The Anatomy of the Softboy
The softboy is a sensational creature, bored by both reason and mature emotional process.
Note: On the surface, reposting this makes a bold claim for its literary merit, given that the central term of the piece has since fallen out of fashion along with its immediate successors. But its literary merits are not for me to judge, and others may be split on them at best. I bring it here because it was fun to write and I suspect it may be fun enough to read. That in itself is a bolder claim given I don’t know how broad your parameters of fun are and I’m posting it without context. (It is one of several linked satirical monologues about gender essentialism.) It will at least do while I work on other shit.
We sisters are always forward-looking. That which most people call “the past” is for us a long night of oppression. We do everything we can to set aside the tyranny of what was and to focus keenly and with purpose to what will and must be. But that is not an easy, automatic process. You cannot just switch off the past. Letting go of the past also means letting go of those few things that warm every sister’s heart with fondness and longing. Nostalgia is inevitable; I don’t condemn it. But I like to direct that nostalgia in whatever proactive way I can.
I’ve heard some sisters talk wistfully about the Stretch Armstrong doll. This may seem strange because Stretch Armstrong was usually marketed as a boy’s toy. And sure enough, most of the sisters remember it as a secondhand plaything. Their brothers or their mandated male playdates having neglected the toy for an extended period and making it very appealing to the empathic sensibilities of the young girls. But their methods with the toy don’t seem very different from the boys’ methods. Like the boys, the girls poked, prodded, pulled, and twisted the elastic strongman. In about the same time—not very long—they developed that same exploratory curiosity about the innerworkings of the doll. They twist off its head to try and find an opening. They bash it against a wall or slam a door on it. Then they do the inevitable with a pin, a knife, or some scissors and let the clear slime pour out. Much to the dismay of the parents.
Some wise sisters don’t appreciate this talk, as it at first seems to blur the distinctions between the genders we’ve put so much work into reinforcing. But that is the thought of an anxious person who can’t seem to notice the deeper meaning.
To the boy, the Stretch Armstrong is just an object to amuse and be discarded if not destroyed—in other words, a pre-woman. To the girl, the Stretch Armstrong is seen very differently and, in a way, much more accurately. The girl is familiarizing herself with a very singular kind of man she will have to deal with countless times in her existence. Deep within the joyful amusement of the girl as she pulls the doll’s arms out and twists them like a gooey pretzel is a deep, defensive inquisitiveness. For the girl, the Stretch Armstrong is her first, and somewhat literal, encounter with what we call the “softboy.”
To a majority of the sisters, if not all of them, the softboy needs no introduction. The female intuition has practically evolved to spot them from great distances. Perhaps standing at the summit of a high mountain she can spot as many as 20 within a given radius. Lately, softboys are written about as if they are something to avoid at all times. But this seems to smooth over the woman’s complex nature. Some women don’t like them at all, which is fine. Some women are more tolerant of them. Other women genuinely like them. A man that inspires such divergent tones of interest is at least unique, and worthy of examination.
The woman’s aversion to the softboy is fairly understandable. Like our previously examined “nice guy,” the softboy is a sensitivity-driven subspecies. Yet he is not as finely cut as the former. The nice guy is so hyper-focused in his niceness, and so intent and strategic in dealing it out. The nice guy is gilded by a destructive intelligence—not an emotional intelligence but an intelligence about emotions. The nice guy is a doll with hidden spikes. The softboy has no detectible rationality; and he is far less complete-seeming than the nice guy. What he claims to know comes off as memetic, with no real context or connective sinews. It’s as if he catches information half-heard at parties and makes a mental collage out of them. It comes off as cheap deception at worst, an inferiority complex at best. He seems like a poser, and trying to engage with him as a woman of substance and real passion, the softboy becomes indignant and frustrated. Because at heart, the softboy is a sensational creature, bored by both reason and mature emotional process.
Through this rather unattractive cloud we might glean also why they are sometimes redeemable. The softboy is almost never self-assertive. Nor is he especially intrusive as other men are. The softboy is a receptive creature. He hangs at the edges, he gathers, he scavenges, he listens. He rarely offers a helpful point-of-view. What he does offer is usually a rehash of assumed platitudes that only seem interesting because they come out like a poorly signaled radio mishmash. The simplistic reactive palate of the softboy supplies easy validation for some or practice for others before they find someone better to interact with.
Why the softboy is composed as he is is an ongoing, maybe endless debate. For me the prognosis is quite simple. The softboy is playing human, but playing human very poorly. I find no personal use for softboys but I do find them pitiable. I suspect many were born wrong in some way. They have failed to settle into a proper life role and have disappointed. Or they erred in a significant way long ago and were chastised for it; maybe not by their mom, but someone else’s—or a dad or a female crossing guard. I think women fascinate them in a pleasing but vague way not even they understand. I think they spend most of their days wishing they were anything but who they are, something that a woman finds more useful and engaging: a small dog, an umbrella, a blanket, a mixed-green salad, a middlebrow novel or self-help guide, a plush armchair. Women who’ve gotten in deeper than most—say, to bed—with the softboy are more familiar with this aspect. They seem minimally responsive. Sometimes women are jolted thinking they’ve awakened next to a mannequin. No doubt some softboys could only hope! In this and only this very limited sense are they self-perceptive.
The tragedy of the softboy is that even in a male-dominated world he doesn’t fit in. Some women are bound to see a kinship. Not as a lover or a friend or even a brother, but something like a reflection—different, but also not. The temptation of a sister to over-identify with the softboy and hence to secret away or try to spare him, is one that should be taken seriously and anticipated. Technically, the softboy does fit in a post-male world: in the same place that the other males are to be fitted. But the pleading of the empathic can at least be heard out, and even met halfway. Within reason. Softboys lacked a use in the male world. Maybe we can find them one in the gynopocene age. Maybe more than one.
The softboy’s figure is usually beneath a peak conventional physique. With no concept of pattern, Softboys follow an erratic fitness regimen. Some constantly skip leg day. For some leg day is every day. Some only work their neck and upper back. Some work out only the left extremities. Some eat protein power out of the tub and forget to exercise altogether. And so on. The able-bodied softboy is only partly abled. Still, we will find them and beta test their physical limits against our proposed male management procedures. Though hypersensitive, the softboy indulges a habit of self-abnegation that enables a remarkable sensory threshold; they are tabula rasa in this way. They won’t resist or flinch if we changed their clothes or removed them entirely, if we tattooed their lower back with a barcode, if we put them in cold or hot climates, or gradually rationed their food supply. In truth, it’s not so much what we can do to them, it’s how we can turn the high-functioning man into him.
Some sisters have wondered if softboys would make ideal pets. The pet policy of the gynopocene is under review, but bringing a low-functioning man to a much lower function has crossed more than a few minds of wise sisters, if only out of curiosity. We at least know that their reproductive capacity could be surgically disabled without complaint.
Softboys have been an inspiration for our more entrepreneurial sisters, for sure. One is floating a proposal of Soft-Boy™️ chairs, in which their muscles and joints are placed in a stage of permanent rigor of a sitting position while their fat is softened and their skin is toughened into a leather. She has clever mockups for lounge, desk, and table settings based on different body types and a beautiful variety of stitch patterns.
Another idea, not yet formally proposed but very much in the air, is gaining wide appeal. The sequestering of the men will inevitably leave a surplus of gendered toys. Many will be destroyed as tokens of a darker past. The supply of Stretch Armstrongs, however, might be kept around for another use. Applying our time-honored sciences of filling-extraction, we amass it and transfer it into the softboy using a specially tailored embalming procedure. His veins and bowels flowing with gel, he is a life-sized doll, to be pulled, twisted, pummeled, and poked by keen and delighted sisters.
I was never a doll kind of girl, but the potential and value for it is obvious. And no one more than the softboy himself might be gladdened to help remind every sister never to shy away from childlike wonder when they need it.