A poet, a fashion designer, a philosopher, a surfer, a dad, and a guy who easily transitions from laboring with his hands to thinking and reading all day, Thaddeus is the definition of the liberated man. Suits and ties challenge his care-free sartorial whims, though he will wear them if inspired. However, jeans, tees, knit sweaters and surf shorts of his own design are more fitting to his nonconformist ways. Thaddeus means God's gift, and after spending much time with the Walt Whitman fan, we see why his parents chose his name. He has been oblivious to society's confinements from the get go, raiding his sister's closet in high school and spending most of his time surfing, where he finds refuge with the rest of life's bandits. Operating under the MO that "the best clothes are unisex," Thaddeus continues to sling gender stereotypes into the gutter. Garbed in nightshirts made by his mother, Thaddeus has the kind of self-deprecating, self-awareness to admit that parenthood, including his own role as a father, is at best a travesty of experiment.

Given the proliferation of violence, I am pretty sure that we are not the first to wonder what is happening in the world right now with men. This is one of the reasons that we have chosen to highlight men such as Thaddeus, who, while not short on muscle, has his biceps tattooed with the first sentence of Nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil  -- "Supposing truth is a woman - what then?"  Lucky for his wife and the mother of his child (and for the world), Thaddeus is rare in that he believes that truth and all of mankind derives from women, thereby throwing all notions of solid, impenetrable masculinity out the window. "Women are the source of life and death, of destruction and creation, at once," explains Thaddeus. "Truth is everything: it's not static, it's illusive."

If only all men were this comfortable with stacking all of their hats on their head or staking claim to their existence on something soft and transitory, then, possibly, men would be truly strong.

Thaddeus's video was edited by Lily & Daniel Duran
Shot, interviewed, and photographed by Elisa, Lily & Mona
Opening & closing graphic designed by Maximiliano Gaston Longo

See our first post on Thaddeus here