Personally, I found the film The Mask You Live In very eye opening. It focuses around how young boys are taught to portray their assigned gender and how they carry the lessons they are given into manhood. From as young as six years old, a boy is taught not to show emotion; that crying and hugging and any public displays of affection towards friends or loved ones in too feminine and unmanly. Boys learn to watch their father figures and associate them as the ideal role model for masculinity. When a father shows aggression towards a woman who then starts to cry, a young boy would not initially know what to make of it, and would possibly then associate violence with being manly and strong emotions as weak and girly. This can be the reason why from
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They learn that sometimes violence solves problems, and are discouraged with physical force from showing emotion.
The documentary went into detail about how young boys have learned to put on a theoretical mask to hide what they are truly feeling inside. On the outside, they let others see what they think will make a masculine impression, like humor, athletic ability, and occasional compassion. But behind the mask they hide their true emotions. These hidden emotions, like anger, aggression, and loneliness, are what lead to such high suicide rates that we see in teenage boys today. These boys are not talking about the problems that they have or the depression they feel because of the fear they have of being ridiculed or called weak. It is society that has put this fear into these boys. Even from the first time they join a sports team and their coaches tell them to stop running “like a girl”, young boys begin to fear being associated with femininity, and learn to better perform masculinity. Advertisements and social media have stigmatized boys sharing emotions with their friends by showing it as a form of being gay, and therefor it is not allowed. Because male adolescence are not able to express how they are feeling to their peers or those close to
They learn that sometimes violence solves problems, and are discouraged with physical force from showing emotion.
The documentary went into detail about how young boys have learned to put on a theoretical mask to hide what they are truly feeling inside. On the outside, they let others see what they think will make a masculine impression, like humor, athletic ability, and occasional compassion. But behind the mask they hide their true emotions. These hidden emotions, like anger, aggression, and loneliness, are what lead to such high suicide rates that we see in teenage boys today. These boys are not talking about the problems that they have or the depression they feel because of the fear they have of being ridiculed or called weak. It is society that has put this fear into these boys. Even from the first time they join a sports team and their coaches tell them to stop running “like a girl”, young boys begin to fear being associated with femininity, and learn to better perform masculinity. Advertisements and social media have stigmatized boys sharing emotions with their friends by showing it as a form of being gay, and therefor it is not allowed. Because male adolescence are not able to express how they are feeling to their peers or those close to