"Be a Man"

This video shows how the phrase "be a man" is interpreted by men from different ages ranging from 5-50. It's interesting to see how even the youngest boy already has a definition for those words because we start to instill what being a man means since birth. When little boys cry or show emotion we tend to be more intolerable because boys aren't supposed to show emotions. They learn from early age that men are strong and tough. Some of the men took a different approach to the phrase. They understood that the phrase can also have derogatory connotations that aren't necessarily useful to men. It puts men into a box where they have to act a certain way that fits in to that box in a very one-dimensional way. Some of them mentioned how being a man meant being "hardworking", "strong", "honest", and "tough" but these aren't necessarily characteristics of just men; women can be all those things too. Society gives certain characteristics a gender category and thus prevents both women and men from being who they really are from fear of not fitting into those categories and being bullied. "Theres not real definition of what that is to be a man, but theres is an assumption when someone says it like that, that there is a very clear definition of what men should be." The phrase "be a man" itself is a reinforcer of those values that tell men how they should and shouldn't act.