Monday 15 February 2010

FTM UK - Role Models

I expected a bit more results with this topic, I thought we would all have role models growing up, people we idolised and wanted to be like, maybe it's just me? I'm a big movie fan, I always have been, and I think I've learned a lot from films. Watching how the male characters acted, especially in old films, we watched alot of old films as kids. I think seeing those strong, alpha male, gentlemen characters had a profound influence on me. That's what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I was always a big child, now I don't mean fat, but tall and well built and strong, it's traits that run in my family. But I also tended to identify with male characters who also had these characteristics. The same applied to computer games, with this outlet, I could go some way to express myself. One childhood favourite was Streets of Rage 2. I always went the big wrestler guy, Max.



And as games become more sophisticated and you could customise your characters, I would always go for the big guy. Tall, strong, muscular, everything I wanted to be. But it wasn't just films and games that I had these role models, there was TV too. One program that really sticks in my mind was a TV adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, with Ron Pearlman and Linda Hamilton (some of the older readers should remember!).



I guess this kinda appealed to me as I never really felt 'right', there was something different about me too. Another favourite as a child was a kids' program called 'Round the Bend', I absolutely loved this program, and the main character, Doc Croc, I thought he was brilliant. I think my sarcastic sense of humor was shaped from an early age by the Spitting Image guys.



I don't think I could really say that I had a real life role model that I looked up to. I wouldn't call my dad a role model, we don't really have anything in common to allow us to have a proper close relationship and he's not really one for passing on the things he knows. Pretty much whatever I've learned has been my own doing.

Lacking a proper male role model, I've had to kinda figure a lot of things out myself that normally your father or grandfather would have passed on to male children, fortunately a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of The Art of Manliness, which I've found to be very interesting and quite inspiring. I've still got alot of reading to do on the site, but I think it's going to be quite the influence on me.

The channel's videos -

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