

On the other hand, many of these students would be ridiculed very harshly under the “mancard” rules of American manhood. Let me count the ways. As stated before, at least one of the guys has gotten mud masks. In general, these guys enjoy watching sappy and melodramatic love movies (like “Dear John”), they regularly sing Celine Dion songs like “My Heart Will Go On,” besides having an irrepressible love for British boybands and K-pop, and they tease each other about crying, even as they try to bolster their manhood credentials by claiming that real men don’t cry. It is deeply interesting to hear them chatter about their manhood, recognizing the similar conversations I have had with my own male friends.

It is striking that there are some strong similarities in what is considered manly in many parts of the world. Generally physical accomplishments of strength are well respected and valued across the board. Often emotional control–the avoidance of tears, for example–is also valued. In Thailand, the ‘traditional’ Buddhist culture seems to value the most a sort of unsmiling appearance of indifference to avoid the danger of wrongful clinging of either anger or desire. This sort of studied indifference does not appear to be very common among the general population, beset as it is with an excessive greed for money, a notable love of alcohol, and a fairly promiscuous lack of morality. I say this as an American, in the knowledge that my culture shows the same weaknesses, for many of the same weaknesses, whatever our cultural ideals.

Nonetheless, that said, I find it striking that the young men I teach do not appear to me very different than the guys one would sit at a bar with and tease about their mancard back in the states. I suppose one advantage, if it may be called this, of the spread of our culture around the world is the fact that many other nations appear to have adopted the popular view of manhood (and womanhood), which makes other cultures a bit less different and less mysterious, even if it is a shame that all too often what has been adopted from us is our technology and our vices, rather than our ideals and virtues. Perhaps the virtues and ideals will come in time. I hope so.