Product Description

Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 111/2 shoes—a perfect disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism that’s destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.

With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a high-octane sales job taught her the gut- wrenching pressures endured by men who would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically sealed as a men’s therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent ended her journey astounded—and exhausted—by the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn’t an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent’s surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40893 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The disguise that former Los Angeles Times op-ed columnist Vincent employed to trick dozens of people into believing her a man was carefully thought out: a new, shorter haircut; a pair of rectangular eyeglasses; a fake five o'clock shadow; a prosthetic penis; some preppy clothes. It was more than she needed. "[A]s I became more confident in my disguise... the props I had used... became less and less important, until sometimes I didn't need them at all," Vincent writes. Gender marking, she found, is more about attitude than appearance. Vincent's account of the year and a half she spent posing as a man is peppered with such predictable observations. To readers of gender studies literature, none of them will be especially illuminating, but Vincent's descriptions of how she learned, and tested, such chestnuts firsthand make them awfully fun to read. As "Ned," Vincent joined an all-male bowling league, dated women, worked for a door-to-door sales force, spent three weeks in a monastery, hung out in strip clubs and, most dangerous of all, went on a Robert Bly–style men's retreat. She creates rich portraits of the men she met in these places and the ways they behaved—as a lesbian, she's particularly good at separating the issues of sexuality from those of gender. But the most fascinating part of the story lies within Vincent herself—and the way that censoring her emotions to pass as a man provoked a psychological breakdown. For fans of Nickel and Dimed–style immersion reporting, this book is a sure bet. (Jan. 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Vincent's first experiment in cross-dressing came on a dare from an acquaintance who was a drag king. When she experienced the intoxicating invisibility and safety that came from wearing the disguise, she wanted to learn more. For 18 months, she disguised herself as a man, renamed herself Ned, joined a men's bowling league, visited strip bars, and dated women. Along the way, she found that the freedom and privileges enjoyed by men were counterbalanced by a constant testing and severe limits on emotions. She also found women to be distrustful, ever ready to criticize men for being emotionally distant yet clearly preferring men who met stereotypical images of strength and virility. Vincent is frank about her experiences--the hard business of sexual transactions devoid of emotions, the easy bonding between men, fear of sexual attraction among men, and, ultimately, the explosion of her own notions of sex roles. She also explores the guilt she feels about her deception. Writing from the perspective of a gay woman who had a view of the male world that women don't get to see, Vincent finds unexpected complexities in the men she meets and in herself as well. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
A fascinating, truly weird account of a female journalist who dresses in drag for 18 months in order to feel men's pain. What prompted Vincent, who notes that she is not a transsexual or a transvestite, to undertake a cross-dressing experiment as the 35-year-old nerdy Ned, who stinks at sports, is attractive to women, frequents strip clubs with new blue-collar buddies, brings a refreshing "emotional awareness" to a Catholic monastery and excels as a high-testosterone door-to-door salesman? Fascinated by the "unspoken codes of male experience," Vincent bets that becoming a man will allow her to "observe much more about the social differences between the sexes." With great seriousness she undertakes the creation of Ned's persona: Consulting a makeup artist, she fashions a credible five o'clock shadow (it gets a little nasty when she sweats); cuts her hair into a fade to emphasize a squarer jaw and dons rectangular glasses; wears a binding sports bra and pumps weights to bulk up her shoulders; and learns to modulate her already deep voice (men, she learns, don't talk in torrential prattle, but "lean back and pronounce with terse authority"). As Ned, she joins a working-class bowling team, who offer touching fatherly tips, and while she genuinely likes the men, revealing her identity to them after months of friendship seems a violent and traitorous blow. In chapters entitled "Friendship," "Sex," "Love," "Life," "Work" and "Self," Ned undergoes the rigors of male conditioning, though it is finally while participating in a men's-movement group that Vincent recognizes that most men in fact live in disguise-hiding rage, pain and shame. One of the curiouser books to appear of late-sure to attract attention. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of gender & gender differences
Norah Vincent is a respected journalist who went "under cover" by dressing as a man for an extended period of time. She interacted with men and women in various contexts: joining a bowling league, working a high-pressure sales job, even spending weeks at a monastery. She writes candidly about her experiences in "Self-Made Man." The book is funny in many places, unexpectedly poignant in others, as Vincent discovers some unsettling truths about what it's like to be a guy in today's world. The book is particularly refreshing in that it is not a guy-bashing book: one of Vincent's conclusions is that it is difficult to be a man and she writes about the different expectations and cultural conventions that affect the way men act and interact. Vincent is also frank about the effect her deception had on her: she is troubled by her deception and writes in the last chapter about her own emotional breakdown after she leaves her alter ego "Ned" behind.

A thoughtful, honest, fascinating book that will make you laugh and make you think. Brava, Ms. Vincent!

An Eye-Opener in Every Way....
I was lured by the title/cover photo....I was hooked by the synopsis and thought this would make a diverting read. I knew I would laugh at Ms. Vincent's exploits and adventures, what I was completely unprepared for was the sense of sadness that overcame me as I finished 'Self-Made Man'.

In her guise as "Ned", the author explores such bastions of manhood as strip-clubs, the world of dating women, a monastery and a men's support group. Her experiences are intriguing as well as entertaining and will make most people think about how men and women are perceived by each other.

I think this book should be required reading for any woman who is currently married, engaged to or in a relationship with a man. It made me seriously examine my attitudes towards men and my perceptions of their behavior. It underscores so sublimely the need for men and women to HONESTLY communicate with each other...on ALL levels.

The most telling point for me was when the author was at the men's support group retreat, when the members drew their heros & some drew Atlas holding up the world.

Read this book with an open mind, whether you are male or female and you will see there is more to it than just a cool stunt just for its own sake. I hope people will pick it up and give it a chance.

Well written, insightful, quirky and VERY entertaining
I gained more insight into male behavior from Ms. Vincent's viewpoint than I have as 46 years of living as one myself. I'm extremely glad she didn't do a superficial travel log through the world of men, or a "why men suck" type of expose.

The only thing that I didn't like about the book is that it left me wanting more information on some of the friends she met as Ned. Her writing made me as fond of her cohorts as she seemed to become herself.

Highly recommended reading that folks will clearly be talking about more and more.