Media Defined Identities, Not Just For Women

JACOB EVANS

My arms look like those little noodley strands of goop that you get when you push Play-Doh through a strainer. In fact, overall I look kind of like a wet trash-bag full of mashed potatoes. If society’s ready to start talking about how the media perpetuates unrealistic standards of beauty and gender roles, can we at least mention the fact that society expects the sweaty bean-bag chair that is my body to look like Arnold in his prime?

The arms race that is boyhood is a constant string of unrealistic expectations placed on me for the sole reason that I have a penis. After realizing that no amount of my penis was going to make me Bruce Willis, I kind of gave up on the notion of manhood being something worth achieving.

I was raised thinking that my level of manliness was measured in the number of doors I kicked down and galaxies I saved. It’s really not until you reach your teenage years that potentially achievable expectations are thrust upon you, but they are all absolutely horrible expectations.

Suddenly, your manhood is based on the number of women you sleep with (with no consideration given to whether any of it was actually consensual), your willingness to put yourself in danger for the amusement of others, and your emotional callousness.

Thankfully, I was already convinced I would never be a “real man”, and I never cared as much about those things as my peers did. I may be sitting here typing this with a hand I broke on someone else’s face, and I have all the feelings of a Roomba, but I never really considered those to make me very manly.

Then you reach adulthood, and suddenly, every boy becomes a man, and you realize that isn’t always a good thing. My ideas of what it means for me to be man come from what I learned from my step-dad. To me, manhood is about taking care of those you love even when it’s hard to do. To millions of others, it’s still about how many women you sleep with (or rape), and if anyone wonders why men often act so oppressively toward women and even each other, I can’t help but wonder if it stems from the fact that the only way little boys are taught to behave when they reach adulthood is like monsters.

I get very frustrated when my concerns about how boys are educated about manhood are shut out because “women have it worse”, that may be true, but I really believe that’s mostly because boys are basically trained to make it that way.