Shelby Lorman's Awards for Good Boys

Awards for Good Boys is a hilarious book containing writing and pithy illustrations which capture the normalised horrors experienced by women in terms of dating, desire and ambition. More specifically, through the prose and illustrations, Shelby Lorman examines and dissects a society that readily celebrates men for displaying basic decency.

What upsets me is that it’s easy for people to frame Lorman’s critique of dating life as hatred of men as a result of negative personal experiences. But the glaringly obvious truth is that though her illustrations and stories sound insane, they are related to and affirmed by the experiences of many other women. So, she is not a conniving, man hating feminist because her work simply emphasise and outline patterns of mediocre behaviour shown by men (and patriarchy princesses) again and again. And feminists do not hate men! They call out injustice when they see it and have the courage to speak up for higher standards and a healthier society.

Furthermore, Lorman denotes the subtleties of men misbehaving. She does this by exposing why the covertly misogynistic men, those who aggressively claim that they are ‘good’ are often the worst. She describes the male ‘performance of goodness’, how many men feel entitled to praise for pointing out the obvious. However, she does not neglect the reality that sexism is exacerbated by the complicity on the part of women to maintain the status quo. That is, some women are conditioned to reinforce intense social pressures placed on women and accept the low standards expected of men. As she puts it, ‘women also shape other women to be more pleasing shapes for men’. She gives key examples of women telling other women to shave before a date or not to text too early to avoid being too intense.

The most striking example of women policing other women’s behaviour is the idea of being likeable so men can accept you, ‘You just need to be nicer to men so as not to push them away’. But men hung up on the idea of women having to be likeable is exactly the type of man to be avoided, because those standards of likability do not apply to men! This extends to politics. In 2019 we are seeing bigoted men get into power without being questioned on grounds of their likeability).

In summary, Awards for Good Boys criticises a world where men are celebrated for acting marginally above the unimaginably low standards that are set for them. It also shows the ways in which the language and beliefs held by some women is complicit in maintaining poor standards of behaviour. This is problematic because women ( especially women of colour and people of marginalised idenities) who take on non-glamourous activism remain largely invisible. The key point is that if we celebrate men for doing the minimum, it shifts the burden on women to be more accountable in terms of emotions and actions.