600 miles west of Fiji, on the island of Vanuatu, young men bungee jump off of enormous wooden structures and hurtle towards the ground, trying to touch it with the tops of their heads before springing backwards. The extremely dangerous pastime is called Naghol, a rite of passage for males of the ancient aboriginal tribe.
In Kenya young Okiek tribespeople are painted to appear as wild animals, then secluded from the rest of society to be haunted by a terrifying spirit. When they can imitate the creature’s roar, they too have entered maturity.
In Amish communities across North America and Europe, you become an adult after you have practiced Rumspringa, a weekend of freedom to experience the pleasures any 21st century pleasures you choose. In Jewish ritual, a bar or bat mitzvah codifies your passage into fertility.
But inside of our modern, urban life, we seem without formal rites of passage. Increasingly atheist and agnostic, severed from our ethnic traditions by generations of life in the secular West, we live without the danger or necessity to ever really prove our bravery or survival skills. This isn’t to say that adult life isn’t hard in the First World. In fact, it might even be harder, precisely because it’s so problematized. Without culturally agreed upon ways of saying we’re adults, how do we know we’re adults at all?
Tapped in brands like Old Spice seem aware of the situation. The mens’ deodorant, body wash and hair care brand wants to ‘Smellcome to Manhood,’ and suggests what might actually be the truth about today’s male rites of passage. As our sweat glands activate and our hormones kick our bodies into hyperdrive, passage into manhood becomes about keeping its very signifiers in check: we wear antiperspirant, we shave. We bear the physical signs of keeping our primitive bodies in beautiful and kempt. In a way this is its own kind of bravery, and really does become a daily ritual of our sexuality’s affirmation.
We prove our manliness by proving our gentlemanliness: the modern man is someone in control of their appeal, like others are in control of their fear or environment. Old Spice’s Fresher Collection, with a set of new scents like ‘Timber’ and ‘Amber,’ seem totally aware of the dynamic, linking our new modes to old names.
