Tony Dokoupil

"To survive in a hostile world, guys need to embrace girly jobs and dirty diapers," argued the Newsweek writers Andrew Romano and Tony Dokoupil in the subheadline of their September 20 article "Men's Lib."

The writers set out to explain "[w]hy it’s time to reimagine masculinity at work and at home."

If American men want to be competitive in a global economy, they argued, they need to suck it up and get comfortable with the idea of working traditionally "girly jobs" and/or being stay at home dads:

It’s possible to imagine protectionist trade and immigration policies boosting blue-collar employment at the margins. But the U.S. can’t stop globalization. If male morale—and the American economy—are ever going to recover, the truth is that the next generation of Homer Simpsons will have to stop searching for outsourced manufacturing jobs and start working toward teaching, nursing, or social-service positions instead.

Fair enough. But Romano and Dokoupil also cast their gaze across the Atlantic, arguing America needs public policies that emulate European countries on paid parental leave, particularly paid paternal leave (emphasis mine):

Tony Dokoupil, who once asked "is journalism ready for a black president" in the Columbia Journalism Review -- he also excerpted it in a blog entry at Huffington Post -- gave Newsweek readers a look at what the presidential candidates' neckties say about the men who wear them.

You may scoff now, but Dokoupil sure finds it a knotty problem (emphases mine):

So what does the knot say about today's presidential candidates? In McCain's case, it screams old-guard Washington establishment, like a bolo screams cowboy. According to his top adviser, Mark Salter, the Arizona senator wears his tie with either a Windsor or the related half-Windsor knot--a configuration long favored by Beltway elites and, at least judging by the photos, nearly every U.S. president in the 20th century.... McCain's Windsor might seem like an odd choice for a self-proclaimed maverick, but it reflects the senator's public struggle to remain true to himself despite the distorting pressure of the presidential campaign. [...]