Instead of telling our readers who to be and what to wear, in this new iteration of GQ we wanted to help men find those answers for themselves. The issue was like a giant mood board celebrating all the defiantly nontraditional forms of masculinity that had sprouted out of so many different subcultures—and were fast becoming pop. No cookie cutters allowed.

Upon publication, the issue had an instant impact. We had recaptured the zeitgeist, which is exactly where GQ has always belonged.

Jump cut to 2025.

We are now, obviously, in the second Trump administration. Life feels…chaotic. And there are op-ed headlines, almost daily, declaring that we’ve swung back to a retrograde form of masculinity. You know: the whole “men can be men again” thing. (A movement espoused by JD Vance and Mark Zuckerberg—two hyperintelligent individuals who also happen to be untrustworthy when it comes to anything cultural.)

At the same time, we are supposed to believe that Gen Z represents a lost generation, and that Andrew Tate (whoever that is) has young men by the balls.

To which I say: bollocks.

The glory and promise of the New Masculinity moment—the whole point, really—is that masculinity is not a simple pendulum that swings dumbly from toxic to woke and back again.

But one thing that’s funny, and a little tragic, about humankind is that too much freedom often freaks us out.

This thrilling New Masculinity idea that men no longer have to live up to tired old manly-man tropes—that, instead, we can look inside and become the most elevated version of ourselves…. Well, that requires an awful lot of self-awareness. An awful lot of self-determination. Simply put, it requires an awful lot of work.

And for men, inner, emotional work is often the hardest kind.

Some of us are up for it. Every day, I see young people who have achieved levels of embodiment and self-expression I could only have dreamed of at their age. (2hollis, who appears in this issue, is a great example.)

Some of us, however, not so much.

So with all the old rules out the window, and many men unsure of what norms to adopt, the so-called crisis of masculinity era is upon us. And it has collided with the chaos of our modern political and media environment, where truth is just a conspiracy; the body, mind, and soul can be biohacked; and the almighty algorithm is God.

The promise of the New Masculinity was freedom, maybe even salvation. But instead it has turned into something resembling Babel.

Into this uncertain moment, we present the issue of GQ you are now holding in your hands. Think of it as the spiritual successor to 2019’s New Masculinity issue.

The questions this issue tackles are: Six years on, how has masculinity evolved? How has it devolved? How are men feeling about it? What makes us anxious? What makes us optimistic? And, in general: How should a man be right now?

What we’ve created is a GQ special report: the State of the American Male in 2025.