I probably talk too much about how things in your world start to echo each other; how you see connections, but I love to talk about it so I’m just going keep doing it for at least today.

And today it is all about Ewan McGregor.

I’m not sure when I first saw Ewan in a movie, but I immediately picture him as a Jedi even though I think the later Star Wars movies are just terrible. It was probably “Emma” and I loved him in “Big Fish” and as I type this I’m stalking him on Wikipedia. But, most recently I found myself watching in perhaps two unlikely – unconnected projects: “I Love You, Phillip Morris” and “Long Way Round.”

In the first, he plays a small time criminal with shockingly blonde hair who falls in love with a slighlty more devious white collar criminal played by Jim Carrey while they are both in a Texas jail. Yep. You are reading all of that correctly. The movie (I know now the viewing fare for everyone!) was sweet and funny and I also find myself proud of people who can play someone so totally not like themselves. I say that for actors but what about when you write as well? What about when you tackle a subject or try a form that is so unlike anything you’d normally do?

Then my husband and I (we also watched the movie together) watched all 10 parts of a documentary that Ewan did with his fellow actor friend Charley Boorman called “Long Way Round” which followed them as they drove around the world on motorcyles (they also later put together a book about it). They started in London and drove East so that they had to travel through Russia etc.

Ewan is playing a version of himself (we all have various faces we put out there) in the documentary, but I hope that much of it was the real him because I thought I could survive the very stressful, grueling, dirty ordeal of driving these cumbersome bikes through things we (Americans I mean here) wouldn’t even dare to call a road because Ewan was gregarious, kind, light-hearteded and not afraid to be a REAL MAN (come on they are riding motorcycles and growing facial hair!) while at the same time he would embrace his friends along the road and not feel that is somehow “unmanly.”

I bring this up to tie these two together because I (while trying not to push any kind of morality or politics onto anyone. I enjoy free thinkers) find it refreshing to see different representations of gender in general. Sometimes I think we all live too much in fear of anyone who doesn’t conform to the role we placed on them (think of my earlier Sister Wives post).

There was an article (can’t link as it is subscription online) that spoke about how much gay bashing goes on in sports and I couldn’t help thinking of Ewan and how he represented himself in person and in film and I wondered how much of any hate mongering has to do with unadulterated fear? What if – just what if – being a MAN was also about giving your male friend a kiss on the cheek while still chugging down a beer? What if that was just ok? What if – just in general – we weren’t constantly in fear of what someone thought of who we felt we were at our core?

Just – what if?