All the real man’s men

Abstract

When we say to someone “Don’t act like a girl!”, we are saying more than a simple sentence. We are moving in the field of representation and self-perception. What are we saying about men? What are we saying about women? In the last decades gender stereotypes, in particular the idea of ‘real man’ that is linked to the father ‘breadwinner’, constitute one of the key limits to gender equality: overcoming these conceptions and categorizations is a fundamental step. As creative designers we feel the necessity of a smarter approach to design and the responsibility to be active protagonists in changing our society. This project can be defined a cognitive ergonomic move in the fields of psychology and design concepts: it is an educational path made to be ‘designer friendly’ recognizing the relevance of the stereotypes and their connection to prejudices. Creating guidelines which include psychological and designer sensibility, we suggest not to simply replace the ‘real man’ with a new one: we wish to deconstruct this model improving the emerging of new ones and consequently promoting ideas of ‘diversity’ and ‘authenticity’. The aim is training creative designers in order to let them introduce and slowly educate audience to accept cultural changes and new models.