Self-Made Man is a look at what it’s like to be a man, written by a woman who successfully disguised herself and lived as a male for 18 months. The author, Norah Vincent, a writer for The Los Angeles Times, says she undertook this experiment out of curiosity for the differences between men and women, not from any deep feelings of being a man trapped in a woman’s body.
The various chapters in the book address different aspects of our lives—life, love, work, etc. Her male alter-ego, Ned Vincent, joins a men’s bowling league, lives in a monastery for a few months, goes on dates with women, visits strip clubs where “he” endures lap dances, and joins a men’s psychotherapy group.
The author is a lesbian who, from her earliest memories, has been perceived as a rather “masculine” female. Ironically, once she became “Ned,” most people assumed she was a gay man because she came off as being feminine, which really surprised her. At some point in most of her relationships with the people she met, she eventually revealed herself to be a woman. The reactions of the people are varied, and quite interesting.
The stress of having to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, for so long, and lying to people with whom she’d developed close friendships, eventually took its toll on her mental health, which she explains toward the end of the book. After reading the book, I listened to an interview with her on www.npr.org, which was a nice follow-up to the book.
I found her experiences fascinating and very enlightening, though sometimes she went on a bit too long with her analyses of our gender differences. After finishing this book, I wanted to explore gender differences even more, so I am now reading Deborah Tannen’s Talking From 9 to 5, about men and women communicating in the workplace.
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