The recent discovery by scientists that #NotAllMen love a stag party begs a couple of questions. First, I want to know more about the research methods. Loads more. The concept of ethnographic researchers following bands of men through the pubs of Brighton and bars of Prague analysing the angle of dicks scrawled on sleeping friends’ foreheads and the emotional response of grooms to lapdancers whose eyes say “I hate you” really tickles me. I want to know everything. The waterproof notepads they used, the questions they asked, what they did when a man silently mouthed: “Help.”
Secondly, I’d love to hear about the other men. The ones that love stag nights, who return home filled with the honey of male bondage rather than the greying worry that they have drained their entire redundancy package on a 24-hour city break.
Every man I know who is popular enough to be considered for the guest list of an August weekend in two years’ time marks the days off with dread. Their friends have been putting £10 a month into an account titled LADZ LADZ with the idea that this will either be used for drugs or to post bail in case of misdemeanour. Even the consciously wholesome plans are feared like job interviews: the paintballing retreats, the tasting menus, the Scorsese marathons.
Because what kind of adult parties specify “no girls allowed”? Unless a consensual chemsex rave, the lack of a whole other gender tends to add a complicated dynamic to a party. It’s presumably why so many of these nights end with broken wrists and shaved heads and the scars that come from pushing through awkward silences with slightly too much force. The wobbly tattoos, misspelt and incriminating, which years later flash from shirt cuffs. When did visiting a strip club become tradition? Who decided you had to drink until you passed out, shirtless in December?
There is a thriving wedding industry in the UK, but while we have heard hundreds of eye-rolling accounts of the money brides spend on dresses and hair, little attention has been paid to bachelors’ fantasies, the industry that drives the expectations of a stag night experience. From the idea that you have to run naked through Trafalgar Square with the word FARAGE on your arse, to the one that you have to have a stag night at all. And these ideas, they sell because they’re simple illustrations of what we believe men are meant to enjoy. Naked girls, competition, the freedom of booze, an escape from the tyranny of a nagging woman, from adulthood, and conversations about the future.
Could this new research offer more proof that nobody, whether a girly girl or laddy bloke, gains from restrictive gender stereotypes? The study concluded that men on stag dos are “performing” a role rather than enjoying the party. “These men are merely reproducing exaggerated forms of behaviour that are expected of them,” the report continued, “and that they expect of themselves in a pocket of available time to celebrate.”
When men feel pressured to be “men”, the research found, bad things happen. Men humiliate each other, they fight, they find themselves in positions where they feel deeply uncomfortable, and arrive at Monday as a wreck, washed up on the beaches of endurance, the only joy coming from having survived. Hence the stories you have no doubt shared. In 2013, Ollie McAninch claimed he developed shingles after he was kidnapped by his friends, driven out into the countryside and forced to cycle 10 miles wearing only a mankini. In February a stag do travelling from Bratislava to Luton acted so badly their Ryanair flight was forced into an unscheduled landing in Berlin.
The study claims the reason many men went along with “deviant” behaviour was so they would have stories to tell in later life which could be used as a kind of “cultural capital”. But that capital is only of value if we maintain that these endurance tests are enviable and exciting, rather than slowmo horror films with no suspense or redemption. Set in Bournemouth.
It’s in our hands. When we see a bachelor party careening along a train carriage in fancy dress, rather than blankly staring at our feet, we must take it upon ourselves to help a poor hero exit this ancient nightmare. We must save the stags.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
