CHEERS TO…BILLY & CAMERON
There was something really powerful - quietly revolutionary, even - about the moment Cameron Munster collapsed into Billy Slater’s arms after Origin Game 3.
Two grown men letting the emotion crack wide open on one of Australia's biggest stages in sport. No puffed chests, no tough guy act. Just raw, beautiful vulnerability and grief 💔
It was the perfect antidote to rugby league’s hypermasculinity.
And like, full disclosure here - I'm a born and bred Leaugie, and often a League- apologist to. But I'm also a feminist. And the mother to an 8 year old boy. So, I straddle that fine line between Bring Back The Biff and believing Phoebe Burgess.
I think Wednesday night was a reminder that dismantling the patriarchy doesn’t just liberate women. It frees men too.
Because what else do you expect when boys are raised being told not to act like a girl, not to run like a girl, not to fight like a girl. Boys don't cry.
No wonder suicide rates among men are so high.
What Munster and Slater showed us wasn’t weakness - it was a reclamation of strength. And that’s the kind of masculinity we need more of.
Queensland won Origin fair and square on Wednesday night - on and off the field. Bravo 👏🏻
This piece first appeared in Excessive Consumption - a weekly dispatch on culture, branding, politics and whatever other modern internet brain rot the algorithm has emotionally assigned me that week.
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