Gabrielle Selz is an award-winning author. Her books include the first comprehensive biography of Sam Francis, Light on Fire, and Unstill Life: Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction. Her essays and art reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Hyperallgic, Art & Object, Art Papers, The Rumpus, and The Huffington Post, among others. She makes her home in Oakland, California.
The amount of pressure on young men still to get on with it and to bottle it up and to be strong and be certain is overwhelming. And it shows in the UK. The suicide rates for men are so high. It’s a mental health issue. We don’t allow men to express themselves or talk about their vulnerability, and we blame them for a lot; we get to that phrase “toxic masculinity” really quickly. I don’t believe masculinity is always toxic, I just think sometimes it’s very unhealthy and we need to examine it and open it up.