Take it Like a Man?

           Masculinity and

Self-esteem

Blog Post #1:

Have you ever heard the phrases “Take it like a man” or “Real men don’t cry” or have you ever been told that for someone to like a man he has to be wealthy, physically fit , good looking or highly intelligent? Well if so, whoever told you was most likely misguided or even blinded by these deceptive morals.

My topic that I am studying Masculinity and Self-Esteem, in a way expose the truth behind these theorems. I would like to try and decrease the amount of low self-esteem in at least the freshman class at SLA. I want to do a poll for the current freshmen, that asks if they have any self-esteem complication, and if so what is the reason for it.

I am really interested in this topic because of personal experience that I have had with it. My personal connection is that when I was younger people always told me things that made me good...in their eyes. The false rumor that “Real men don’t cry”, I believe is extremely misleading. I think this because people always told me not to cry when I had to experience burdensome events. For an example, all of my grandparents passed away within a span of 3 months. Every time I thought of them I would always want to just cry. A lot of times people would tell me that I shouldn’t cry and that I should “take it like a man”. So, without knowing any better that’s what I did.

When I look back at it now, I realize that the longer I held it in the more independent, lonely, and even self-conscious I became. These emotions affected me big time because they were starting to show in my grades. I began to think that I wasn’t good enough for school or even life.

I think that it is important to know my story and how this relates to me because it shows how things that are natural in life can really affect you emotionally. And those emotional effects can be displayed physically.

This dilemma is significant because this is an issue that is widely spread across the world but, not many people are doing anything to solve it. This is also an important issue because if an individual lets the emotions that they get from this issue get the better of them a lot of the times it leads to suicide or suicidal thoughts. It’s not only good for people who struggle with this to know about it but it’s good for everyone to know about it. It is important for others to know about it because often times the thoughts of not being good enough randomly cross through everyone’s minds and it’s better to recognize it now than to have the thoughts and not know what to do about it.

This topic has really affected me because I always thought about self-esteem being an issue but I never thought about where it might have came from or why it was such an alerting issue. I just would like to know why boys and men always judge someone and or themselves based on their outward appearance and why they start doing it at such a young age.