Him Mut Powerful of Him

A previous girlfriend and current friend of mine complimented me on my manliness from time to time. This was qualified by a questioning of the notion of manliness and a certainty that her notion of it was rooted in a particular confidence that I, at least at those or that time, displayed. While this led to a number of conversations on the topic, I was never engaged with the thought as much as I am now. It strikes me that I have not developed a personal notion of manliness, where I do have at least some language to use around notions of femininity and a personal ideal of personhood.
So, where to begin?
I could work contrastively from my ideas and language around femininity. Or not, as this approach would assume a fundamental competition between these ideas that I don't feel exists. While, yes, the feminine and the masculine are fundamentally different, they are not essentially competitive with each other. They most certainly both deserve language expressive of that difference, but to do so comparatively would either narrow my thought to what can be compared, or bring me to the realm of my ideas of personhood, which is another set of thoughts altogether.
I could approach mass media representations of manliness and debunk or appreciate them in turn. While a very useful tool for understanding my understanding of media, this approach, now firmly rooted in what passes in adolescence for feminism, will not bring me any closer to what I may claim as my ideas of what it is to be a man, just as it brings me no closer to an understanding of femininity to say that "skinny models = bad." This thinking is limited to being as dimensional as the media being examined is.
I could read and consider pop-psych self-help books for men. Ha.
My recent obsession with this topic has led me to a few tools that may be useful. As I've been experimenting with bringing this up in conversation, I have heard myself resorting to forms of hero-worship in order to try to express myself. So, there's that. I've also been considering assembling an anthology of poems, song, stories, plays, essays, articles, paintings, prints, etcetera that speak to my foggy notions of manliness. There's that, too.
So, my starting point is a set of heroes, followed through with expressions that speak to the points of worship. The goal is to have a language to use to explore this world honestly. Subject, as always, to change.