According to a new study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, men who get less sleep are widely considered to be more masculine than men who get a healthy amount of sleep, PinkNews reports. Yes, you read that right, according to research, less sleep makes for a more manly man.
The research, which is based on a combination of the results from six different studies, found that "sleeping less is related to increased perceptions of masculinity, and increased masculinity is related to decreased perceived sleep amounts." Additionally, the studies found that "based on how much they sleep, men face social judgements favoring men who sleep less."
In one part of the study, men were asked to say out the words "I sleep a lot more than the average person," and "I sleep a lot less than the average person." Those who said the first statement reported they felt a lot less "manly" than the men who got to say they don’t sleep.
This means we can now add sleeping to the long, long list of things that supposedly make men less manly. Just a week ago, Fox host Tomi Lahren said that Joe Biden "might as well carry a purse" to go with the COVID mask he wears. In October alone, we’ve learned that sleeping and not getting sick are things that men just shouldn’t do, they’re just girly things.
Unsurprisingly, one of the places researchers pointed to as the cause of this problem is Donald Trump. "Men often choose to ‘tough it out’ by avoiding feminine associations with health care," they said. "For example," they continued, "US president Donald Trump has boasted about getting less than four hours of sleep per night and regularly derogates his political opponent Joe Biden as 'Sleepy Joe.'"
How did we get here as a society? How on earth did we let cis, straight men decide what makes you man, and why do they constantly keep making such bad choices on the matter?
