A recent study caught my eye, mostly because of its unintentional hilarity. The authors claim vegetarians embody more masculine qualities than meat-eaters. That’s right. Skip the steak, ditch the discipline, and somehow, you emerge more alpha. Once forged in bravery and burden, masculinity can now be found in a compostable lunchbox. But let’s not fool ourselves. The narrative is slick. The framing is deliberate. And the takeaway is deeply disingenuous.

First, the study itself: a sprawling survey out of SWPS University in Poland, covering over 3,700 adults from the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Participants ranked their personal values — abstract things like “achievement,” “conformity,” “benevolence.” The researchers then cross-tabulated these results with dietary preferences. What emerged? Vegetarians reportedly scored higher on power, achievement, and stimulation. They cared less about conformity, tradition, and basic human warmth.

Cue the media swoon. Suddenly the kale crowd are misunderstood mavericks. Not soft, but steely. Not agreeable, but aspirational. It’s the kind of narrative that flatters its audience and flatters itself even more.

Interpreting abstract value rankings as fixed personality traits is a fool’s errand. These aren’t clinical observations. They’re vibes dressed up in data. It’s astrology with footnotes.

And that’s the real issue here. Not whether vegetarians secretly fantasize about running hedge funds or staging coups, but the way we keep mistaking lifestyle branding for psychological depth. Choosing not to eat meat doesn’t suddenly flood your veins with testosterone or fill your spine with steel. It doesn’t make you stoic. It doesn’t make you alpha.

If anything, this study unmasks the performance art behind modern vegetarianism. It’s not about animal welfare. It never was. It’s about image and curating a moral persona. Vegetarianism today is less Gandhi, more Instagram bio, an obnoxious flex dressed as compassion. Look at me — I care differently. I transcend. I eat for the planet and post for the applause.

It’s a declaration masquerading as a diet — a staged rebellion, fed through filters. The study claims vegetarians are more “independent” and less concerned with groupthink.

Yet here’s the paradox: you’ll struggle to find a more rigidly conformist subculture than the modern urban vegan scene. Spend five minutes in any East London café or West Coast co-op and you’ll see it. The same talking points. The same outrage triggers. The same sacred cows, minus the actual cows. It’s a tribe built not on food but on moral exhibitionism. They dress alike, speak alike, and perform dissent in perfect unison. Dissent from what? From anything outside their curated worldview. Try questioning oat milk, or suggesting that maybe hunting isn’t barbaric (it’s cultural). You won’t be met with open minds. You’ll be met with gasps, glares, and a cancel campaign before your flat white cools.

What Is Masculinity?

Moreover, masculinity, at its core, isn’t about power or achievement as abstract values. Wall Street bankers chase those too, and many of them can’t change a tire or change a lightbulb. Masculinity is about responsibility. Endurance. Sacrifice. It’s the quiet strength of the man who wakes at 5 a.m. to provide. Not for praise, not for show, but because someone has to. It’s the one who steps forward when danger looms, who defines success not by aesthetics or applause but by what he shields, sustains, and sacrifices for.

Wanting power doesn’t make you a man; it just means you’re hungry. What matters is how you use it. And according to this study, vegetarians care less about security, tradition, or community — the very pillars men have long been expected to defend. Also, I should add that the study was cross-sectional. That means it tells us nothing about causality. Do vegetarians become more individualistic? Or are individualists simply more likely to skip steak? It’s all surface. Like claiming sandal-wearers are more spiritual. Maybe. Or maybe they just hate socks.

So, what’s really going on here? Simple. We’ve entered an era where lifestyle is mistaken for character. Where giving up meat is treated not as a dietary choice, but as a declaration of moral superiority. Virtue has gone vegan. In this world, every bite is a broadcast. Every grocery haul is a manifesto. Rejecting meat is all about carving out an identity in a culture starved for meaning. This study doesn’t prove that vegetarians are more masculine. It proves they’re more performative. Less interested in belonging, more desperate to be seen.

Beneath the soundbites and headlines lies something colder: the modern hyper-individualist. Unmoored from tradition. Suspicious of community. Addicted to attention. They aren’t rejecting groupthink. They’ve just built a new group, and the entry fee is muscle wastage and public virtue. It’s conformity masquerading as rebellion.

So, no, vegetarians aren’t more manly. They’re more manicured. More image-conscious. More invested in the optics of principle than the weight of responsibility. Masculinity is grounded. It’s humble. It serves something bigger than the self. Theirs shouts. It sells. And it vanishes when the cameras stop.

READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn:

The Most Dangerous Teenagers in America

The Literary Castration of the Modern Male

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