Why Prince Harry is the male role model men so desperately need

The multi-millionaire prince is about as privileged as it gets, but it turns out, says Martin Robinson, Harry is an inspiration
Prince Harry spoke openly about his pain and mental health during his and Meghan’s primetime interview with Oprah
PA Media
Martin Robinson10 March 2021

It is hard to view a royal as a role model.

It’s like looking up to bison, or cacti, or cutlery; royals are a different species, not quite human. We tend to idolise people who are fallible, who struggle against the odds to find success. The mythical struggles of Odysseus played out again and again in our Michael Caines, our John Lennons, our Marcus Rashfords. Royals don’t struggle, there is no journey, they just kind of sit in castles as animatronic visitor attractions.

So why then, did I, and perhaps other men, watch the Meghan and Harry and Oprah televisual event and find myself admiring Harry? He seemed… alright. Like a decent bloke fighting against his limitations, who had done what I hope I’d do if my wife was in trouble.

Deciding to expose his “pain” and be vulnerable was a move clearly learnt from his mother, who refused to bow to the royal tradition of not being human and was duly exiled by the mannequins with the clockwork wrists. Yet Meghan’s plight was the impetus. Surely, any of us humans would have had the same reaction to this grand but restrictive institution: ‘What is this place? Who has my phone? Why can’t I go for a McDonald’s breakfast?’

Anyone who isn’t from aristocratic stock would suffer. Stir in the tabloid abuse, laced with racism, and it was horribly inevitable that she’d spiral downwards.

But a miracle of sorts happened: her royal husband listened to her. By his own admission, it took a while, but he showed empathy, tried to support her, find help, and when none was forthcoming, started to recognise a machine which would grind up his wife and son the way it did his mother. Rather than swallow this, Harry acted upon it; decided they would take a step back, and eventually, a big step away.

He realised the environment he was in was fatally toxic. The curtain dropped on his lifelong privilege and status: his purpose as a man and his intentions as a father were under threat, he was in “a trap”. The way he pitied his father and brother was sincere, I think, he really wants freedom for them too.

And herein lies the reason he is suddenly a perfect modern role model for men. We are all coming to see ourselves as trapped in some way: conforming to what is expected of us as a man in our environments, which is often different to the man we really are or want to be. Instead, we tend to blend in with the expected behaviours, clothes, values and opinions; this is ‘hegemonic masculinity’, the pursuit of an idealised masculinity in a certain location.

You Are Not The Man You Are Supposed To Be by Martin Robinson
Bloomsbury

Most typically it involves a strong, cool, Alpha ideal, one infallible and less-than-human. This causes so many mental health problems for men - when they hit life’s difficulties and ‘fail’ to live up to the image, they then can’t ask for help because that is anathema to the ideal.

In rejecting what was expected of him as a man in his situation, Harry has provided a model which can free a lot of men from their particular traps. No easy task, given the weight of cultural and social expectations which bind our identities together, but one crucial to self-respect.

It’s not so much a rebellion as simply standing firm in your humanity, not letting yourself to be compromised by what’s around you. It’s hard to claim the biggest TV event of the year was in any way quiet, but Harry embodied a quiet revolution that is transforming men and has mental health at the heart of it. Rather than sticking on the stiff upper lip, he recognised his young family’s mental health problems, and found a dramatic but necessary solution.

Inspirational stuff, because it was not royal behaviour, not male behaviour but human behaviour.

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