Hm. It is cool, but I'm not sure I can say a lot about it. Mostly I think it's that when I was 18 I was in general uncomfortable with who I was (as I expect most 18-year-olds are), and I didn't know why or what parts of me were problematic. In comparing myself with other men, well, I was short and scrawny and wimpy and unathletic and interested in brain things and didn't think girls were either incomprehensible aliens or meat... and at least sometimes, I probably thought that if I were more like other 18-year-old guys, I'd be happier or more comfortable with myself or better.

It seems plausible that, under those circumstances, being presented with models of more typical masculinity (or humanity, or Americanism), would have felt more prescriptive. I don't remember it feeling that way, but it seems like it might have, and I was sufficiently out of touch with my feelings that I might not have been aware of feeling that way. I know I don't feel that way now.

Over the years I have gradually become much more comfortable with who I am overall. And so no particular aspect of myself really bothers me much in that way. I am myself, and for the most part the degree to which that correlates to any particular standard is somewhere between "interesting data" and "irrelevant." There are still things about myself that I'd like to change, but for my own reasons, not to better meet anyone else's standards.