Side Note: Masculinity Sucks
The first time I put on black nail polish, one of the first things I thought was: how am I going to explain this to other people? Nail polish was something that I grew up believing was for women. So was the color pink, eyeliner and flowers. I was raised in a traditionally Catholic family. As a man now, I realize that the concept of sex-exclusive identity markers is just a matter of opinion. There is no penalty for wearing nail polish as a man.
But why did it hurt so bad when the man at the register that night at dinner laughed at my nails? He pointed to them, told me that if I knew they were painted and then chuckled back into the kitchen.
Ideally, men shouldn’t be judged for how their self-expression takes form. But we’re not playing by the ideal rules in 2020. I love the fact that identity has been revealed to be a gradient. There is no binary anymore. We can exist outside the prescribed boundaries of our assigned identities. Yet, not everyone is on board with that idea. There is still a large group of people that advocate for traditional identity labels. Marriage should be between a man and a woman. Men are the breadwinners of the family. Men are mentally fortified and discouraged from outwardly expressing internal conflict. The status quo is slowly shifting to encourage an individual to identify themselves however it pleases them but there is still so much work to be done in order to push men to come out of their preconceived identity.
Being a man is boring. There comes many certain privileges that come with our assigned sex at birth but staying a man is admittedly, not exciting. Or at least, society’s idea of what a man should be is bland.
What do you mean I can’t enjoy fruity cocktails? Personal hygiene? I HAVE to like sports?. Why is it that when men are allowed to deviate from the norms, it’s always framed as a joke? Because it’s not a joke. On social media, when you see a man express their feminine side, why does it have to be for a laugh? Why can’t men enjoy a Sex on the Beach without the implication of femininity or secrecy attached?
Is it because men are afraid to be called gay?
I got blue light glasses to help my headaches when writing and working on my computer. I bought them in a shade of pink. When they got delivered, my mother saw them and assumed I was going to come out to her. When she told me, I was shocked and said of course not, I just liked the color but then I spent more time thinking about it later that day.
Why would it have mattered? Why does it matter to men (especially straight men) if other people think they’re gay? Do we think it’s a bad thing? Do we think that other people’s perception of us factors in our positioning in today’s society? And if so, have we crafted our identity around being defensive and reactionary so that we might maintain power due to us creating the rules of power in the first place? Are we afraid to be outed as anything other than the “powerful man” because to do so would open us up for discrimination and loss of power? Do we understand discrimination is based on identity and appearance which an individual can’t help and yet choose to repress those things within us to avoid being pushed down from the top of the power dynamic?
Are we afraid of being called women or woman-like? Where’s the insult? Why must we insist on being nothing other than man?
Let go of that.
I wear a colorful bracelet and imagine that many men I encounter have the first impression that I’m gay. At first, the thought bothered me. But what do I care about the opinion of a person that can’t handle identity expression beyond what they were taught?
I think the base position as we move towards a more socially conscious future is that everyone should be able to express themselves as they please. That means that the traditional manly-man must give up some of the power. The more kinds of people that take power, the better off we’re going to be as a species. If we really live in a free world, we can’t have set definitions of what a person’s identity can and cannot be.
It will take generations to break the male conglomerate of identity into its real factions. It’s going to take a lot of positive reinforcing to make masculinity an option rather than the standard. Some people really like being a manly-man. Some people are attracted to the manly-man. Cheers to that but again we are interested in having options, not standards.
Men, you don’t even like being manly-men all the time. You’re more than that. Stop repressing your feelings. We’re crabs in a bucket and won’t let each other escape toxic masculinity. No one wants to uphold these standards but we all believe this is just how it is so we keep normalizing toxic identity behavior within ourselves.
Our fathers were stoic and made of iron. I’ve never seen my dad cry. I subconsciously repress tears. It’s not genetics. It’s learned behavior.
