We have broken children that turn into broken teenagers that turn into broken men and then those
broken men go and have children and they turn into broken babies and turn into broken teenagers turn
to broken men and we just continue that cycle.
And I don't want my son to be a lost 30 year old like I was.
Right. How am I going to start this?
There's going to be less laughs on this one, isn't it?
I'm Iman Amrani and I'm a journalist at the Guardian and I do a series called Modern
Masculinity which looks at the issues affecting men today.
I've decided to come back and kind of do a different variation of the series
focusing just on mental health and men because a lot of
men did ask me to do that the first time around and secondly because with covid19 and all of
the uncertainty that people are living through, a lot of people are at home a lot of people
feel isolated and it's something that is affecting everybody.
So yeah, the first episode I wanted to do
is looking at employment because I think that traditional ideas of men and masculinity kind
of state that men are supposed to be providers they're meant to be breadwinners, you know, their
job is kind of very, very important to their identity and we might be in 2020 and things
may have changed but I do think that a lot of those ideas are still present.
I wanted to go and speak to some people about how this was affecting them
and I was in touch with Neil who was in season one.
He owns a number of barbershops in the North of England and is based in Leeds.
We need men talking to men.
But there are no male figures talking to 18, 10, 20 year olds and saying, look life's gonna
be brutal, malevolence is waiting for you, evil is waiting for you, hard times are waiting for you ...
We spoke about the need for meaning and responsibility and how important it is to have
that in order to be able to hold on to something when challenges come and I mean if this time isn't
a challenge, I don't know what is.
I wanted to ask him how his ideas are kind of serving him
at this time how his mental health is and what his concerns are for his employees and for the future.
Neil, how are you? — You're alright?
I'm good.
You look like a different person?
I look like a different person? Well, straight hair?
Oh my goodness, hello! I'm good.
Nice to see you, I remember you shook your bum on the last video.
I did, yeah.
A few comments on it last time.
Like Tinder for you last time, wasn't it? All the messages he got after that show.
Yeah, this is a different shop, they used to have a smaller shop upstairs.
This is massive and there are more barbers than clients at the moment.
So, like, walk me through since I was last here filming, like, what's going on the past two years,
up until covid.
We started pre-lockdown with 15 barbers.
When we came back in July, we were down to
eight and we dropped by 50%.
So when we opened up in July, that week was insane.
So it was like a month worth of business in the first week and maybe naively we kind of thought,
oh cool everything's back to normal and then after that week it just fell over cliff.
Why do you think that happened?
Well, it's a luxury. So when guys are still on furlough or they've had to take a dip in salary and so much
uncertainty around the first thing that people do is they get rid of the luxuries.
So you were saying you went from 15 people to eight.
What happened to those seven people that you lost?
We've had three people that left to go and get other jobs so people that have been barbers for sort
of 10, 15 years just simply weren't making enough money.
So you had guys that love being here, love being barbers,
they're trained, that's what their entire working career is, that are now working
in care homes.
So that's your employees but what about you so?
So I come from a very, very working-class
family so I was used to growing up with no money, we had no money until I was sort of, you
know, 17, 18 and managed to get into kind of, you know, the bottom kind of middle class.
So we had 10 years of living really comfortably compared to where I came from.
All of that's gone now, so this is this
is the the brokest I've been in the last 10 years.
When you say the brokest you've been, can you explain, I don't know, difference from pre-lockdown to now,
like what impact does that have on you?
The first month or so it's fine, you've got some savings, you've got some reserves
and then it got to the point, and this is the same point that we're in now, where there is no
excess money, there's a deficit now, so now we've gone from, you know, being able to book a holiday
whenever you want, you want to go for a meal, let's go for a meal, you need some new jeans, cool let's
go buy some new jeans to now go in, right I've got £20, I've got to take my son to
football, I need £10 in fuel for the next few days and there's going to be £10 for food.
So that's how steep the decline was.
And how worried are you going into a
lockdown, they've announced a new lockdown start after tomorrow, so how are you feeling?
Another potential four weeks.
No amount of worry or anxiety that I put into the situation
is going to fix it, so my only alternative now is to find solutions to it.
So, and I know that me worrying about it isn't a solution, it's just a coping mechanism.
If you do that too long, you know, nothing moves forward but i'm very concerned for, you know,
for the guys that work for me.
So it's been two years. — It has.
Maca is 24 now and like many of the barbers here, he's self-employed and therefore doesn't qualify for furlough.
Without over two years of tax returns, he isn't eligible for any substantial support.
How's like the journey been in the past eight months?
I think I speak for most, especially most
people my age, that's not being fun at all.
I found I've been sitting in my room quite a lot and just
dwelling on like how [ __ ] it is for everyone.
You know what? It being a series on masculinity,
I feel like for a lot of guys their work and their job is like quite central to who they are.
Yeah, definitely.
So having that taken away or put on hold or putting a lockdown,
what's that impact kind of been?
Right, you don't want to be not earning money, you don't want to be having to ask people
for money, like, all I got really was universal credit which worked out about £90 a week
that's all I could get.
So what would you do if say, for example, you can't do barbering and universal
credit isn't covering stuff, like, do you have a plan or any thoughts of what you could do?
There's two options.
I would have to probably look for work with my dad who was in construction
and then as much as most barbers probably want to admit this like to the public but a lot of them
will look to just cut hair like at home which obviously is against the law
but when you're getting to a point where you're not getting any income,
the government aren't helping out, it's like,
I don't know what they expect us to do.
You've got your back against your wall with it really.
Going into these next four weeks, like how are you feeling, honestly?
Nervous.
What are you nervous about?
For the four weeks that we're definitely in lockdown for, I can't work.
Dario is 21 and after spending the first lockdown working in construction, he's looking for more work
during second lockdown.
Worried about covering his rent, he's applied for a job in a warehouse.
I always feel a sense of not worthlessness but that you're not really a man if you're
not working, I don't really know how to describe it, you just feel like you're not really getting
anywhere, especially as a man as well, I think it's a massive pride thing.
That's strange, that's your male conditioning, you know?
We don't even realise we're being male conditioned.
It's really quite weird, isn't it?
It's funny because I think, like, there's a massive conversation
now and how men don't have to be men all the time
and you can open up and stuff but as much as we say that, I think it's still
inbuilt in us, we still have them sort of values.
When I last interviewed you, you talked about
the need for like meaning and responsibility, you said you need like, an iron rod, if you
will, that will help you weather a storm ... I remember it almost like verbatim.
Hard times are waiting for you and prepare them then and tell them that the antidote to that is
to find meaning now so that when those times come, you have an iron rod if you like to hold on to.
That will get you through that storm.
And it's so mad that now, is kind of that storm.
Yeah.
Do you feel like you're practicing what you were preaching before?
Yeah, yeah, I do.
My business is my business and I love it.
And the guys that work for me, I love them and I want it to do well and be successful
but if it doesn't, it doesn't.
And a little part of my personality is connected to it
and the only two choices that any of us have really got when you reduce things right down,
you know, to the most fundamental elements is, if you're going to get through, you're not
going to get through and surviving something like covid is more than just going bankrupt.
Me surviving this or other people surviving this is the ability to lose and then to recoup and then
to build again.
So, yeah I guess I just wanted to broadly ask you about mental health.
Your mental health, how you approach that sort of thing a bit more specifically.
So in my 20s, I had no idea where I was.
In my early 30s, I had no idea what I was.
Anyways at the time but looking back now, probably like a constant stare of mild depression.
Probably for 10 or 15 years. So it's something that
we all suffer from, it shouldn't be something that we use now as a label to excuse ourselves
of the responsibility that we have to fix and heal ourselves
and it's a responsibility that only we have.
It's that simple, it's not the NHS, it's not the government, it's not your wife's responsibility
or your kid's responsibility ...
Yeah I remember thinking when Kobe, my son, was born,
this will be the catalyst for me being the man that I want to be.
This will lead to all the changes that
I've tried to implement and failed before and it did for six months or a year.
And you tried dealing with that and that's really scary.
I'm a father now and I'm still making certain mistakes
and it was at that point I realised, actually no, there was no outside stimulus that's
gonna fix me, you know?
I hate that term but there's no outside stimulus that's going to make me
be whole or give me the sense of direction purpose to navigate in the world. None.
Would you say that there's been like a moment where you were particularly worried or in the
past eight months when you think you've like spent ...?
All the time. Worried all the time now.
And like, you worry about money, we've talked about the employment stuff ...
What would you say though for you is like the main concerns?
I'd probably say what all these factors are going to do to
my mental health long term.
So i actually had a counsellor just before lockdown.
This is the most frustrating thing really.
I was struggling quite badly just mentally and stuff and just as
I felt I was starting to get somewhere, lockdown happened.
I'm just worried now I might end up back in that bad state, it's a little bit colder, it's a little bit hard to go out
and exercise, gyms are closed ...
It's like, I'm hearing about how many people are like killing themselves and stuff
because they're just locked away, they can't go anywhere, they've got no one to talk to,
they can't meet friends, can't meet family and someone someone's got to change really like, quickly.
And I am cutting into your time, aren't I?
How are you feeling?
It's lonely, it's lonely, I miss my dogs, I miss my mum
but there's not a lot you can do about it so you just have to grit your teeth and push through.
Neil was saying that he's got quite strong philosophy on the fact that no one's going to
come and save you and that you essentially have to take responsibility for yourself.
How do you guys feel about that philosophy?
I like it because there's no princess or prince come to save us.
It'll never happen, will it? So we've got to save ourselves.
Looking at your son Kobe, do you worry looking at the way the world is going for him?
In one sense yes and in another sense no.
He's nine next so, you know, he's gonna get to a
point when he gets to secondary school where he's spending more time with his peers and teachers than
he spends with me or his mum.
So in that respect, it's worrying because this is not a culture or a
society that in my opinion is going in the right direction but I also paradoxically don't worry
because I trust my ability to parent him correctly.
The conversations I have with him now even as a
nine-year-old are all about who do you want to be, what does strength look like, Kobe?
What does maturity look like? What does sacrifice look like? What's acceptable to cry about?
What's not acceptable to cry about?
Do you tell him there's things that he shouldn't cry about?
Absolutely.
What kind of things?
Unashamedly yeah. In fact, it happened last week and other parents looking like
I was a scumbag.
So toughness is a big thing for me, OK?
Since he's been two, I breed toughness into him, OK?
Jesus Christ!
No! It's not ... I'm not doing it with sticks or anything like that.
He doesn't get a beating but the reality is, right, if you want to boil everything right down,
you either do it or you don't, you live the life you want or you don't, you're either beaten or
defeated, you even live or you die ... You've got to make things that simple at some point otherwise
you can't move forward.
I never ever, ever not once in nine years have I allowed my son to
leave my presence without telling him I love him. Not once, not ever.
You know, I kiss him, I cuddle him.
Ironically, it's because I love him that I want him to
be tough but to recognise what that looks like and to what
a man should be and to teach him that life is innately hard.
Because that nine-year-old will in a heartbeat become a 16-year-old and in a heartbeat
he'll become a 30 year old and
I don't want my son to be a lost 30-year- old like I was.
That was quite powerful that you were talking about your son not crying
and then you, like, cried and then I guess the reason that you
did that is because you think that is what matters ...
Their names are sacred to me and that's the way it should be at least when
you come back like the to the mental health thing, this is why it's so important because
we have broken children that turn into broken teenagers that turn into broken men and then
those broken men go and have children and they turn into broken babies and turn into
broken teenagers turn to broken men and we just continue that cycle, you know, it's because we don't
have difficult conversations about one, what does masculinity look like?
What is it to be a man?
We talk about toxic masculinity and misogyny and all of these terrible labels that we put on young men
and somehow their desire to succeed or to be forthright is somehow toxic and we wonder
why everybody is suffering with mental health and why suicide is through the roof and nobody
wants to go backwards and say, well why is this?
Why? How complicit were we as a society in this?
That was much more intense than I was expecting, Neil.
I'm pissed off that you made me cry.
I made you cry?
Take responsibility.
If there were any things that you really would like me to talk about that you want to
see us try and do a video about during lockdown related to men and mental health,
write a comment underneath or you can get me on Twitter my instagram is @imaniamrani
Like, comment and subscribe to stay up to date with what we're doing.
It's not gonna be weekly, it's gonna be sporadic, we are really just trying to work with
what's going on but hopefully throughout all of that something positive can happen.