There’s a superhero “on top of the world,” perched on a building’s roof, staring at his sandwich, clearly in the throes of depression. In the book’s most arresting spread, a tattooed motorcycle rider has parked his bike and is crying beside the dead body of a squirrel in the road.īut we see other, less dramatic emotions as well. There’s a bawling race car driver who’s coming in second, a weeping pirate who can’t seem to find the buried treasure on his map. Several of the bright, colorful images in the book display copious tears. The comforting implication, of course, is that a little boy experiencing his feelings must nonetheless himself be, at heart, a tough guy. “You might not think it, but tough guys have feelings too,” the text says. The next page shows an astronaut floating in the empty blackness of space, a forlorn look on his face, holding a photo of himself with his mom. “It’s not always easy being a tough guy,” Negley writes. The book begins with an image of a slumped-over, masked lucha libre wrestler shedding droplets of terrified sweat in a locker room as his opponent flexes his giant muscles back in the ring. This appealing book makes the timely decision to hold the conversation about male emotions while everyone involved is in costume, performing some iconically macho role. But the earnest, straightforward Rosey Grier approach was ripe for an update. So do boys feel more free to cry and show emotion now than they did back in the 1970s? Keith Negley’s “Tough Guys (Have Feelings Too),” a simple, stylishly illustrated picture book from the design-conscious publisher Flying Eye Books, suggests they do not. These imaginary figures show vulnerability only in tiny doses, and preferably while they’re encased in protective, muscle-hugging spandex. Perhaps even more now than in the 1970s, an ever-growing pantheon of superheroes and ninjas and other tough-guy fantasy figures surrounds American boyhood. Finally, little boys would be freed from the tyranny of the tough-guy stereotype! But that hasn’t exactly happened. The Vietnam War was nearing its end, and the grown-ups were emotionally exhausted. You and Me” album, inviting a generation of boys to let their softer feelings show. star Rosey Grier sang “It’s All Right to Cry” on the “Free to Be.
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