Aisling Curtis | Senior Staff Writer
When future generations talk of great cultures, there will be one they ignore: that of the contemporary Irish Lad. Though the ‘lad lifestyle’ currently dominates the landscape of young Irish culture, it’s a heritage that will hopefully soon die out and be forgotten one day as a small and shameful misstep on the path towards maturity.
There’s a dark underbelly to this lifestyle, a grimy and sinister culture of masculinity and posing
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At face value this assessment may seem harsh. Like many young people lads like going out, getting drunk, and looking good. None of these things are necessarily crimes. This intense appetite for ‘lad activities’, though slightly shallow, is not the worst thing one could have. But there’s a dark underbelly to this lifestyle, a grimy and sinister culture of masculinity and posing, of attempts to outdo one another and achieve some intangible reputation. Of course, it would be less sinister and more silly if it weren’t for the statistics from the National Office for Suicide Prevention, disclosing that the highest recorded suicide rate is among 20-24 year old men. Of the 495 tragic victims of suicide in 2010, 42% of these were men under the age of 40. The lad generation, then. The generation characterised by excessive drinking and a greater capacity to isolate themselves behind social media than any generation before. The generation that retains much of the Irish tradition of bottling it up and pushing-it-under-the-rug. After all, big boys don’t cry, right? Any self-respecting lad certainly doesn’t cry.
I’ve always found lad culture incredibly lonely. A bridling, show-off facade, a fruitless attempt to win some masculine competition without a palpable prize, solely because that’s what media and mates have suggested you do. To me, lads have always seemed less the legend and more the victim: victims of the media, of the TV shows that depict how a man should behave, of one-sided and aggressive porn, of derogative websites like Lad Bible and True Lad. Handed a prescription for behaviour and told that is the only way to be, it is not so unexpected that a large swathe of this generation succumbs. After all, there is no other rule book; for some, they know no other way that they should be.
The truth is, guys, there’s nothing special about being a lad
But the truth is, guys, there’s nothing special about being a lad. You won’t be successful in your chosen field for being a top lad. You won’t receive that incredible promotion for being a good lad. I fail to comprehend how you could achieve any of the markers of satisfaction – marital happiness, career success, intellectual or spiritual fulfillment, whatever you want – by being the most exceptional specimen of lad culture to ever grace the dancefloor of a Dublin club.
With suicide rates so high it has become even more urgent that we address what this culture is allowing fester, the secrecy that it permits breed. Too many young men in Ireland aren’t speaking out about their mental health, afraid perhaps of being labelled ‘un-laddish’, afraid that nobody knows how they’re feeling, afraid that they’re not supposed to feel this way. We need to talk about lads. Lads themselves need to talk about their behaviour, their language, the ominous culture of silence and emotional isolation that they are reinforcing and facilitating in themselves and their friends. All of us must stop supporting these behaviour patterns, stop encouraging young men to act this way, stop prescribing this as the sole means for boys to express themselves.
After all, it’s already so very difficult to detect which of us is hiding our secret tragedies behind an opaque screen of banter and nights out; there’s no need to encourage cultures that make the problem far, far worse.
