Take Off Your Mask

We all are living, one thing makes us human, socialization. Norms and beliefs are
taught and learned through socialization. These ideas were handed to us by a nasty
cycle that is continuously thriving through our blindness and passed on through the
generations. Five agents have taught us all of it, family, media, sports, religion and
peers. These agents can either bring greatness or illness into our lives. We learn to
love, speak, and even just take care of ourselves. We also learn to hate and oppress.
Somebody once told me that the world is mine but I belong to the world. It shapes me,
physically and mentally. Always being told to be yourself when yourself and your
personality is already chosen for you. I have been socialized to be blind of how strict
the gender roles of men are and as a man I cant show emotions and sometimes cannot
even have them.
Males have to conform to the rules and standards to fit the gender of a man but
dont even notice them. I've later come to know that to be the collective socialization of
men, better known as the man box. Tony Porter states in the video, Tony Porter: A
Call To Men. The collective socialization includes being strong, smart, courageous,
sexually appealing and many other traits. This limits how boys are able to express
themselves, particularly in relation to boys and men. This way of socialization has
actually been proven to be harmful to the mental health of boys. These illnesses are
cycling in violence and harmful oppression. While girls are able branch out into typically
male actions; there are much higher social sanctions when boys take part in typical
female behaviors. While boys and girls are taught and retaught to act in such ways, it
would be hard to change the social norms but not impossible.
Men cannot express their emotion or even have feelings sometimes. Porter
discusses how he told his son to stop crying and to talk to him like a man. In the
common culture of Americans, women are known to be more emotional than men. Men
and women differ in their experience and expression of emotion. Parsonss functional
theory about gender predicts male-female differences in subjective feelings and
expressive behavior that are generally consistent with cultural beliefs about mens and
womens emotions. Emotions are embedded into our minds and, for men, are supposed
to stay in it. Women are able to freely express emotions anywhere they would like but
boys and men can only express themselves in private. I have always been told to be
less sensitive and talk less about how I feel. All of middle school I knew that I couldnt
show how I felt but I still did. Kids and teachers got mad at me for being so expressive. I
saw the same girls go to the counselors everyday and show even more emotion while
others felt bad for them. I was getting ridiculed till I finally stopped expressing my
emotions. I started expressing less and less and felt a hole grow larger filling up with
actions and words that hurt me. I felt worse and worse. I never told my parents. Society
needs to change. Boys everywhere are committing suicide and nobody sees it coming
because they keep the emotions on the inside.
Today, I am told to act more like a man, be less of a pussy and to show less
emotion. All boys are told these things at least once in a lifetime and think that

everybody is better than them. We can change, but we are innocents falling into already
established cycles. Told we cannot change because this is who we really are. If we
change we arent considered human. We are scared to be devalued by the people who
have fallen so deeply into this cycle. I can break this nasty cycle by being myself and
not letting others choose who I am. To do what I want and not listen to the ridicule.
Easier said than done, but it is definitely possible.

Mask Paragraph

My mask represents how men are supposed to look according to the man box.
The other half is shows the opposite of what's acceptable. Wearing makeup and crying
because hes being told that makeup is for girls. That it isnt acceptable to express
himself in that way. This represents my essay because the half with the beard is what
the man box is trying to shape boys to be. The half with the tears represents that if a
boy expresses himself in a way that isnt acceptable in the man box.