I recently watched a movie in my Kinesiology class about how men are trapped into a box, limiting what they can do and be by certain characteristics associated with men and masculinity. I thought that this was really neat, because we talked a lot about how the media cornered women into these positions of submission.
The movie talked about how the media portrays men as tough, strong, unemotional, dominating, leaders. But not all men fit into this box of limited stereotypical behaviour. And for those men who don’t, they feel like they have to live up to these expectations or they aren’t “man” enough.
The other thing, was that there are also characteristics that men DON’T want to be known by that KEEP them in this box. Things like fag, pussy, girly, wimpy.
The truth is that we’re all human, we’re all unique and individual. There shouldn’t be a few key terms that will describe an entire sex. Just like there shouldn’t for a race, nation, or sexuality. This is so limiting.
So I think it’s good to look at what the media is doing to portray men as well as women. We tend to think of women as the submissive victims, because the media portrays us that way. But rarely think that men are victims as well in the way that they are portrayed. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, if my boyfriend didn’t show any weak, vulnerable, and emotional side, I would think he was just plain inhuman … not that he was more of a man!
