Thursday, September 22, 2011

Katy Hanratty Blog #6

While reading this article it made me think how hard it is for guys to show emotion.  If a guy shows emotion such as crying he gets called gay, sissy, wuss and several other names.  It almost seems unfair that girls are able to show any kind of emotion but guys are expected to be strong all the time.  I understand that some guys like to be to “that guy.”  The type of guy who never cries and acts strong 100% of the time.  I agree with the author when he says “Masculinity is a constant test- always up for grabs, always needing to be proved” (Kimmel 51).  I fully believe this statement because I feel like guys are always needing to prove how masculine they are.  It’s almost like if they don’t show masculinity they are afraid that other males or females with think that they are gay.  I think that guys care just as much as girls about how they present themselves to others.  Guys never want people to think that they aren’t masculine.
The second hot spot I found while reading this article was “Boys learn that their connection to mother will emasculate them, turn them into Mama’s Boys” (Kimmel 52).  After reading this statement, I realized that if I were a mother reading that I would have been offended.  I would have gotten offended because I feel like when little boys are at such a young age they need their mothers around to nurture them.  When I was reading the story about the little boy who was getting his haircut and some of the chemicals burned him so he started to cry and the barber began to call him a wussy and that he needed to stay away from his mother I thought that was horrible.  This little boy was only three and a half years old when this happened.  How can you say that he is not being man enough at the age of three.  I feel like that has no connection to how much time he was spending with his mother.  A little kid as young as three will cry at anything that hurts them, I don’t feel like a mother has anything to do with that.  A mother simply nurtures her child when the child is in pain.  I think its horrible that males have to live up to this expectation of always having to feel “manly.”

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