In my early twenties, an unusual job landed in my lap – or rather, on my bare skin. I became a naked dancing ghost, a last-minute replacement for a production of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Several evenings a week, I would make my way in the twilight to the Malmö Opera, an imposing building with its cool marble columns and expansive, warmly illuminated windows.
Backstage in the dressing rooms, the atmosphere was surprisingly familiar, reminiscent of the pre-game energy before a minor league football match. The guys were relaxed, joking around, talking nonsense. The key difference emerged as they returned from makeup one by one: stark naked, their bodies painted a ghostly pale, punctuated by dramatic splashes of black. Their lips were rendered chalky white, and dark circles around their eyes lent them a startled, spectral appearance.
My entry into this peculiar world was born of drama. The previous makeup artist had endured offensive comments from one of the ghost dancers, leading to his dismissal. And so, I was hired – urgently. My very first night was the dress rehearsal, performed before an audience nearing a thousand people.
Despite the common stereotype of Swedes as being completely at ease with nudity, readily stripping off in public at any given moment, I was deeply self-conscious and embarrassed about my own body. Ironically, this very discomfort was a significant reason I took the job. I entertained the notion that it might be therapeutic. Exposing myself naked a couple of nights a week, I reasoned, should surely erode this ingrained shame. I hoped the external exposure would somehow heal the internal anxieties, aided by the presumed intense gaze of the audience.
However, the physical shame proved to be a superficial issue. My deeper turmoil was rooted in a profound sense of self-disgust, a feeling of being out of control. I was ashamed of my drinking, my lies, and my general “asshole” behavior. I was gripped by the fear that if people truly knew my thoughts, feelings, and actions, I would be utterly abandoned. When drunk, which was my constant state, I desperately sought validation from women, regardless of my relationship status.
Wagner’s opera resonated with me on a subconscious level. It tells the tale of a man tormented by an unspeakable inner anguish: a sea captain condemned to endlessly sail the oceans. Once every seven years, he is permitted to go ashore to search for a woman whose unwavering love until death can offer him salvation. The Flying Dutchman is fundamentally about the possibility, the yearning for forgiveness and redemption.
In a strange, perhaps naive way, I hoped that some of this redemptive quality would transfer to me. I wished to achieve a sense of clarity, to re-establish boundaries for my body and my very self.
On stage, the harsh spray paint stiffened our pubic hair, and the powerful voices of the opera singers sent shivers down our spines, making the hair on our bodies stand on end as we moved with them in the dramatically lit darkness, our facial expressions fixed and ghostly. It was a truly captivating synthesis of sound, light, and movement.
We ghosts were fragile, yet somehow powerful, simultaneously ridiculous and profoundly funny. Our penises swayed in unison with the music, a bizarre choreography of flesh and sound. Male camaraderie, so often elusive and difficult to combine with genuine presence, vulnerability, and meaning, seemed in this surreal context, effortless and self-evident.
Previously, the idea of connecting with men in groups had been intimidating, almost paralyzing. Simply hanging out with a group of men felt impossible without becoming withdrawn and frozen. But this experience was different.
The return of war to Europe has brought this experience back to the forefront of my mind. Sweden has abandoned its neutrality and we are constantly reminded of the looming threat of Russian aggression, the potential for war. The military has long been one of the most idealized forms of male bonding in our culture, glorified in countless movies and books. A powerful, noble male connection forged through a shared will to compete against another group of men, even to the point of death, if necessary.
While the military ideal of male companionship may be increasingly outdated, the concept of large groups of men engaging in activities together beyond sports, performance, drinking, or fighting remains challenging to envision. Intimacy among men in groups, when it occurs, is often manufactured by an external threat, whether real or imagined. In the absence of such pressure, we often become incapable, lacking a shared foundation for connection.
Group settings that allow men to be emotionally sensitive beings are rare outside the high-stakes arenas of professional sports. Within these ritualistic, confined spaces, the complex emotional and relational issues that men grapple with must be confronted, albeit often indirectly.
The underlying pressure, the unspoken expectations, are palpable. One only needs to glance at the Swedish sports newspaper Sportbladet to see, beneath a thin veneer of competitive events, headlines that reveal the real pain points: infidelity, domestic violence, illness, friendship, love, and gossip. “The mother’s anger: my son was weak and sick,” one headline screams.
Others proclaim: “I’m not going to hide any more – the football star comes out as gay” and “The handball player’s strange shoe addiction.” These headlines hint at the vulnerabilities men face and the societal pressures they navigate.
The male community I found during The Flying Dutchman was almost utopian. We were undeniably masculine in our shared nudity, yet we were placed in a situation where the typical male strategies for connection simply dissolved. The usual power dynamics and posturing were rendered irrelevant.
Although, as nude men, we certainly provided a spectacle, eliciting nightly boos and cheers before the curtain fell, we were kept separate from the opera leads between acts.
A diverse collection of individuals, we would gather in the smoking room in dressing gowns, awaiting our next cue. We felt a surprising freedom to simply sit together and chat about anything and everything. After months of this stripped-down waltzing, the arias and the sense of community had become so deeply ingrained in my being that, even two decades later, the opening notes of Wagner still trigger an almost uncontrollable urge to shed my clothes and dance.
Expressions of male friendship have evolved since then. I now regularly go to the gym with my “gym bros,” and while we work out, we can discuss almost anything. A friend and I recently launched a podcast exploring culture and masculinity. I’ve come to understand that modern male friendship can be intimate and candid – a formula for improved health and more fulfilling relationships and careers.
But it remains complex. While there is no shortage of male influencers offering guidance towards a more contemporary masculinity, they are often surrounded by controversy. The recent backlash against US podcaster, male influencer, and wellbeing advocate Andrew Huberman prompted Swedish columnist Catia Hultquist to ponder whether this signaled a rise in the demands placed on male friendships, and the beginning of a male disappointment movement – not so much #metoo as #brotoo.
The fundamental challenge we still face with masculinity and friendship is that, like art and literature, friendship requires relinquishing control and embracing vulnerability in the presence of another person. Masculinity doesn’t need to be confined to football and public displays of bravado, nor must it be solely defined by warfare. Similarly, male mutual support can emerge in the most unexpected contexts. But the crucial question remains: has male community evolved sufficiently to truly accommodate this vulnerability?
Earlier this summer, I traveled to Berlin with Författarlandslaget, the Swedish writers’ national football team. Over a weekend, we participated in a European championship against teams from England, Italy, Germany, and France, fostering a sense of male European writing community.
Within Författarlandslaget, I’ve encountered individuals who have taught me valuable lessons about vulnerability. Our team captain, Fredrik Ekelund, publicly came out as a transvestite, and I’ve played alongside Martin Bengtsson, who, after a suicide attempt, left professional football to become a writer and musician. The burden of having to project strength and invulnerability, which men so often carry, is temporarily lifted when I wear the yellow and blue jersey of the national team.
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The pervasive rage and aggression that surround us necessitate building defenses, but when we strip away the superficial layers of our culture, masculinity has the potential to genuinely transform. Men in a group can open up to each other about their hidden fears and insecurities, discuss what fills them with shame, about the emotional and physical violence they are capable of inflicting on each other, on women, and on themselves. The paradox of stripping away our defensive, buttoned-up facades – as I discovered, naked and ghostly before an audience of opera lovers – is that it ultimately gives us back control.
Exposing our authentic selves can liberate us from the constraints of outdated notions of masculinity. It allows us to embrace our inherent fragility and, even at the risk of disappointment, become more fully human.
- Gunnar Ardelius is a Swedish author.
