How Millennial and Gen Z Toxic Masculinity Took Over The White Lotus Season Two
With the exception of Portia this season (and Paula in season one) who both visit a White Lotus on the backs of their richer counterparts, every character who goes on holiday to a White Lotus resort automatically oozes massive amounts of wealth and therefore, privilege. With season one focusing on class and in turn, race and colonialism, season two turned its eye to toxic masculinity and how it has shape-shifted its way through current generations.
The three generations of men in the Di Grasso family visiting Sicily in hope of discovering their Italian roots have a representative for multiple age groups: For the baby boomer generation, Bert, Gen X, Dominic and Gen Z, Albie. Meanwhile the millennial category are denoted by long time friends from college Ethan and Cameron, who are vacationing together with their wives, Harper and Daphne.
It is revealed that Ethan and Cam were roommates at college and that until recently, Cam always had the upper hand in the dynamic of their relationship. A key element of their friendship is that above anything, it is built on rivalry - before they both got married, Cam would flex his white privilege by pursuing girls he knew Ethan desired, and up until very recently, Cam also had more money than Ethan, who at the point of the vacation has just sold his company and become richer than Cam. The four of them go on holiday together by Cam’s invitation and it is obvious that both Ethan and Harper feel less comfortable in the rich lifestyle enjoyed by their counterparts, not only because they are people of colour but also because they are both politically-aware and products of new money, both of which Cam and Daphne are not.
Harper in particular is suspicious of why Cam has invited them, and Ethan concludes that it was with the intention of getting him to invest some of his new riches in Cam’s company. As the show progresses, it becomes obvious that it was also to keep up the illusion that Cam has more confidence and power than Ethan now that financially, that is no longer the case. Arguably, the only way Cam sees their respective statuses being somewhat balanced out is if Ethan invests in Cam’s company. Men are socialised to believe that their life’s quest is to secure a heterosexual relationship and get rich. Now that Ethan has more money than Cam, their relationship is imbalanced in Cam’s eyes and he reverts back to his college habit of trying to one-up Ethan - by way of sleeping with Ethan’s wife Harper.
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Ethan dismisses Harper at the start of the season when she tells him that Cam got naked in front of her while alone together in their room, so she shuts down before she tells him anything else about the encounter. To her surprise, Harper comes to the realisation that Ethan has more similarities to Cam than she once thought. Upon finding a condom wrapper in their room, Harper connects the dots to believe that Ethan slept with another woman - in part due to Daphne confiding in her that Cam is a cheater.
Upon confrontation, Ethan gaslights Haper by continuously saying nothing happened until eventually, he reveals the truth about spending time with the show’s local sex workers, Mia and Lucia, as well as taking ecstacy. Not only did Ethan lie about nothing happening - even if he didn’t have sex with either of the women, he was still not truthful about what actually occurred - but he also tries to manipulate Harper by saying that she should actually be grateful that he didn’t cheat on her. His point being that he could have if he wanted to, but he didn’t and that should be a valid symbol of his love for her. A typical display of toxic masculinity - instead of admitting fault, spinning the situation to seem like a positive action.
This situation runs parallel to the final episodes of the show, when Ethan is the one suspecting Harper of sleeping with someone else: Cameron. Although extremely similar situations, Ethan refuses to believe Harper when she says she did not cheat. Ethan is crumbling under his inescapable obsessive thoughts of his wife and friend sleeping together to the point where he can hardly separate his imagination from the truth. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Ethan cannot see the similarity between himself and Harper and age old anxieties within his relationship with Cameron, stemming from their masculine rivalry, mean he cannot believe his wife over his own suspicions.
The plot culminates in a physical fight with Cameron, a battle of manhood that’s been boiling between the two since school, where the two men brutally take turns in holding each others’ heads underwater until a hotel guest intervenes to stop them from killing each other.
Theo James, who plays Cam, noted that he wanted the character to physically take up space on screen in order to assert his dominance, but when the two men emerge from the water and Ethan’s large and muscular upper body is almost entirely exposed through his soaked t-shirt, it is clear that now he is starting to take up the same space as Cameron after this incident between them. A clear cut signal from White Lotus writer Mike White that masculinity is just as much about primal physicality as it is a mental characteristic.
Following the fight, it is heavily insinuated that Ethan seeks out Daphne, Cam’s wife, and together they decide to take to a secluded spot and have sex. Later in the episode, Ethan is invigorated and seduces Harper for the first time in the whole season - after much talk about him no longer being attracted to her. It turned out that Ethan needed his wife to be desired by his male rival in order to feel attracted to her again, through means of feelings possessive over his wife - mirroring the masculinity of decades of toxic husbands. Ethan needed to get everything Cam had before he could be content - including playing Cam at his own game by fucking his wife.
This isn’t the only incident where the show illustrates how masculinity and all its toxicity hasn’t progressed as far as society would like to think. It is particularly noticeable in the character of self-described Nice Guy, Albie and how he treats women - not only his peers Portia and sex-worker Lucia both of whom he is attracted to, but also his mother, who the audience doesn’t meet because she has refused the vacation due to her husband Dominic’s infidelity.
“This is a stark reminder that even to the Gen Z feminist men, women are disposable when it comes to their desires, including their own mothers.”
Albie grills his father throughout the season about how poorly he treated the mother of his children, until he is given the opportunity to live out his white knight fantasy of helping women and saving sex worker Lucia, who has been explaining her financial difficulties to Albie. When asking his father Dominic for €50,000 to give to Lucia, Albie offers a trade. In order to satisfy his own needs - in this instance, impressing a lover - Albie offers to convince his mother to get back with Dominic, despite having insisted she deserves better. Albie was unwilling to enable his father’s bad behaviour towards his mother until it came down to the possibility of no longer being able to get sexual gratification from Lucia - a classic softboi tactic of only caring about feminism when it suits his needs.
Despite warning from his father that he was being ‘played’, Albie’s youthful naivety - and arguably, masculine driven ignorance - makes him assume that Lucia would jump at the chance he gives her to escape to LA with him if he just gives her the money. Albie wakes up the morning after the transaction is made and Lucia is gone, but in the airport following the incident Albie seems nonplussed.
While this money is life changing to Lucia, it is a drop in the ocean to Albie, a small price to pay for a life lesson on women’s ability to manipulate. However the lack of upset this causes Albie only twists the knife in how easily he gave up his mother for his wants, especially as she proposes to meet up with Dominic due to Albie’s recommendation. This is a stark reminder that even to the Gen Z feminist men, women are disposable when it comes to their desires, including their own mothers.
Words: Rianka Gill
