30Planks
In November 2021 the artist Fittererr did a self-proclaimed plank challenge for TEMA Magazine to explore how repetition and routine shape normality.
Artist statement
Doing research about masculinity models, I came across the opinion that military training has also shaped hegemonic masculinity. The latter is the most common, ("normal"?) identity model for people with a penis, defined by factors such as: Physical strength, money, and the objectification of women. All factors boil down to being able to stay in control and a state of (physical) dominance.
I was fascinated when academics such as Cynthia Enloe or Klaus Theweleit talked about how a state’s international policy shapes the most intimate interior of humans: Their identity, and therefore also their gender identity. One example is how tips by the nazi educationist Johanna Haarer such as “not to comfort baby boys when they cry in order to prepare them to be emotionally ready to be a perfect soldier” (source) still find their ways into modern-day parenting books. Moreover, I realized that most men of my grandfather's generation and a majority of the men in my fathers generation still joined the army for their obligatory conscription year. Conscription (Wehrpflicht) was only abolished in Germany in 2011.
So what does this military training do to men? A big part of the training routine is to follow orders properly and normalize extreme circumstances; for the soldiers to stay calm on the battlefield. Getting up very early or in the middle of the night to walk or run many kilometers and doing push ups – ordered by superiors – when you mess up: The physical pain experienced by the soldiers-to-be is induced by the individual to themselves, which I think makes the soldiers internalize the learned ideals. Either you strive to be the perfect execution of an order or you are the odd one out. The routine makes you function instead of thinking. To me, that means you also shut down all emotion, bringing us back to notions of toxic masculinity where men live shorter lives because they are the first victims of male violence and cannot show vulnerability.
For this contribution to TEMA Magazine, I wanted to test out whether my theory is true by performing a self-experiment. The plan was to plank once every day of the month of November for as long as I could. I recorded my face while doing it in order to observe if my emotions would numb down with the repetition. When physical pain becomes normal, am I still so sensitive to it? Will I be able to tolerate it for a longer time, will I get used to it?
I soon realized that two crucial elements differentiated my experiment from real Bundeswehr training: No superiors and no peers. I missed 8 days of planking, represented in the chronological grid of the video. You can also tell from the video that instead of getting better over time, I was more quick to give up before I was at my limit the longer I did the exercise. I suffered no outside consequences if I didn't do it or if I didn't do it for longer than I could. I understood that a military mindset is formed in a social context and not on one's own. I also remember feeling a bit as if nothing can touch me emotionally that month, but to be perfectly honest it would be inaccurate to just pin it down to this one exercise. So, although I learned a few things doing this self-experiment, it was still an insufficient method to prove my theory. I still hope that you will have fun looking at my suffering face c:<
