Esquire - Cover Article about white teen "An American Boy"

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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...stirs-controversy_us_5c62ca3de4b0ab4bc4e2ad37


The piece follows 17-year-old high school senior Ryan Morgan from West Bend, Wisconsin. Morgan is featured in a powerful cover image on the March 2019 issue of Esquire. Overlaid over the image of Morgan, who is donning both a button-down and a hoodie and holding a sneaker, is the text: “An American Boy.”

“What it’s like to grow up white, middle class, and male in the era of social media, school shootings, toxic masculinity, #MeToo, and a divided country,” it reads.

I didn't know it was SO ROUGH OUT THERE FOR RYAN MORGAN

Dude looks like a Jake Paul clone
 
“I can get whatever I want......... you mad?”

Lol.

like I said in another thread, right there in picture attempting to depict problems....

1. Kid got multiple pairs of shoes
2. His own room
3. Clean clothes
4. His own bed
5. Beat machine on the table :lol:
6. NFL everywhere
7. Pissed off look on his face
8. Xbox
9. Nice house

Where exactly is the negative here?

Why is #metoo even mentioned? White men have that much female hate?
 
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There it is. Next up, an invite for a Big Mac at the White House.
 
Eric Sullivan, one of our senior editors (who also wrote this issue’s close-combat profile of celebrity attorney Benjamin Brafman), helpfully recalled a classic Esquire profile: Susan Orlean’s 1992 account of the day-to-day life of a ten-year-old boy. Twenty-six years later, we decided to follow that model but to enlarge it into a series on growing up now—white, black, LGBTQ, female—that will continue to appear in coming issues.

This first installment, written by Jennifer Percy, doesn’t have the same aim as Orlean’s piece, which sought to capture a key stage in a boy’s life. What we asked Jen to do—and she did brilliantly—was to look at our divided country through the eyes of one kid. Ryan Morgan is his name. He’s white, lives in the middle of the reddest county in Wisconsin, and, as you will see, he is an unusually mature, intelligent, and determined young man.

I’d like to thank Ryan here for the time he spent with Jen and photographer Justin Kaneps. He may be only seventeen—and as infallibly human as the rest of us—but I admire the courage he’s shown in speaking with us so openly about his life, and for agreeing to be on our cover. “I know what I can’t do,” he says, with some understandable frustration, at one point in the story. “I just don’t know what I can do.” I suspect that although quite a few adults would agree, not many would have the guts to say it out loud.

—Jay Fielden

This appears in the March '18 issue of Esquire Magazine. Subscribe here, and read the cover story in-full here.







 
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"The piece goes on to say: “Ryan, raised in Republican households, was surprised by the vitriol. ‘Everyone hates me because I support Trump?’ he says. ‘I couldn’t debate anyone without being shut down and called names. Like, what did I do wrong?’”

lol
 
Honestly thought this was a joke when I saw it yesterday. What a shame. I don’t care what some white kid in upper middle class suburbia thinks and neither should most people either.
 
“I can get whatever I want......... you mad?”

Lol.

like I said in another thread

1. Kid got multiple pairs of shoes
2. His own room
3. Clean clothes
4. His own bed
5. Beat machine on the table :lol:
6. NFL everywhere
7. Pissed off look on his face
8. Xbox
9. Nice house

Where exactly is the negative here?

Why is #metoo even mentioned? White men have that much female hate?
sounds like ninja, besides for #9
 
HuffPo article says this is the first in a series and the following stories will be about different demographics

They started with the white Trump supporting kid because they knew it would generate the most attention
 
I actually found the article enlightening for none of the reasons they intended. Like an article that attempts to humanize something that is already overly humanized; white people. It leads to some ridiculous quotes, insights and reflections.

A few thoughts....

1.) He was regarded as intelligent several times throughout the piece with no factual evidence to back this up. This despite showing no ambition or aptitude.
2.) Wisconsin in general, but Milwaukee specifically has one of the worst track records on minority/police interactions in the country. How does RYAN feel about it? Seriously I'd love to know.
3.) The most telling line in the article:“I feel like it was easier for our parents,” Kaitlyn says. “They figured things out quick. Now there’s so much competition.” - Because for white folks it WAS easier for their parents, and god forbid having to work as hard as the next man now isn't tough. This was another opportunity to explore. Why is there more competition, who do these kids feel comprises of these competing forces? How does it shape their views?

4.) What a vapid and poorly written article, there are numerous potentially poignant quotes with almost no context, like this one:

“I don’t know why it’s always white males shooting up schools,” Ryan says. “In the inner-city schools there are shootings and stuff, but it’s more like ‘I hate this kid because he touched my girlfriend, so now I’m going to shoot him.’

Why does he say this? Why does he think this? There is no exploration, only observation. In some other world there is an article that explores why Ryan feels this way? Why he thinks this way....
 
I have only read pieces of the article and I can't stop shaking my head and chuckling at the lack of insightfulness from the article; and the entitlement, fragility, and lack of self-awareness the kid displays.

As far as pointless profiles of fragile white people go, I never thought the NYT telling me white supremacists also do regular things like buying groceries and watching Seinfeld could ever be topped. But this joint has a chance.
 
  1. I cant remember if I've ever read Esquire but this series they're trying to do sounds interesting. Once its complete I'll go back and read all of them although based on the quotes I would hope they go further in depth with the young men/women
  2. I know this is for a March issue but they were better off starting with a African-American youth seeing as its right after black history month. Could of avoided alot of the commentary coming their way but for all I know that was their intention
 
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