Masculinity In Jason Taylor

As Jason Taylor attempts to navigate the choppy sea that is adolescence, he often struggles to find his place among his peers. Just as young kids like Jason are trying to explore who they are, the cruel social hierarchy created by other students forces Jason, and other young boys, to try to fit into a rigid, outdated mold of stereotypical masculinity that causes Jason distress and conflict in his everyday life. The social expectations of being a boy cripple Jason’s self-esteem and force him to shun parts of himself that others deem unacceptable, like his love of poetry. Most of the conflict that Jason encounters throughout the novel could be avoided if he didn’t feel pressure to fulfill gender stereotypes. Throughout the glimpse at Jason’s life that we get to see, he is always hyper-aware of how his actions …show more content…
He even says throughout the novel that some things would just be easier if he was a girl. On the night of the dance, when Jason has his first kiss with Holly Deblin, he admires a song that is playing and says “This song... that’s on right now. Sort of hippieish, but it’s beautiful. Words like “beautiful” you can’t use with boys you can with girls” (pg. 275). Jason doesn’t feel like he can even use the word “beautiful” around his male peers for fear of seeming too girly, because real guys don’t use those kinds of words. In Jason’s world, and even our world today, “cool” guys aren’t soft, they only care about things like sports, and seeing how many girls they can kiss. Jason’s cousin Hugo, to whom Jason looks up to and is desperate to impress, embodies many of the qualities of the stereotypical male. Hugo is cool because he smokes cigarettes, is a star on his rowing team, and because “Hugo reckons he’s kissed thirty girls (and not only kissed)” (pg. 275). Hugo’s presence causes Jason to alter many parts of his personality, just in order to impress him. As Hugo and his family are first arriving to