Manhattan's theater district at midday is a neighborhood full of disguises. Actors, singers and dancers thread between the crowds to their evening performances, a costume of American normality—sweat pants or jeans—their best camouflage.
No one understands this game quite like Norah Vincent. Strolling in to an empty French bistro on a recent afternoon, the tall, strikingly attractive journalist has just finished the acting gig of a lifetime.
For a year and a half, she passed as a man.
"It was mad," says Vincent, now dressed as herself, not Ned, the alter ego she painstakingly created with the help of an acting coach, a glue-on beard and a weight-training regimen. "It was like changing the channel or going to a foreign country, where the customs are highlighted because they're not your customs."
The result of this experiment is Vincent's first book, Self-Made Man, in which she describes how she infiltrated the inner sanctums of maleness and observed them with fresh (female) eyes. Over a cappuccino, Vincent explained why she left Ned behind with a greater sympathy for his kind.
Why did you feel you had to go undercover, so to speak, to write about manhood in America?
I realized as soon as you put a woman into the equation in a group of guys, everything changes. It doesn't matter if no one is speaking to you, what they say to each other is different if they know a woman is listening. It's sort of like the Capote thing—if you give a man the mask, he'll tell the truth. The whole idea of going undercover is that people just won't be honest in general.
In addition to bowling, working at a sales job and going on a men's movement retreat, you also date. I was surprised how many women went to bed with you after they learned you were Norah, not Ned.
Well, I had my three-date limit, and this isn't in the book, but I went on three dates with a gay man initially. That was a good exercise. He wasn't mad. But he just basically absolutely instantaneously lost interest in Ned. He thought Ned was his ideal gay man. And then all of a sudden, he was like, well, you don't have the right equipment—so sorry, I'm just not interested. If I'd done this as a guy as a woman trying to date straight men, I think most straight guys probably would have beat me up or at least been disgusted.
I found it interesting that one woman said that she had a 200-pound limit on guys—that anyone under that weight just didn't qualify.
That was the other prejudice I had—that as a woman in a man's body I'd find that the metrosexual was king, but actually I felt really sort of weedy and small, and it made me feel insecure as a guy, like no one would want Ned.
I think you described the feeling as being like something on a popsicle stick.
Yeah, a petunia on a popsicle stick. I definitely felt small, and I had that body/image feeling. Which was interesting because I think a lot of feminists think those are just women issues—but a lot of guys have those problems, too. Are you man enough? Are you strong enough? Are you big enough? Or, on the other end, are you just an ape because you are a big guy?
And women have a lot of power in this regard over men?
It's not just sexual decisions. I think if women could only appreciate how much it hurts when you just completely, you know, wipe the floor with [a guy], and how easy it is for you to do that. You got a lot more power than you know.
How many hours a day did you spend as Ned?
Well, the thing is—the year and a half was the course of the experiment. But I wasn't Ned every day, 24 hours a day. There were periods of time when I was, of course, writing the book during that time. So there'd be a month where I might only do Ned a few times a week, because maybe I would go on a date or something, but I would spend most of the day writing.
But there were heavier times?
Yeah, at the monastery, I was there three weeks straight. I was supposed to be there a month, but I left early—I just couldn't take it anymore. If I had done [this project] 24 hours a day that whole time, I would have completely lost my [marbles]. I reconsulted an acting voice coach, who said, "You know, I should have told you. I have that problem with actors sometimes when they do a part for a long time where they kind of disappear into the role. You gotta decompress at the end of the day. Otherwise, you really will kind of crack up." If I had known that I probably had a better time of it.
Was there anything you have retained from Ned's persona as Norah?
You know, I think that Nike phrase, "Just do it," is kind of dumb. It's a very masculine phrase. But it works, and it is a kind of attitude that pro athletes really adopt because they realize it's not seeing is believing, but that believing is seeing. It's not arrogance, but just a comfort in taking the reins and assuming an authority you don't often have, but making that authority real because you conjure it. So I use that—that's Ned's lingering voice. It's sort of like, okay, come on, Ned!