Tanner Guzy - Style, Masculinity, And The Appearance Of Power

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Team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I am Connor Beaton. Joining me today is a man that I've wanted to have on the show for some time, Mr. Tanner Guzzi, a men's style coach and the host and founder of masculine style.com. he is the author of the Appearance of Power How Masculinity is Expressed through Esthetics, an analysis of the intersection of clothing aesthetics and masculinity, and how men throughout time and across the world have used their appearance to signal virtues like courage, strength, mastery, and honor. So that is actually what we're going to dive into today. We're going to talk about how masculinity is expressed through aesthetics, and we're going to talk a little bit about historically, what that's looked like, how different archetypes within our world have dressed to express their specific virtues, whether it's honor or mastery or strength, et cetera. And then Tanner gives some just sort of practical, real life advice in terms of how we can begin to dress, to use our own personal aesthetics to express who we are as mental and to express our core principles and our core values and virtues. So it's a really interesting conversation. I really appreciate his approach and I've been wanting to have him on because I know a few of you guys have asked for him to be on the show and asked for this conversation. So don't forget to man it forward, share it with somebody. Thank you so much for all of you that have been leaving reviews lately. That goes a long, long, long, long way. So please head on over, take 30 seconds today to leave a review for the podcast. Goes a long way to helping us get into the other ears and onto other phones of people. Please man it forward and share it with somebody in your life. One thing I'm very, very, very proud of is we have never, ever, ever spent a dollar on marketing this podcast. And we have grown organically because of people like you sharing the content that you have found valuable and that you have learned from and that you have believed that other people would give get value from as well. So, you know, you guys have really helped us grow this year, and I would love to carry that on. So this podcast or any of the other ones that are upand, coming, please feel free to share them. So with that said, and with that in mind, please welcome Mr. Tanner Guzzi. All right, Tanner, welcome to the show, brother. How you doing?

I'm great, man. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, it's. It's a pleasure to have you here and I've Been looking forward to this conversation. And it's funny, I actually, I'd been following your work and then a couple guys that follow me because I always, you know, put out to my audience, who do you want me to have on the show? I actually had a couple of guys like, oh, you should have Tanner Guzzi on. He'd be a great guest. I want to hear what he has to say.

I love it.

So here we are. I know that. I know a bunch of the guys will be happy, as will I. So let's begin where I always begin, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life as a man.

Dude, we'll just. We'll just start a little heavy with this because this is something that's happened fairly recently. We've had some real heavy stuff happen to us this last year, and I don't need to go into detail on all of it, but I think one of the things that's really fascinating and you learn this as a dad, is that whatever your emotional state is ends up bleeding out into your family. It affects your wife, it affects your kids, and it really does have this kind of, like, longer, bigger reaching impact. And so it's been a hard year for my kids, too. And one of the things that I've realized just recently, one of these events is I see I've got one son, got four girls, fifth daughter on the way, and one son. So it's just the two of us. Yeah, we were very outnumbered. As things have been hard for him. I've seen him throw these tantrums or deal with his emotions, deal with these difficulties in ways that feel very, very immature to me and can be kind of frustrating. And I had a realization even just recently where my son is me. Like, I. My outside behavior may be a little bit different than his, but all of that inner turmoil and everything else that he experiences, I still have never learned how to be able to handle that. I may be able to mask it or present it in a way that's more appropriate for an adult, but I haven't been able to maturely develop the emotionality to handle the full range of emotions that he does. And so I would say one of the defining thing that comes to mind the most recently, is how much of a mirror kids are for men. And if you're really, honestly parenting, you will find so many of the things that are greatest about yourself in the way that your kids are. And that's easy, I think, for most dads to see. But if you're willing to humble Yourself, or in my case, be humbled by circumstances. You will see your biggest flaws in how your kids are. And I'm trying to use that as an opportunity to not only help him grow, but to help my. Help myself mature and grow up emotionally in the way that I should be as well.

Yeah, I appreciate, I appreciate that. I feel like that's so true, man. And, man, it sounds like I don't know what's happening behind the scenes with the details of that, but if you just. Personally, if you ever need anything, I'd be happy to chat, but thanks. I get exactly what you're saying. You know, my son's 19 months old. He's not even 2, but he is. I mean, he's got like a nuclear power plant worth of energy stored in his little chest. You know, it's just like a little power pack. And I'm like, dude, you know, I remember my wife and I when he started crawling and then walking, I was like, this kid just doesn't stop. I mean, I, you know, at first I was like, is he okay? Like, is there something wrong with him?

And, you know, why is he so non stop?

Yeah, I was like, why is he so non stop? And she was like, well, what do you think you were like as a kid? And I was like, oh, yeah, no, I was definitely, I was definitely that. Like, I just had this abundance of energy. And it's funny because a lot of the. That I got into in my life, it's like nobody taught me really how to deal with that. The intense charge that I carried within me as a man, you know, whether it was my anger or just the abundance of energy that I had to go out in the world and do and build things and destroy and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so. So it's been a. It's been a very humbling reminder for me as well that I still judge that part of myself, you know? Yeah, that is intense sometimes because I have. I have very intense parts.

Yeah. And you've been taught to judge those negatively. So of course you're going to judge those negatively in your son or in other people, because otherwise it's an acknowledgment that you shouldn't be judging that negatively in yourself. And there's a better way to handle it than what you've done for the last few decades.

Right? Right. Yes. Well said. I'm curious. I mean, you had. That's a lot of daughters to have. So, you know, thank you for your service. Thank you for taking that on. You know, Whatever, you know, God's plan was for you. He's decided to. He's like, apparently this guy right here, this guy's gonna have it to him. Yeah, yeah.

Have you noticed? Because I think one of the things that's interesting about our modern culture is lots of people talk about the gender war, the war between men and women, or the war on gender itself. And I'm curious, being a father of that many girls and then a son, do you see them handling the pressures of growing up in today's world differently? Do you think that there's very different stressors on each of them? And maybe you don't have a specific answer for this, but I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Yeah, that's a good question. Especially because my oldest is 10. So they're all really young. And we are in a lot of ways protected from a lot of what the rest of the world is dealing with. We live in a very kind of homogenous culture. Neighborhood. Neighborhood. We're outside of Provo, Utah. We're members of the church Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Most of our friends and people in the neighborhood are that way. We're in a very kind of like, I guess, for lack of a better term, a fairly homogenous area. We homeschool our kids. And so in a lot of ways, and this is very much by design, my wife and I are both of the opinion that one of the things that we experience now that's a big tragedy is the extension of adolescence in both directions. We force kids to be adolescents younger than they should, and then we extend adolescence longer than we should. And what we're trying to do is let them be kids for as long as possible and then help them transition into being adults as quickly as possible and minimizing that time of adolescence. And so right now, my kids don't even know that there's a gender like that there's any of this stuff that's going on. They don't even know. Like, they embrace the fact that my girls are girls and my. My boy is a. Or my son is a boy. And. And there's very much an intentional leaning into this for them that said, dude, I'm the oldest of five and it's four boys. And then my. My young sister, who's 10 years younger than I was. I didn't grow up around girls. I didn't really deal with girls until high school. None of my friends seemed to have sisters or they were kind of like non existent. And so to all of a sudden be in A world where it's just like all girls all the time. I feel like I'm in a foreign country sometimes, and it's wild to see what this is like and how different it is from my child.

Yeah, I hear that. I'm. I'm the oldest of five as well, but I have. I have two and two. I have two brothers, two sisters.

Gotcha.

So it's like a even split.

Yes.

I often joke, like, you know, at some point I'm going to have to pay the therapy bills for my younger brothers, you know, for the shenanigans. Yeah, for the shenanigans that we got into. We. My sister always tells. I'm going to out myself on the show, but my sister always tells the story. This is just going to give a quick insight into what I was like as a child. My aunt had given me this cologne, this, like, musk, and it smelled absolutely terrible. Like, it smelled horrible. But I figured out, and I was like 13 years old, I figured out that it was flammable. And so I grabbed my buddy and I grabbed oven mitts, and we're outside in the backyard. I grew up in northern Canada, in northern Alberta, and my sister's riding her bicycle through the back alley, and I'm spraying this cologne onto pine cones and lighting the pine cones on fire and then throwing the pine cones at her as she's riding down the back alley, you know, and your poor sister.

And that's awesome.

My poor sister, right. So I was like, yeah. But anyway, so. So I want to talk a little bit. Like, what got you into the work that you're doing? Because you're, you know, here you are, you're talking about where you live and your background. And so I'm curious about what got you into the type of work that you're doing right now, because that. It's great work and I love it. And I'm just curious, like, what was your path? What was your path there?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And obviously, being a men's image coach is a really weird. Like, people don't do this, you know, you don't go to school for this stuff. This isn't something that, like, you aspire to or follow in other people's footsteps. Like, you kind of fall into this. I think for me, where it started was back in junior high, where I was attending a private Christian school. And it was one that had uniforms, the rep stripe tie and the white shirt and the gray slacks, all of that. And at the same time, I was getting really involved. This was like mid-90s and I was getting really involved in the punk music, bmx, snowboarding, these kind of like alternative extreme sports and this like kind of whole counterculture scene. And both of these worlds are very aesthetically driven. Like you have to have the green Liberty spikes and the battle jacket with the right band patches in order to not be made fun of when you're going to the shows or wear the right. Like you don't wear sellout brands, you wear like the underground, like S and M bikes versus Huffy or stuff like that. You know, like it's, it's this kind of stuff, like very esthetically driven that way. And then very much so in school where it's like if your uniform is not worn correctly, then that's a sign of rebellion and that's a sign of disfavor and sin and all of that. And so I found myself really struggling with these kind of like disparate aspects of my identity because I wanted to be a good kid. But at the same time I really identified with all this other stuff. And I found that people, not only did other people treat me very differently depending on how preppy my punk uniform was or how ratty my school uniform was, but I also found myself feeling like I almost had two different identities depending on what I was wearing. And so I recognized really early on that what we see when we look in the mirror every day has a pretty big impact on what our self perception is and how we see ourselves. So fast forward, I get to go to a normal high school, I get to kind of express all of this other stuff. And it wasn't until I was in my 20s I went to school for broadcast journalism. I wanted to do talk radio. And I got really sick of talking and writing about politics. Really frustrated by it. It's heavy and dealing with that all the time. And so I started a little blog called Masculine Style as a way to keep writing and get better at writing and get better at communicating ideas and expressing stuff. But it was a way to talk about something that was a little bit more fun and a little bit more just kind of like interesting. And it started to pick up momentum and people got interested in it. And.

That led to me working in custom suiting for a few years. And so I've got some technical experience that way. I ran a few shops for a company and got to do that. And then now I've been doing the coaching as a full time gig for almost six years. So it's been a fun journey.

Nice man, nice. Well, I appreciate you Giving me some background. It's interesting because your book the Appearance of Power, I love the subtitle, How Masculinity is Expressed through Aesthetics. And that's actually what I wanted to talk about a little bit, is, you know, how. Because I think most of the time, the approach I've seen over the years through platforms like GQ is more just about a look and less about how do you express your own masculinity or yourself as a man through the aesthetics of what you might be wearing? And I've never thought about it that way. And it really caught my attention because it got me thinking about historically and from almost like an anthropological sense, we as men have expressed our masculinity through esthetics especially. And so I would love for you to give a little bit of context of what that's looked like before we get into sort of the details of how do you represent yourself and express your masculinity? How have we maybe historically, or what does that look like in terms of how we've expressed our masculinity through aesthetics? And why do you feel like this notion is so important for us as men, especially in maybe in our modern culture, to understand?

Cool. I love that question. Okay. I think the best way to start is to understand exactly what you said, that historically, it is the norm for men to care very much about how they look and to use their appearance, their grooming, their body language, their clothing as a way to express themselves. And it's very easy for us to see the things that we say or the things that we write, like the written and the spoken word, as a method of communication. But we've been largely removed from understanding that our visual expression is just as much a method of communication. And this isn't something that's even unique to us as human beings. This is something that happens in the animal kingdom, albeit a lot more subconsciously and a lot more kind of like, evolutionarily. But animals like, basically, they do different things to communicate sexual availability or that they're dangerous. Like lions have big manes to make themselves look more dangerous and more powerful as a way to dominate the other males and to assert their authority, and all of that. Or birds will do these elaborate dances that involve all these visual cues as a way to kick off mating season, as a way to attract the most. The most fertile partner. So this is not something that is unique to us. But what's cool about how humans do it is that we take these very kind of like, base, instinctual, animalistic things and we turn them into entire languages. We turn them into entire methods of communication. And so you go into most cultures and men have created clothing to signal things. I'm a big adherent of Jack Donovan's four tactical virtues of masculinity. He talks about courage, strength, mastery and honor. And how essentially these are like cross cultural things that men have always been valued for. And if you look at masculinity through that lens and then you go back and you look at whether it's the eagle and the jaguar warriors of the ancient Aztecs or you look at the Inuits and the way that they would like just carve different things into the glasses that they would put on as a way to protect themselves from the sun. Or even you go into like the Aborigines or different parts of the Amazon, where people don't even need clothing for a functional perspective because they live in these idyllic environments where clothing doesn't have to protect them from the elements, but they introduce clothing as a way to express status within the tribe or accomplishments or these other things. Men have always used our appearance as a way to demonstrate our courage, our strength, our mastery or our honor. Sadly, now we're in a culture that one tells us and you don't hear this as much anymore because it's not politically correct to do so. But if you came of age, even like within the last 15 years, I would say anywhere from like the 60s, maybe the 70s, up until the mid-2000s, if you cared about your clothes, you were told you were gay or effeminate or whatever else. And so there was this social stigma against caring about it. But again, you zoom out. And historically men have always cared. Or then you do get into the stuff like the gqs or these others where it's more about not communication so much as it's consumption. You are going to buy an identity based on following this trend or conforming to this look. And there's. The implication is always that you will find a sense of belonging or something else. But it's always externally created and then internally adopted. Whereas what your clothing should be is internally created and then externally expressed.

Yeah, that's so good. I feel like that's why I rebelled against. I mean, I was. I didn't give a crap about fashion growing up, I was like, you know, I was that guy. I think I had like the corduroy pants in junior high and then in high school. I mean, I guess I was expressing myself a little bit because I was rocking the Metallica and Green Day T shirts.

There you go.

With the chain, you know, the chain to the wallet. Yes. But then I had, like, the spiky frosted tips, you know, so I looked like if Nick Lachey from 98 Degrees was a punk rocker. Yes.

Oh, man, I know that aesthetic all too well.

It's very, very popular. It worked well for me in high school.

But, you know, I think what's interesting is that when I got out of high school and started going to university and college and whatnot after that and seeing the aesthetics that were presented in GQ and those types of magazines, I couldn't quite put my finger on the pulse of what was bothering me about it. But I think what you just said, nailed it. Which is that you're buying an identity versus expressing your identity. I think the other challenge for me as a man in that period in my life is I didn't really know who I was. You know, I was a very. I was an amalgamation. Right. I was like this motorcycle riding, car racing, opera singing, yoga doing guy, which.

Should be so visually interesting. It's so multidimensional, and that should all be incorporated in your style. But if you don't know how to do that, then you don't really settle on anything because nothing is going to feel congruent, right?

Yeah, a hundred percent. Do you feel like some guys struggle to care about their visual aesthetics because of what I was talking about before? Like, because they don't necessarily know who they are at their core, and so it becomes harder to say, this is who I am in the way that I dress, or.

Yeah, especially because, you know, when you're in junior high or high school, you really do kind of like, pick a group of friends that you want to belong to. And then you assimilate in every way. You wear the same clothes, you use the same language, you listen to the same music. Like, you really do buy an identity when you're in junior high and then college or at some point when you grow up a little bit more, you go, okay, like, I'm not going to reject these things that I'm interested in, but I'm also not going to totally base my identity on it. And so it is this time of, like, what is my identity based on? Because it's not just my music anymore. Like, it is when I'm a kid or it's not just the sports that I'm into. And it does become a lot more difficult to be able to have a visual expression that isn't rooted in a particular hobby or a particular style of music, or belonging to a particular high school tribe that most of us experience. And so I would say absolutely, that as soon as you start to expand beyond that very simplistic sense of identity, it becomes a lot more difficult to find clothing that's expressive of what you are. Which is why I have a job.

Yeah, yeah.

So maybe let's just start with what are some of the, you know, what are some of the important elements to figuring out how we as a man can begin to dress ourselves and express who we are at our core? Like, how do you. Where do you begin in your process when you're working with somebody?

Yeah, so what I do is my whole program is built around. It's three different pillars that we focus on. And so I'll give you kind of an overview of all three of those, because they all matter. First one is really just simple aesthetics, because clothing is visual, and there are rules to this, just like there are rules to painting or to photography or film or anything else. And there are things that can be evoked or felt or things based on that. And so when you know how your clothes should fit based on what your build is or what neutral colors are and how to not totally overwhelm yourself, or does a pattern look like it's making you smaller and look more like a little kid, or does it make you look more dignified and that kind of stuff. Like, most guys, if they would just get stuff that fit better and was the right neutral colors on them, they would instantly just like double their aesthetic appeal right there. Super simple. And so what I usually do with my guys is we start with that, because that's the least context dependent. From there, we focus on the second pillar, which is this idea of communication. Because, I mean, I'll give you just kind of an example of some of my clients. I've got one guy who owns a roofing business in Wisconsin and another who is a personal injury attorney in Las Vegas, and another who's a student in Romania and another who is. He's just in the middle of selling his second business. He's a tech guy out in San Francisco. Like, these guys are in different parts of the world, and they live in different, like rural or urban environments. They participate in different tribes. Most of them want to communicate the same things. Credibility, authority, dignity, self respect, friendliness, openness. But the way that those are visually interpreted is very different in each of those worlds. And so you have to understand what the world is that you inhabit and how those signals that you want to send are interpreted by the people around you so that you can adequately do it. And again, it's the same thing with language. If I want to say bread, then the sounds that come out of my mouth mean something to you because you speak English. But if I go, I learned Spanish serving a mission for my church. And so if I go to a very rural part of, I don't know, Nicaragua, where they don't speak any English at all, and I say bread, that word doesn't mean anything to them. But I say pan, and then they get the exact same meaning, even the languages. And so it's the same thing with clothing. Like, you have to speak the same language as the people around you. So that's the second pillar. And then the third one is this idea of self perception because, and I'm sure you've experienced this, most of the guys who are listening have experienced this is if you get the aesthetics right and you're sending the right signals to the right people, but you don't feel congruent in what you're wearing. You hate what you have on. You feel like a fake, you feel like a fraud. It tanks your confidence. It's always kind of like buzzing in the back of your head about how self conscious you feel about it. And so it sucks to get dressed every day, even if it's the right thing to wear. And so that third pillar is actually the most important one. It's how do we make it so that what you see in the mirror or on a zoom call or on a social media post every day is congruent to how you see yourself on the inside. We want your external and your internal perceptions to. To be totally aligned so that when you do see yourself, you go, that's me and that is the best version of me. And so we have to figure out what your core values are, what the best version of Connor or anybody else looks like. And then how do we pull that out through your clothing? And so when we focus on those three things, that always gets us to really, really cool style and stuff that makes these guys feel confident and carry themselves differently and help their kids be better, make their wives more attracted to them. And they always look very different from each of my other clients too, which is where it gets really fun as well.

That's awesome, man. Yeah, I love that. And I can imagine that during the, during the pandemic, that must have been interesting. But then post pandemic, as people are coming out, it's, you know, it's funny. It's like we basically all wore pajama bottoms for a year straight, and Then got really used to comfortable clothes. But what I, you know, what I wanted to come back to. Well, first off, I was going to ask in jokingly, you know, what is the Ed Hardy style of clothing represents? I definitely went through that phase going clubbing and wearing the Ed Hardy T shirts and true religion crap and.

Right.

Yeah, dude.

I know guys who are still doing that stuff, and it's like. It's like the equivalent of saying, yo, dog, or that's the bomb. Like, it's so just like stuck in the 90s and not realizing that none of what you thought was cool or edgy has any sort of that element to it at all anymore. And it's. It's bad to still see guys holding onto that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I did want to, in a more serious note, move in the direction. Because you talk about archetypes, and I think this is fascinating because it, it actually got me thinking in terms of how leaders have dressed. Right. Because again, traditionally, warriors wore different clothing and aesthetics than the, you know, than the tribe leader, than the worker. Then. Right.

Everybody had the shaman, then the merchants, then everything else. Yep. Right.

And the shaman. You can kind of see this in today's aesthetics a little bit, where you see, or at least I see some South American influences within this sort of shamanic style clothing that is being made for. For men that are predominantly in California, but. But still are like sort of everywhere. There's no judgment. Right. I actually love the, like, if I could get away with wearing what, like Luke sky or not Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi wears.

Right.

Like the new show with, like, the long thing with the hood on the back.

I would wear that every day, you know, so. So easy to embrace if you could.

Yeah. So tell me, tell us a little bit about the different archetypes that you. That you talk about. And then what embodies those archetypes? You know, like, what is a. A leader or a CEO wearing that might be different than a warrior, that might be different than the shaman. And, and let's. Let's kind of get into those. Cool.

Okay, so I break it down into three different archetypes, three Rs, which makes it easy to remember them. You have rugged, refined, and rakish. And again, this is rooted in the idea that your style should start internal as opposed to external. And so you have to figure out the way that you primarily interact with the world around you. And all of us are going to have elements of all three, but we're going to lean predominantly towards one More than to the other two. So the rugged guys, the way that you predominantly interact with the world is the physical world around you. You love to work with your hands, you love to be outside. You love to be able to like you. You were. Bet you were at your best when you're engaged in the physical world. And so a lot of times this is where we think of like, the lumberjack or the cowboy, but a lot of times it's where you get into athletes or fighters or warriors or stuff like that. Like, there's very much this kind of, like, physical aspect to who you are. And your clothing will reflect this. And it can be anything. Like, you can. You can do suits in a rugged way, you can do gym clothes in a rugged way, and you can do everything in between in a very rugged way. The next one is refined. And these are the guys who. They are at their best by understanding systems, hierarchy, civilization, the way that people interact with each other. These are the guys that know what the rules are, and they thrive by adhering to the rules and kind of like climbing their way to the top. And so this is typically what you would associate with like, a doctor, a lawyer, a CEO, a politician, these kind of like top tier, top of the echelon type guys. And again, your clothing should be able to reflect that in a way that it does. And again, that's changing because what's refined today is not what was refined when George Washington was getting dressed, and that's not what was refined when Marcus Aurelius was getting dressed. And so the principles are the same, even though the manifestations may be very different. And then the third archetype is rakish. And these are the guys who. They understand the rules just as well as the refined guys do. But rather than thriving by adherence to the rules, they. They thrive by breaking the rules and going against the grain. And so these are where you get, like, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the pirates, the iconoclasts, the rebels, the rock stars, all of this kind of stuff. These are the guys who. They're at their most comfortable when they're out on the fringes of society and kind of pushing the limits or breaking the rules. And again, you're going to have elements of all three, but one of those probably resonates more with you than the other two. And your clothing should start to reflect that so that you start to see that in the mirror every day, and it starts to feel more congruent with what you have on and how you present to yourself.

Okay, and so how do Those styles differ from like a clothing perspective. Like if you have a man that identifies more with that rugged look, what kind of stuff is he wearing versus the rakish one? Because I feel like I'm probably a mix between those two is why. That's why. I guess that's why I said those two and not the refined. What I'm like, refined? Probably not, no. But I got an instant image of like Jordan Peterson. Right. And his like very always wearing the three piece suit with the tie and the vest and the whole thing. Right. And I get that, but it's. That doesn't appeal to me. So how do you, how do you represent those three styles?

Yeah, so this is where you have to dive down another layer and go into this whole tribe aspect. Because rugged when you own a roofing business in Wisconsin is different than rugged when you build boats in the Arizona desert. And that's different than rugged when you are an MMA fighter. Right. And so you have to start to look into the next layer down, which is tribes, and how those things are expressed. But there's some good kind of general principles where for the most part, rugged style will have a lot more texture to it. You'll get into, even if it's traditional materials, you'll get into things like corduroy or flannel or tweed or linen or things like that where there's a lot more texture. The clothing will be a lot more function driven. And that's where you're doing boots more than dress shoes or things like that. Rakish, since that's the other one that you asked, will manifest a lot more. A lot of guys tend to think that rakishness really expresses itself more through brighter colors and bolder patterns. And you can do that. But more often than not, rakishness comes into. And I can see why you would do this really well, is when you take these disparate tribes, like being into opera, but being into fighting or these other things, and you can combine them in a way that it looks congruent and it makes you look really multidimensional that way. And so good examples of that are guys like Johnny Depp is kind of the quintessential rakish style. Brad Pitt does that pretty well. Rock stars or other guys that kind of embrace these, like these fringe identities can do that really well. And then most of the time people associate refined with formal because you go back to like 20th century Western culture, and that was the quintessential way to do refined. But refined usually has a lot more to do with clean lines, simple colors, style that's a little bit more subtle and a little bit more dignified, a little less attention seeking is kind of like the universal way that that refined can be manifested instead of just, like, wear a suit all the time.

Awesome. No, I love that. I mean, I think that gives. I think that gives a pretty clear indication. I think guys very quickly can get a sense of where they stand in that. I mean, for me, I joked around for a couple years that my style was like, lumberjack chic.

You know, There you go.

That's what I dubbed it, right?

Yes.

Like. Yes, the flannel, the. The boots, you know, the jeans. But just like a little edge of classiness, you know. There you go. Yep. Outside chopping the wood on. On my property. Yeah. Okay, so tell me a little bit about. Because I love this notion of the appearance of power. And I think what's interesting, and I want to shift gears a little bit away from the sort of logistical aspect of how do we dress ourselves as men and represent our own internal aesthetics. I want to shift the conversation a little bit towards this notion of men and power and us being able to own our own power. Because it does seem like we're in a little bit of a space where men are disconnected from their own masculine essence and their own masculine power. And there's a lot of commentary around stuff like toxic masculinity and men being dangerous and all this sort of stuff. I'm curious to get your take on why you, first off, titled the book the Appearance of Power. And then secondly, what are some of the core things that you feel that we, as men need to do in order to reclaim a deeper sense of internal power in a healthy, grounded way.

Yeah. Okay. So the name came about.

Largely. I love that you can kind of switch it up because you have the appearance of power, the power of appearance, which is where kind of most people would go. Most people. If you're writing a more universally applicable. This applies to men is. Or to women as well as it does to men, then you could talk about the power of appearance. But when we think about men and we think about what drives men, traditionally, it's this idea of power. And sadly, um, we're in a culture that always sees power as power over other people. And so power becomes this kind of bad word. And that's where you get this toxic masculinity. Like, why would you pursue power? Why do you want to oppress other people? Because there's always this, like, oppressor victim lens that we've been taught to see everything through. But power is really just the ability to enact your life the way that you want it to. And again, if you look historically at the way that most men have been, their relationship with their appearance has been about. It's been another manifestation of their self destiny, their self manifestation, this, this idea of this internal and intrinsic power. And I get to make these decisions for myself. And it may be that some feudal peasant only wore the same thing every day because he could only afford one piece of clothing. But he had some impact on what he wanted that to look like. Whether he made it himself or his wife made it for him or. Or he happened to buy it at the market five years ago, there was still some thought process and some decision that making that went into that. And so there's an element of power in that. There's an element of self direction that goes into that and we should embrace that more. That's why I went with that whole, like, there's a. There's a lot of depth to that title, though it was not an accident to choose that. So as far as that other aspect of it with power and, and how that relates and everything, I think what's sad is that most men today find ourselves in this kind of like false binary of you have the option of either being the mewling nice guy who's so afraid of power or the patriarchy, or being seen as an oppressor or not recognizing your privilege or whatever the term du jour is that we want to throw at it, that we think that the weaker we can make ourselves, the more moral we are. And we associate weakness with morality. We've really, in a lot of ways, a lot of our culture has become a victim culture. And you see a lot of guys embrace this. They apologize for their power, they apologize for their assertiveness, they apologize for their privilege, they apologize for all of it. Or you go to the opposite extreme where it becomes a very reactionary, very desperate approach to I'm going to hold onto or attain as much power as I possibly can because I'm threatened by this other way that people consider power. And so rather than giving up, I'm going to cling to it like Smog does to his gold, like, I'm going to desperately hold onto this. But that's not really a real power either. A reactionary power isn't any more real than this. Refusing to attain any power. I think where true masculine power comes from is enough experience and enough reps that you have the power to empower other people, that other people's power or self direction is not a threat to you. And this is where, you know, I've been involved with like the manosphere on that online world for the last. I found my first manosphere blog in like 2009. I've been involved with this for a long time. And a lot of it is a lot of this reactionary stuff where if you behave this way then you know, women will, they can't help but be attracted to you or your wife or your kids, can't help but be respected, can't help but respect you and listen to, listen to your leadership. And so it's still a very kind of like desperate power of if I do this, then other people will automatically do that. Whereas I think true masculine power is I'm going to do this and I'm also going to give the people that matter to me space to do that or if they cross my boundaries and I'm going to hold those boundaries. But that doesn't mean that I have to enforce every little thing that my wife does or every little behavior that my kids do. I have enough sense of my own place in the world to my own control over my own life, my own sense of well being and dignity that I can give enough space for my kids to develop their own power or for my wife to manifest her own power for my neighbors to have theirs, for my clients to have theirs. And so my friend Ken Curry puts this really well where good power creates more power. It's abundant as opposed to scarce and needs to be, needs to be hoarded by other people.

I love that. And I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted to chat with you is because I appreciate your more middle of the way approach. Approach, you know, and actually my podcast producer found this quote that you said about the manosphere and we should probably define that for the people that are listening here in a sec. But you said the worst hidden lie of the manosphere is that if you act perfectly, you'll be able to control other people to the point where no one will hurt or disappoint you. From pickup to fatherhood, the undercurrent is all about how my behavior can control others. And I think that in some ways that is very true. What you're saying is that I have to figure out exactly how to act because women are hypergamous and they act this way and you know, children act this way and other men act this way and it's a very sort of dichotomous way of existing. Right. So I have to act this way all the time. And by doing this, I can control and ensure that I know how other people are going to act and respond and behave, and then if they don't, I can just cut them out.

Yep.

And it leaves no room for the gray matter of life. And I think that sometimes it doesn't leave room for real heart, you know, within. Within our connections. Like a mentor of mine said, control is where we lack. Trust is where trust doesn't exist in our relationship, and power is where trust enters in. And so that's cool. I like that when we are in power in relationship to other people, there's trust automatically. Right. And I love what you're saying is that there's room for me to do my thing and what I believe and what I want, and there's room for you to do your thing. And so I'm just going to pause it a bunch of stuff and just kind of get your reflection on, you know. Do you agree with that? Do you disagree? What do you want to add in?

Yeah, I think the thing that I would add in is, you know, like. Like a lot of guys, I would imagine you're this way. So much of what I tweet or what I put out is more kind of like my own journey. And then finally, like, putting succinctly what I'm recognizing about myself, or putting succinctly, like, half the time, I tweet things that I need to be reminded of, and it's a way to just like, solidify it in my own brain. And this is one of the realizations that's come about with all of the trials that we've been dealing with this year is for me, throughout most of my life, I never really knew what comfort or safety or security felt like. And the best that I could do to get a semblance of what those were was develop my own power and my own control and my own control of people or things. And I had this realization the other day where I'm driving into the office and there's a traffic. You know, there's. There's like a. There's construction. And so the traffic is worse than I want it to be. And I find myself getting pretty pissed about it, where it's just like, oh, I'm going to be late for this call with this client, blah, blah, blah. And so I try to take a detour, and I do, and it ends up taking me, like, twice as long to get to the office than it would if I would have just waited in traffic. But I felt better about it. And I realized that for me, it wasn't about the time that it took me to get there. It was about how much of a sense of control I felt in the speed that I was going or the direction in which I was heading. I hate traffic not because it makes me late. I hate traffic because it makes me feel like I'm out of control. And I've realized how much of that has been applicable throughout my own life where I don't have a sense of. I don't have a sense of security or sense of safety. And I've always replaced that with a sense of control. And so one of the things that I'm learning to do right now with my wife, with my kids, with friends and family and everything else, is to embrace the fact that if I let go of control, yes, that does open up the potential for hurt and for betrayal, for abuse, or even just little things like negligence or just like, oh, you know, I didn't make you as much of a priority. Like, it doesn't always have to be these big things. It can be these little things that we're afraid of, but at the same time, it opens up the door for real love, for real trust, for real safety, for real security and everything. And I have. Out of my fear of the negative, I've completely shut myself off to the positive, too. And I have to have the courage to embrace that. If I want the positive, I have to let the negative into my life as well.

Yeah, and it's. I mean, it's interesting because it's like the power of choice, I feel, is what you're really talking about. Right. I want the ability to choose. I love that. I hate traffic, too. It's just like, I want the ability to choose even if it takes me longer. I want to take that route where I don't mind driving, but I want the choice to go and do that or to stay in the traffic. And it's such a simple analogy, but such a powerful analogy for how we're all trying to do life together, you know, in this nation as a. You know, as families and whatnot. It's like I have to have my own choice, but you also have to have your own choice. And somehow we have to learn how to coexist with those choices, which is like, that's some real. That's the human experience. Right. How do I coexist with your choice and grant you the ability to choose and still have my own sovereignty and independence and choice? So I think that that's A huge piece of it. I'm going to wrap up this conversation because I'm curious about this. How old's your son?

He's eight.

Eight. All right, so you got a couple years ahead of me. What sort of foundational tenets, if you don't mind sharing, what sort of foundational tenets, what lessons are you as a father trying to embody, to pass down what masculinity looks like, sounds like, and feels like to be around to your son? Because this is something that I've really been sitting with as my son starts to come into the age of him talking. Yeah, okay.

This is a hard one because my son. And again, your kids are a mirror in so many ways. My son is more sensitive than my daughters. And that's one of those things that the cultural aspect of me, or even like my own perception of how are the other dads going to see me or how are my parents or my wife's parents going to see me when my son is more inclined to throw a tantrum or be sensitive or things like that than my daughters are. But it's also helped me realize that I'm that same way. I've just buried it beneath years and years and behaviors and behaviors of other ways because I felt ashamed of my sensitivity. And so what I'm trying to learn how to do right now is embrace masculine manifestations of that sensitivity. I think that's another false binary that we've allowed ourselves. That sensitivity is feminine and should be embraced by women and askewed by men. Or yeah, like we just tell ourselves that that's the only way to be. Or it's that, well, my son's sensitive, which means that he's going to be effeminate, which means that his sexuality is going to vary. Like there's all these, like there's just these assumptions and these expectations. But it's either you can be sensitive or you can be a red blooded masculine man, but you can't be both. And I refuse to believe that. I think that there are ways for him to have a full broad range of emotions, to be sensitive to the way that other people are, to be sensitive to the way that his behaviors affect himself or other people or other people's behaviors affect him and to still behave in a way that is appropriately masculine. And so what I'm trying to embody right now is finding and embracing my own sensitive 8 year old that's in there somewhere and parenting him to be able to fully manifest that as a man. Because I do have a lot of skills as a man. And then allowing my son to be able to do that, too, to give him the space and the guidance to be able to do that as well, rather than you can be sensitive or you can be a man.

I love that. I love that. I feel. I definitely resonate with that big time. It was the same. Very much the same way. Right. Very sensitive child. And then I think how that started to come out was, you know, ADHD class clown, you know, seeking a lot of attention growing up through school and high school. And I mean, it's interesting because a lot of the stats and research that are coming out about young boys and young men is like, we're in decline, you know, very, very, very clearly, from an education standpoint, from a job standpoint, from an earnings standpoint, from a sexual capacity standpoint. I mean, men and young boys are in decline. And I think that these conversations are so valuable. And so I, you know, I appreciate you saying that and just also just sort of owning that part, you know, for your. For yourself as a father. Any final words of wisdom that you want to leave men with? As. As we sort of wrap up this conversation embodying the aesthetic of who you are at your core and how we can go about doing that, how we can go about doing a proper job of representing our own internal essence through the vehicle of how we dress, of how we present ourselves.

Yeah. I think the best thing that I would say to that is a way to kind of bring this home, because I've been doing this for a decade. I understand that a lot of men are resistant to this idea, and I don't blame you for being resistant to it, because everything about our culture for the time that you've been alive has made you be resistant to this idea. And then you add to the fact that even if you're open to it, you've never been taught how to do this. So you have the normal embarrassment if you don't have the skills to do it. It's like if you had been shamed your whole life into wanting to learn how to read and write is stupid and effeminate, and that's not for you as a man to do. And then you finally get to it, and you go by Shakespeare and try to read. It's like, good luck, dude, you know? So you have the conditioning and you have the skill set that are both working against you. And so it's very easy to just write it off and say, I'm doing fine without it. It doesn't matter. Don't think about it in regards to this is how you're going to make more money or attract more women. Think about it in when you learn how to do this and you embrace it for what it is, you will get a fuller and deeper sense of who you really are than what you currently have. And you will be better prepared to go into the world confident, happy, and capable than you currently are right now.

Awesome. I love that. And I'll just second that because as I've prioritized this in my own life, I've definitely noticed that as I've been more willing to say, this is my style, this is how I want to express myself in the way that I dress. And I have felt that deeper sense of confidence. The people around me have noticed, and it has made a big difference. You know, I feel different when I go speak on stage because I'm not, you know. I know because before I kind of knew that I was dressing like a fool, you know? Right. Kind of knew I was like, this isn't really appropriate, you know, this Superman jacket that I'm constantly wearing, you know, and like the yellow backpack with my.

Don't know any better.

Yeah, just don't know any better. Right. Yeah. Well, there's. There's probably a whole other conversation around the Costco. The Costco dress code. But anyway, listen, Tanner, thank you so much for joining me on the show. This was great. I definitely want to have you back on to further our conversation. Where can people find you and follow along with your work?

So I am most active on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, and all of those are Annerguzzi, so pretty easy to find me there. The main website, if you want to go. I actually have a quiz that you can take to learn which of those archetypes that we talked about as your primary one. So you can go to masculine-style.com and you can take the quiz there. Sign up for the newsletter and all of that, and then feel free to check out the appearance of Power. You can read it. You can listen to me, read it to you on audible. A lot of different options for you on that.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And we'll have the links to all that in the show. Notes, make sure that you man it forward and share this episode with somebody that you know would benefit from it, would get something from it, would enjoy the conversation, whether it was a, you know, whatever aspect of the conversation you think they'd benefit from. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.