After reading the summary of The Mask You Live In (Discussion Guide), I affirmed a lot of the things that I have been told and that I know about myself. In this blog post, I’m going to look at how this made me feel, what it made me think, and what it makes me want to change.
Before I start the discussion, one of the quotes that made me think a lot was “Every boy measures his masculinity, at the deepest level, against his dad.” I think that this is something that is at or very near the heart of the problem. When someone describes a father figure, they usually describe someone who is strong for the people who look up to them as well as fair and decisive. They could also say that he is a personal hero. While none of these traits are inherently bad, I think that the pressure and the push to conform to them ultimately cultivates toxic masculinity. The difference between what I felt after watching Miss Representation and reading this summary is definitely unfair to Miss Representation because I can understand The Mask You Live In more personally. I think this one made me feel a little upset at myself because things that seemed meaningless in elementary school and early on in my years actually carved my path directly to the trap of masculinity. Seeing a girl break down when a teacher scolded her versus seeing a boy shrug it off chisels the idea of toughness into your mind. Many small moments such as this build up the mask that guys wear. This film made me think about what I can do to get myself to express my emotions more openly. I think that understanding the root of the problem has shed a new light on my worldview. It was also kind of raw. It feels weird to have your psyche dissected like this especially if it has to do with masculinity because I feel that masculinity kind of pushes away the thought process of the whole thing and just says it is going to be this way. I also thought about playing sports as a child. I used to play soccer for a team and my coach would always tell us to be aggressive. If you are not getting to the ball first then the other team is. It rewards behaviors that anywhere else would be toxic and I think that when you are younger, the line between what is acceptable in certain situations and what is not is significantly fuzzier. I think that this film has made me want to change more internally than anything externally. I think that as I experience more of life, I want to perceive it in a more accepting way and learn to see through the mask to understand things. I think that we have made the first step to a solution by naming the problem. While that is great progress towards boys feeling better about themselves and in turn taking steps toward gender equality, there is still a hell of a road to be paved ahead of us.
1 Comment
Sabatino
4/6/2019 06:06:47 am
I appreciate the perponal insights provided here. Possible themes for research project:
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“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all: Read a lot and write a lot”
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