“I couldn’t be myself, and after a while, this really got me down. I spent so much time worrying about being found out, even after I knew that nobody would question the drag, that I began to feel as stiff and scripted as a sandwich board. And it wasn’t being found outa s a woman that I was really worried about. It was being found out as less than a real man, and I suspect that this is something a lot of men endure their whole lives, this constant scrutiny and self-scrutiny.” (276)

What really makes a man? Norah Vincent bulked up with protein and weightlifting, got a flat-top hair-cut and masculine eye glasses that emphasized the angles of her face. She used theatrical make-up to create a five o’clock shadow and consulted a voice teacher to learn how to modulate her voice. She bought men’s clothing and even asked male friends to correct her mannerisms. But after 18 months of passing as a man in various social situations, Norah was surprised to find that she could dispense with the beard and the glasses and still be perceived as a man. With gender, perception is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

This was one of many interesting observations Vincent makes in her book ‘Self-made Man.’ For a year and a half, Vincent lives as ‘Ned,’ her male alter-ego. As Ned, she joins a blue-collar bowling league, stays on retreat at a monastery, goes on dates, works in a high-pressure sales environment and explores strip clubs. The author enters these situations with preconceptions and stereotypes that change racially as she experiences life from a man’s perspective.

As a woman, her exploration of manhood is only surface – she could only know what it was like to be ‘as a man’ and not what it is ‘to be a man.’ However, I found the author’s analysis of her experiences fascinating. Each chapter, roughly chronological, explores a different aspect of living as Ned. Ned was a full participant in these experiences – doing everything from paying for a lap dance to baring his soul on a men’s retreat.

I was surprised to find that in many cases, the author eventually revealed herself as a woman to her subjects. She was extremely upfront about the dishonesty of her project and the potential hurt it could cause. Although she didn’t always ‘come clean’ to people who knew her as Ned, her experiences when doing so were some of the most interesting and moving parts of the book.

I have to confess that I was a bit uncomfortable with the subtle betrayals throughout the book and the access the author had to spaces that assume confidentiality. For example, her descriptions of what goes on in a men’s support group (right down to the crayon drawings the men made of their ‘heroes’) seemed to walk a very fine line between ethical journalism and a blatant breach of privacy. I’m not sure the insights Vincent gleamed from these encounters were worth the potential hurt of such an infiltration.

I found the last few chapters, about the psychological impact of life as Ned, disturbing but oddly compelling. Are gender constructions so basic to the sense of ‘self’ that violating them can cause a mental breakdown? It definitely made me think about gender in new ways.

The author is openly lesbian and those who are uncomfortable with homosexuality or frank discussions of sexuality and the concept of fluid sexual identity may potentially find this book disturbing. I did find that parts of the book were poorly written and awkward in comparison to other books in this genre. However, it was definitely a page-turner and even when I didn’t agree with the author’s observations, they still held my interest.