Justin Baldoni Is Breaking Down the Harmful Myths of Masculinity
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At first glance, Justin Baldoni seems like a guy who’s got it all figured out. The actor-director is tall, handsome, and totally ripped. He’s a caring father to two beautiful children, a devoted husband to his lovely wife. Over three million people follow him on Instagram, filling his comment sections with paragraphs of praise and endless seas of heart-eyes emoji every day.
Most people know Baldoni from his role in Jane the Virgin, the beloved satirical telenovela rom-com which ran for five seasons until its finale in 2019. Opposite Gina Rodriguez, Baldoni played the leading man—Rafael, the dreamy playboy hotelier turned adoring father and husband. In real life as on screen, Baldoni checks a lot of the traditional boxes that come to mind when you think of “the perfect man.” But look beyond those passing assumptions, and you’ll find a man on a surprising mission: to deconstruct the very pillars of masculinity and manhood that have defined his success all his life.
Baldoni’s new book, Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, is out today. The book’s central thesis—that in order to be truly happy, men must redefine restrictive notions of traditional masculinity—has its roots in a TedTalk he gave in 2017. The 18-minute talk, “Why I’m done trying to be man enough,” went viral online, one clip from it garnering over 50 million views in a matter of days.
In both the TedTalk and his book, Baldoni mines his personal experience as a man and an actor to reveal larger truths about the harmful myths of masculinity. By delving deep into his own childhood, adolescent, and young adult experiences, Baldoni takes a closely considered look at how we as a society have gotten here, and how men might engage in the process of reframing traditional notions of what it means to “be a man,” in order to be happier, and truer to themselves.
Baldoni spoke with Esquire about writing Man Enough, masculinity in Hollywood, how to be vulnerable with other men, and balancing fatherhood and his career.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Esquire: Where did the journey to writing Man Enough begin for you?
Justin Baldoni: I think the journey to writing the book began when I was born into a culture that puts men in these very constricting boxes. I remember being very young and struggling with this concept of wanting to be one of the boys, yet never feeling like I was enough. That feeling never left me.
Millions of men have it, yet it's just never talked about. In my twenties, as I was coming into adulthood, I noticed just how inauthentic I was being in so many different situations and relationships. I was constantly testing to figure out the type of person I should be. What kind of man would garner the best response in what situation.
So what I've been doing over the last seven years is talking about it as I'm learning. I'm not on the other side. I'm not writing this book as an expert; I'm writing this book as somebody who's on this journey learning in real time. I figured if I can write something that's healing for myself and invite men into this journey with me, then maybe it can be healing for them, and they'll see some of their story in mine.
ESQ: You write that one of the more harmful myths of masculinity is that you have to be the “the man who has it all together and who doesn't need anyone else." How do you learn not to enforce these myths on other men, and how to be vulnerable with other men?
JB: It's really hard. I think that it's very uncomfortable for us men to start to reach out and ask for help or to model vulnerability, because it's been used against us. Vulnerability shouldn't have to be a strength. Vulnerability should be just something that we are born with and that we do. But because of the culture that we are being raised in and we're living in, the patriarchy and how it's been designed, vulnerability becomes a superhuman strength because we have to risk something to share something that should be second nature. And that's really fucked up.
What is my advice, or what would I recommend men do? I would recommend that as men, we have to look at vulnerability in our interpersonal connections and relationships in the same way we look at the gym. All these things we do for our bodies—we have to be willing to do that for our hearts, our emotional wellbeing, and our mental health. The only way that we can do that is to be willing to become uncomfortable.
If I can share this pain that I've had, that I've not been able to share with anybody, with this guy that I trust? He might then be willing to share with me. When he shares with me, I'm going to get another dopamine hit. I'm going to be like, "Oh fuck, wow." You're going to feel less alone. You're going to feel stronger. You're going to feel clearer, you're going to feel bliss.
ESQ: In writing this book, you dug up a lot of personal and intimate memories that you hadn’t spoken about before. What was that process like?
JB: A lot of it was unexpected. I didn't know what I was going to get into when I started writing the book. The only way it felt safe and good to write about masculinity was by using my own experiences. I would start writing and these experiences would just pour out of me on paper that I don't think I had ever fully processed.
It became very therapeutic for me. It can come off at times like a memoir, but it's far from a memoir. It's a personal exploration of masculinity from a straight, white, cisgendered male perspective. The only way that I could do it was by being truthful.
There's stuff that my family, as they're reading this book now, had never known about or heard me talk about. It's very confronting and challenging. But I'm grateful and happy to be sharing it with the world because it was written for me, and now it's ready to go to other people. If it helps people examine their own experiences and stories, that's the purpose and the intention—and it will have not been in vain.
ESQ: In the "Big Enough” chapter, you write about trying to reconcile your personal journey of reframing masculinity with your career as an actor in Hollywood, where many of your roles were stereotypically attractive, muscular men. How did you reckon with that disconnect?
JB: I'm still dealing with that. I'm not on the other side of it. I'm still reckoning with it. Hollywood puts you in a box when you get here, decides what you are and who you're going to be. I was put in a box of the handsome, buff guy who generally played characters that were not nice. That's how I looked. What I found interesting is that the roles I would get as an actor were very similar to the archetypes of the men that I was pretending to be in my daily life to gain acceptance.
Then Jane the Virgin happens. Because of the way that I looked, I'm written as a certain type of person—I'm a sex symbol, objectified in this very similar way that we objectify women. It's not done in a nefarious way, it's not done in a way that I believe was intentionally harmful. It's just the culture. It's the CW. It's pandering to a certain audience. It's a telenovela. It's just the system. And I was a part of that, and that's who I was. I was kind of the sex symbol of the show. And if anything, I'm happy that it was me and that it wasn't the women. Luckily it was written by women, so the women weren't that. I was that, and that's okay.
But what I found was that I struggled because I was perpetuating a problem that I was also suffering from. Guys who looked like I looked were the ones I was comparing myself to, that were causing me to be unhappy, creating this muscle dysmorphia. I grew up watching Stallone, Van Damme, and Schwarzenegger. That male body was the body that I wanted growing up, that I obsessed over as a young kid.
Men are suffering from the very system that we are creating and that we are perpetuating. As my dear friend Liz Plank says, her liberation is tied to mine. All of us need to recognize that the system is broken and all of us are suffering, even those of us with an immense amount of privilege.
ESQ: How do you balance your career ambitions with fatherhood and create a work-life balance?
I fail all the time. The journey I'm on today, right now, is to not beat myself up for how much I'm failing. One of the pieces of business advice that was given to me by a mentor is: “You can do it all, just not all at once.” I think that also relates to fatherhood, and to parenthood in general. There's no one way to do it. I don't believe there's such a thing as a work-life balance. I think that that's up to the individual.
Have I spent time with my kids this week? Yesterday, did I spend time with my son? I had a ton of meetings yesterday. Maybe I can spend fifteen minutes this morning and make sure he knows I'm here and I'm present with him, and I love him. Maybe I can go on a walk with him. Maybe my daughter got more time than my son did yesterday, oh crap. Let me figure out how to give him a little bit more time today, while not making her feel bad. Every day, it's a check-in.
You can have a goal. We should be setting goals and intentions for work and parenthood, but we also have to be okay with those things changing every day. We have to be willing to love ourselves through these failings, and then just try harder the next day.
ESQ: Is there anything readers should know going into the book?
What I want to say to any man who's reading this is that this book is an invitation. It's not a condemnation. It's not an attack on men. Because I love being a man. I believe there's amazing aspects to being a man.
I think, as men, we have to look at our lives and ourselves and things that lead to our discontentment and unhappiness, or that cause pain in the lives of the people we love, and be willing to take feedback, adjust, and listen.
I wrote this book because I didn't have that in my life, I didn't have somebody that could model that for me. So this is truly an invitation from my story hopefully into yours, to know that who you are, as you are, is enough.
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