The Myth

Act like a man. Be a man. Suck it up. This is the myth of masculinity. These are all things us men grow up hearing and we are lead to believe we shouldn't express our emotions and feelings because society doesn't see it as acceptable. If women fought to have the same rights as men the rights that defy masculinity, why can't men have the right to have the feminine qualities? The feminine quality of emotion. Men cry too.

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

What is Masculinity?

This is a video of people's opinion of what is masculinity. The voice overs are taken from speakers that address the issue to make people more aware and change the way they think of masculinity. This video highlights the contrast of what is believed to be masculine and how men really feel and talk about the issue.

Video talkers include Joe Ehrmann and Kyle Krieger, where both talk about the idea of masculinity in different ways. Ehrmann address it in a more general issue where he talks about some of the myths he believes in and how we should change (the video of the talk is also available in a previous blog post) while Krieger talks about his own experience of how he was never the masculine acting man and felt like he could never measure up to his father's expectations and therefore considered himself "not the son he invisioned.

Masculinity is confidence, confidence in yourself if you have that it will show others your emotional strength, which is valued a lot more then a deep voice.

[huffpost]

Watch 70 years of “be a real man” in under two minutes.

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Brilliant project

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Collages from today’s workshop event on the expectations of masculinity.

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Workshop Event

The myth of masculinity is about the expectations and idealism that people have of men. Expectations they measure men up against and then become to some extent disappointed when they don't get what they want as they pursue for the perfect good looking man with a six pack that is also 'manly' and confident and the perfect gentleman.

This collage event is about this, I gave people a description of a word that matches up with a myth and got them to collage a man based on that description. They had to choose from face shapes, eyes, mouths, hairs and bodies as well as the colours blue or pink of those features.

With a lot of the words people were very stereotypical, for example with feminine they would go for the colour pink, longer hair, and a slimmer body. And for tough, the colour blue, an anger feature, facial hair and muscle. One person said "It is bad to judge someone on how tough they are based on their appearance because you can be emotionally tough but not look it" And that is the point, as a society we are very judgy on looks, and these expectations/myths are a built up of that.

With the word 'Perfection' people created the most beautiful guys they could find to them and some even asked "Can you make him come true?" The answer was no, because that perfect men was built of different people's features- he had the eyes of someone that their body was classified as feminine and the body of someone that was classified as tough, he wasn't real.

From this event I hoped I showed people that even though they did have fun building these fantasy men, that men are also more then that and come in different forms and identity, that like women are also expected to meet certain criteria and I think it was quite successful in doing so.

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Man up… whatever that means.

Telling a guy to “man up” or “be a man about it” or “not act like such a girl” can be an amazingly powerful insult. When used in just the right away, especially by a powerful or popular male, the guy on the receiving end of that jibe might find himself doing things he wouldn’t otherwise do. As psychologists, it’s time to take a critical look at the concept of masculinity.

The Power of Masculinity

The insult’s power is derived from what seems like a fairly simple source: Most guys believe it’s important to be “masculine,” or “man enough.” Masculinity is generally understood to be an achieved status that needs to be proved. Historically, and across many nations, “manhood” can be proven by completing the culture’s coming of age ritual or earned through the 3 P’s: providing, protecting or procreating. In these cultures, manhood delineates a shift in status from juvenile to adult.

In current day America and other post-industrial nations, masculinity is not delineated by adulthood and there is no enduring standard by which masculinity can be proved once and for all. Instead, masculinity is inherently “precarious” and must be proved repeatedly; challenges to a guy’s masculinity should be answered immediately. Even 73-year-old Jack Palance felt the need to prove his masculinity by doing pushups on stage when he received an Academy Award (for playing iconic tough guy Curly in “City Slickers”.

The Pieces of Masculinity

In order to prove — or defend — his masculinity, a guy needs to act in ways that will readily be recognized as masculine. But “readily recognized” is often enacted by conforming to stereotypes of masculinity, particularly aspects of masculinity such as violence (i.e., fighting), risk taking (e.g., excessive alcohol consumption) and some forms of hooking up and promiscuous sexuality (e.g., who can find the ugliest partner), and hiding one’s feeling (except anger). Talk with friends that is sexist, misogynist,or homophobic can also serve this purpose; these aspects of masculinity, sometimes labelled “hypermasculinity” or “hostile masculinity” in the literature, typically receive low levels of endorsement on the scales designed to measure them.

Article by Andrew Smiler read more at: https://psychologybenefits.org/2016/05/04/man-up-whatever-that-means/

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

The Myth that men can’t have feminine qualities, these being that men can’t express their emotions and feelings like women can and if they do they are seen as weak or gay.

Men Cry Too

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

The Five Myths of Masculinity

-Confidence- The Myth that to be a man they have to be over confident, being masculine and a man is to be confident in yourself.

-Perfection- The Myth that all men have great bodies like magazines made them to be and have no flaws and can be the perfect gentleman because even the gentleman has flaws.

-Femininity- The Myth that men can’t have the feminine qualities, these being that men can’t express their emotions and feelings like women can

-Sexuality- The Myth that all men are sex experts and all they want and talk about is sex

-Tough- The Myth that men have to be tough and brave and have to show that they can’t be hurt.

#themyth

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Men Have Body Insecurities Too.

Men have body insecurities too, it’s nothing to be ashamed off. It is natural to feel like that, we are all human and we are all affected by things people say, but for some reason people always think it is more ok to tell a man that because a man won’t care. A man is tough and won’t let it affect him, but there are many many men that are affected by this and there’s even more people that aren’t aware of the problem with the male body image. 

‘It is just as hard to be Ken as it is to be Barbie’ Who has heard that saying? It is now become more common to want to become the perfect man, where perfect simply means perfect body. Men take care off their body too, men go on diets too, men even get plastic surgery. The same things that affect women in terms of expectations on their looks also affects men.

 Men have body insecurities too and theres nothing wrong with that!

[gelopanda]

Body image

So I’ve been making a heck of a lot of progress here abroad with my body image issues. I actually haven’t felt this good about my body, in…well I don’t know actually. I’ve been eating extremely healthy, going to the gym every morning and nine of my clothes fit me anymore. I’m notably skinnier and my muscles are more toned…

BUT while hanging out today, a friend of mine said “oh, you need to go to the gym, you have a gut! -.- that’s really not helpful -____-

Granted its pretty impossible to be able to tell I would be sensitive about such a thing because I’m not at the body type people would expect to have body image issues…but I am.

Fuck…I actually handled it really well, usually I’d get upset and just be quiet, this time I was just laughing and not even upset…but thinking back on it I’m upset.

[liamgavynsalt]

Thoughts

[huffpost]

19 Men Go Shirtless And Share Their Body Image Struggles

The fruitless quest for a “perfect” body isn’t unique to women,  though based on the body image conversations we tend to hear, it’s easy to think so.

Spoiler alert: Men have body insecurities, too, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Photos by: Damon Dahlen via The Huffington Post

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

The myth of masculinity

[thetimes-thatwehad]

Men is so fragile.

You see us standing, but deep inside we’re crumbling.

Where can we let loose all of these feelings? 

Where is the shoulder when we’re at our weakest?

Am we suppose to lean on ourselves and give ourselves a pat on the back?

When we cry and we scream, there is nowhere we can turn to. 

When we fumble and tumble, the helping hand is not there for us to get through. 

You know we don’t even need you to help us solve our issues. 

 We just need someone to hear us out and hold our hands and tell us,” Everything is gonna be alright.” 

[betsybull]

The whole world has essentially been brought up not to be a girl. How do we bring up boys? What does it mean to be a boy? To be a boy really means not to be a girl. To be a man means not to be a girl. To be a woman means not to be a girl. To be strong means not to be a girl. To be a leader means not to be a girl. I actually think that being a girl is so powerful that we have had to train everyone not to be that. And I’d also like to say that the irony is denying girl, suppressing girl, suppressing emotion, refusing feeling has led us here, where we now have come to live in a world where the most extreme forms of violence, the most horrific poverty, genocide, mass rape, the destruction of the earth is completely out of control and because we have suppressed our girl cells and suppressed our girl ship, we do not feel what is going on so we are not being charged with the adequate response." “I see how boys have been brought up and I see this across the planet: to be tough, to be hardened, to distance themselves from their tenderness, to not cry…. That when we don’t allow men to have their girl self and have their vulnerability, and have their compassion, and have their hearts, that they become hardened and hurtful and violent. And I think we have taught men to be secure when they are insecure, to pretend they know things when they don’t know things, or why would we be where we are? To pretend they’re not a mess when they are a mess.

-Eve Ensler

[connorfranta]

New Video | Real Men Don’t Cry

Just something I’ve been thinking about lately.. check it out and let me know your thoughts! also mind reblogging this post? thanks all x

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

http://gabrielgotardo.wix.com/themythofmasculinity

http://themythofmasculinity.tumblr.com

[hiddles-and-skittles]

Men Cry, Too, You Assholes.

We were watching a video in class and everyone would say “Aww” when the main female character would cry, but then when the male character would cry they would laugh. I don’t like the way society tells boys and men that it isn’t okay for them to cry, and I also don’t like the way people laugh if or when they do.

[themythofmasculinity-blog]

Act like a man. Be a man. Suck it up.

This is the myth of masculinity.

These are all things us men grow up hearing and we are lead to believe we shouldn't express our emotions and feelings because society doesn't see it as acceptable. If women fought to have the same rights as men the rights that defy masculinity, why can't men have the right to have the feminine qualities? The feminine quality of emotion. Men cry too.

Please visit this page and have your say and share this

http://gabrielgotardo.wix.com/themythofmasculinity