Sociology Week 12

This week in sociology we talked about masculinity and how society views/defines it. To be masculine a guy has to be tough, strong, unemotional, muscular, resilient, etc. Just how society pressures women to be and look a certain way it also does that for men. Men are always shown being dominant and strong and those are what teenage boys have to look up to. It's not socially acceptable for them to have a softer side because that is seen as weak and feminine. I've definitely witnessed this first hand in my life. I remember I liked this guy last year and we somehow got on the topic of crying. I asked him when the last time he cried was and he said "No." just "No." And I found it incredibly unattractive! I didn't like that he was trying to be all tough and prove his masculinity. It was especially interesting to me that he just said "no". It would be one thing to lie, laugh it off, and say that he doesn't cry. If that had happened I would have just figured we weren't close enough and he wasn't comfortable talking about that with me. But to completely avoid the idea of the question altogether just shows how uncomfortable the topic made him; it seemed almost threatening to him. He had vented to me about being upset before, but always in a "manly" angry way. It's okay to be upset and get angry, but its not okay to be upset and cry. I'm sure he thought that if he had admitted crying, he wouldn't seem masculine. And I think that's the problem, that men think they can't be masculine if they have a soft side. Unfortunately the definition of "masculinity" is very small with no room for expansion in today's society.