The question below is designed to have you engage with the substance of our course readings and class discussions. Please answer in the form of an argumentative essay in which you foreground a clearly worded thesis statement.

In answering the question, you must make reference to the arguments in specific course readings as well as lectures and class discussions. In-text citations must be provided for all textual passages cited and textual references made. Your essays must be written in 12-point font.

Question:

Even though the decades of the 1950s and 1960s can be viewed as a time in which American men struggled to attain the era’s hegemonic ideal of masculinity, it was also a time in which a number of alternative understandings of masculinity were articulated by a variety of social groups: white hipsters, Black machos, straight playboys, gay leathermen, and butch lesbians.

Write a 5 to 7 page argumentative essay in which you compare and contrast the alternative masculinities articulated by THREE of these five groups. In your essay please be sure to foreground a thesis that specifies in what ways YOU think these three alternative masculinities are the same and in what ways they are different.

In the essay, you must make reference to the arguments and evidence presented by at least 4 authors we have read in class.
Note: I would like to see a draft of paper. Please keep me informed of the process, so I make sure we are on track.