CRITICAL NOTE · No. 15

Suppleness Is a Forbidden Virtue

On the crisis of masculinity, and the quality only capoeira still trains in men

There is talk of a crisis of masculinity — men, or some of them, unsure of their place, their social function, how to relate to “the second sex.” The reference to Simone de Beauvoir is apt: she showed how far gender differences are social constructions, and so arbitrary. Suppleness, coded as feminine, is quietly abandoned by men and barely trained in most combat sports, which prize rigidity, mass, explosive force.

Capoeira is one of the few places a man is asked, without embarrassment, to be supple — to fold, to invert, to flow, to move the hips. The game does not oppose strength and suppleness; it demands their union. To play well is to be, at once, powerful and fluid — a combination the cult of the hard male body treats as a contradiction.

There is a quiet argument here about what a body, and a man, can be. The rigidity valorised as masculine is also a limitation — mechanical, brittle, easily read. The supple body is more adaptable, more surprising, more alive. Perhaps part of the “crisis” is precisely the impoverishment of what men are permitted to be with their bodies. Capoeira quietly refuses the impoverishment.

RELATED NOTES

→ Capoeira Beyond Gender

→ You Are Not Your Results

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Continuous Flow: A Game That Never Stops

→ Reading the Game from the Inside