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For the first time in a long time, we are seeing stereotypical tropes of men come up against more complex portrayals of their whole selves. This is incredibly important to see in mainstream media, since toxic masculinity continues to harm men themselves. Men tend to believe they should they should think and act a certain way, but seeing an alternative depiction on one of TV's biggest shows can go a long way toward shifting that.

The boys and men in Season 2 of are challenging toxic masculinity and the predisposed notions and tropes set out for them. For years in mainstream media, we've consumed male characters who were neatly written into boxes: The jock, the loser, the brainy nerd-think The Breakfast Club. We've gotten used to these simple stereotypes because they create less work for the brain. When boys and men, or anyone for that matter, can be neatly organized into categories, we're likely getting just a surface level idea of who they are. We aren't, in these cases, getting the whole picture: where they've been, and how their unique histories have shaped them.

Sam Levinson-the creator, primary director, and writer of Euphoria- seems to have wanted to go deeper this season into his male characters, revealing a depth and context that may not otherwise have been explored. As viewers watch closely, we are seeing more nuanced layers to who these characters really are beyond their 2D renderings.

As far as first impressions go, we might have pinned Elliot as The Druggie, The Loser, or The Addict since we met him, sitting alone on the floor of a laundry room at a house party on New Year's Eve. But as we get to know Elliot throughout Season 2, we realize he's much more than what those stereotypes and tropes hold.

In episode 4, "You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can," Jules and Elliot have an intimate moment discussing sexuality, in which she asks, point blank: "Are you straight?" to which Elliot replies, "Kinda." Jules then asks if he is gay, and Elliot, again, says, "Kinda." Jules asks if he is bisexual to which Elliot gives us more insight: "I don't think of it that way," he explains. He admits that he hasn't thought of his own sexuality "in a particularly rigid way."

Before hooking up with Jules, Elliot has an opportunity in the bathroom to do a line (like Rue had just done). But he looks at himself in the mirror, looks down at the line of crushed pills, and blows it off the counter before coming clean to Jules about Rue's relapse into drug use.

Elliot's openness about his fluid sexuality shows that he's confident in who he is, who he likes, and doesn't care for labels. He's non-socially dominant, unafraid of owning his sexuality, and is truthful, and intentional when considering his new relationship with Jules.

Ethan

We may have initially though Ethan was fulfilling the typical soft theater-nerd role. At least that's how we see him from Kat's point of view, as she wonders for most of Season 2 whether Ethan is, perhaps, too nice?

Kat seems to look at the relationships around her, comparing hers to those of her friends. At one point, she fantasizes about a tall, muscled Dothraki from Game of Thrones slaying Ethan before dominating in her bedroom. It's almost as if Kat is pining for the toxic qualities in the relationships around her, despite being in a healthy, wholesome relationship with Ethan.

During the diner scene, we watch as Kat fumbles through beginning to break up with Ethan before retreating into a lie about a vague, terminal "brain disorder." Throughout her attempt to turn the tables on Ethan, he sees right through her, plainly calling her out on the specific moves she employs, and her lack of courage in being honest.

Traditionally, toxic masculinity can include acts of violence, misogyny, and manipulation. But Ethan, here, shows active listening and compassion as he tries to help Kat say what she wants to say. In fact, it's actually Kat using toxic tactics like gaslighting and playing the victim. But even amidst their breakup, Ethan shows honesty, insight, and confidence in understanding the reality (not Kat's manipulated reality) of what's happening, despite her attempts to gaslight and change the storyline. Ultimately, Ethan shows strength and courage; ironically, these are the qualities she's been pining for in a partner.

Fezco

Before Season 2, despite the trials and tribulations of Season 1, some may have thought of Fezco as another run of the mill drug dealer. The show gave him no backstory, so any empathy for how he got to where he is would have had to be projected by the viewer (or implied from previous contexts).

But in the Season 2 opener, we learn more about Fez's past, growing up with his grandmother, and how she got him out of an abusive household as we see her holding his face, his eye, black and bruised, presumably by his father. We also see him care for Ash, raising him up, and looking out for him-this becomes one reason why Ash is so loyal to Fez. He's the only family he really has.

As the season goes on, we see a softer side to Fez. He's a drug dealer, yes. He did beat the crap out of Nate's face, yes. But those are not necessarily points of pride for Fez. That backstory showed that his drug dealing is anything but a choice-it's the life he was thrust into, and the only one he's ever known. And beating Nate up-outside of being enjoyable for just about every single Euphoria viewer-was a way to both stand up for himself and his friends.

Seeing Fez's more tender nature come out next to Lexi on the couch after they watched Stand By Me was endearing because we are seeing Fez have a moment he may not have been afforded earlier in his life. He's used to hanging in circles with dangerous people like Mouse, Faye, and even Rue; it's rare he finds someone as removed from his own world as Lexi. In stark contrast to hard drugs and murders, Fez and Lexi forget who they are for a moment, holding hands like middle school lovers.

Later on, when Fez is getting ready for Lexi's play, we see those same sensitive qualities come out as he asks Faye: "Tie or no tie?" He changes out of his usual tall tee and loose pants, even securing red roses with baby's breath before heading out the door. And this shows that he's comfortable with change; he doesn't need to pretend to be someone he's not. Being the stereotypical, hardcore drug dealer doesn't really appeal to him. He's okay with being sensitive, supportive, and emotionally intelligent, because that's who he is at his core.

Cal

Much of the show's toxic masculinity stems from Cal and the world he grew up in. In flashbacks, we learn of Cal's past, his relationship with his best friend, and how a pregnancy may or may not have changed the trajectory of his life forever.

We also see, through Cal, just how harmful it was for him personally to repress his own queer identity. After marrying Marsha and continuing on in an inauthentic relationship, we see him return again and again to the desires he's tried so diligently to shove down. Cal makes his own pornographic videos which his son, Nate, later finds; in a way, he's passing down the generational trauma of being unable to live authentically as himself. For that, the consequences are seemingly unending this season.

When Cal was in high school, we see that he was closest, in all ways, with his best friend, Derek. Their relationship would be unmatched by the relationship he developed with Marsha, and even though they both felt strongly for one another, neither of them knew how to carve out space to exist openly, together, save for the one night at the gay bar where they danced, embraced, and finally, kissed.

By morning, the light pouring in through the windows, Cal received a call from Marsha about her being pregnant. And with that, despite having what we could safely assume was one of the best nights of his life, Cal had to, once again, repress his authentic self and move forward on a linear path towards what society wanted for him: heterosexuality, self-reliance, and breadwinning for his new family.

We do see Cal "win," in a way, when he comes home piss-drunk, pisses in a circle on the ground, and tells his family everything from the first floor of their spacious home. For viewers, it's somewhat satisfying. We see relief of a secret held tight to Cal's chest. We see freedom for him, troubled as he still may be, though it comes at the cost of having harmed Jules, Nate, and likely others in the process.

Nate

Nate is a key example of the kind of toxic masculinity that might be typically expected in Euphoria's genre. As much as the show may toe the line, there's no redeeming this character. Attempts to better understand how he's come to be the way he is, though, at least help paint a fuller picture of the closest thing Euphoria has to a true villain.

It's clear to viewers now that Nate has grown up in a home where violence, threats, and angry outbursts have been as normalized as asking someone to pass the salt at the dinner table. In Season 2 alone, we see his comfort with gun violence as he threatens Maddy with some sick sort of Russian Roulette game. We're called back to his choking of Maddie (referenced by his own mother), and we see the power and control that he wields over Cassie, a power he's fully aware of as he uses it to his advantage.

And yet, we still see glimmers of goodness shrouded in some of Nate's choices and actions. He tracks Jules down to give her the CD of the video recording his father made of her without her consent. Even though the motive is selfish-he needs his father's reputation to be clear before he takes over the family business-he could have destroyed the CD on his own. Instead, he calls Jules, meets up with her, and gives her 1) the information that the recording exists and 2) the physical copy of it so she can have the honor of taking a hammer to it (or keep it for eventually leaking to...whoever).

In another pivotal scene when Nate and his mother, Marsha, are engaging in some "real talk" over mid-morning drinks, we see Nate through his mother's eyes as she describes him as having been "such a sweet little baby" before he "darkened." It's in this moment that viewers learn that innocence once was there, and even his own mother recognizes that something's happened to make who was once a sweet kid into the sicko sitting next to her. It's an implication that something must have happened to change him-that perhaps he is a victim, or has been a victim, in this household too.

Marsha also comments on how she likes Cassie much better than Maddy, and as this episode closes, we see Nate bring Cassie back, who smiles and waves to Marsha as she follows Nate into his bedroom. This action of inviting Cassie back seems to be an action of love towards his mother, or an attempt at remaining her sweet boy. It's a shot at going back in time.

Fast forward to the penultimate episode, which revolves around Lexi's play. The climax of the play features a character who resembles Nate in the locker room with other football players who work out in an exaggerated manner, playing up their homoerotic interactions and moves.

What the audience sees is a mockery of toxic masculinity, and everyone seems to be allowed to laugh except for Nate, as he is the subject and the one maintaining this rigid image.

The actors are having fun as well as the audience, and Nate knows of nothing else to do except harness his emotions as anger and point them towards Cassie and Lexi. Nate storms out, telling Cassie to pack her things and get out of his house.

When we are limited to an idea of who we have to be, we are not living as our full, authentic selves, and that, as we see in Cal's case, has consequences that perpetuate for decades and taint the lives of those who come after us.

The men of Euphoria are representing real men-not our fictitious ideas of what men have been or what they "should" be. They mainly reject the idea that they must ignore all of the parts of them that make them wonderful: their softness, their impulses, their true desires. They begin to show us full and complex renderings of how men can exist authentically and genuinely, and this is exactly what we need more of.

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Euphoria's Boys Are Going Where Guys Don't Normally Go

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For the first time in a long time, we are seeing stereotypical tropes of men come up against more complex portrayals of their whole selves. This is incredibly important to see in mainstream media, since toxic masculinity continues to harm men themselves.

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Meet the crypto bro, the scruffy new standard-bearer of Billionaire style

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You’ll find him in San Francisco, at a meet-and-greet attended by the famed Winklevoss twins, or at one of the satellite social events in St Moritz during the annual Crypto Finance Conference says Simon Mills

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how to upset men part seven #fyp #jonahhill #piersmorgan #newtgingrich #gym #fitness #manchesterunited #goarmy #investment #nftartwork #polyamory

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@kyleprue
how to upset men part seven #fyp #jonahhill #piersmorgan #newtgingrich #gym #fitness #manchesterunited #goarmy #investment #nftartwork #polyamory
♬ original sound - Kyle Prue

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Jonathan Van Ness pushed back against Sean Penn 's idea of masculinity, explaining to him that his recent statements were not only "ignorant" and "transphobic," but "devoid of intelligence."

Penn spoke to UK news outlet last month and brought up the topic of gender. "I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized," he said. He added in a second interview with The Independent last week, "I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminized." The actor went on to explain, "I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them. There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt."

Penn's statements sparked outrage online, including from the Queer Eye star. On Twitter Wednesday, Van Ness posted a screenshot from the Daily Mail in which their photo was used to illustrate Penn's claims. "First of all Im non binary," the beauty expert wrote. "Second, @SeanPenn your remarks are ignorant, transphobic, and devoid of intelligence. My cowardly genes have more strength, resolve, and beauty than you could understand. Sean is suffering from toxic masculinity & needs to watch Getting Curious." Getting Curious is the TV personality's new Netflix show in which they interview experts on various topics, including gender and gender-nonconformity.

Van Ness wasn't the only star upset by Penn's latest quotes. Thandiwe Newton also expressed her disbelief and the actor's claims, tweeting out a Variety story on the topic and tagging the actor with a string of laughing emojis. She wrote, "Dude what are you SAY-ING?? Like for REAL? You're a jibbering FOOL. MF you used to be sexy but now you're just tragic." Penn also said all of this during an interview for his movie Flag Day which he stars in alongside his daughter, Dylan Penn. That detail prompted Newton to add in a second tweet, "In front of your DAUGHTER!? That poor little mite. Thank God her Mum's so dope."

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Jonathan Van Ness Says Sean Penn Is "Suffering From Toxic Masculinity"

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Jonathan Van Ness pushed back against Sean Penn 's idea of masculinity, explaining to him that his recent statements were not only "ignorant" and "transphobic," but "devoid of intelligence." Penn spoke to UK news outlet last month and brought up the topic of gender.

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Sean Penn thinks wearing a skirt makes you a coward

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Sean Penn thinks wearing a skirt makes you a coward

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Sean Penn says 'cowardly genes' have led to men 'surrendering jeans for a skirt'

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Pete Davidson represents the evolution of masculinity, attraction and mental health

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So, what is it about Pete Davidson that’s so attractive, and what makes him different from other Hollywood ‘it’ guys? America loves an underdog. 

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An actress famous for her roles in That '70s Show and Family Guy, Mila Kunis has now launched an animation on the blockchain, which developed from an interest in crypto during the pandemic.

Speaking with comedian Conan O'Brien on his Thursday show, Kunis said she had done a deep dive into cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, during her time in quarantine. However, she was seemingly concerned about the apparent dearth of women in the space.

"I felt like it was a very masculine area - like everybody that I knew that knew anything about it at the time was always a man and I was like 'this can't be that hard,'" said Kunis. "I just deep dived into it and surrounded myself with two incredibly smart women that know everything about it."

The actress said she spoke with women behind the Facebook-backed Libra, now Diem, token project. After learning more about crypto and its role in a decentralized marketplace, Kunis said she found the whole crypto space to be "really empowering," which led to her new NFT project, Stoner Cats.
The female speakers who made an impact at Bitcoin2021 in Miami
Partnering with CryptoKitties founder Mack Flavelle and CryptoPoops NFT creator Jonathan Howard through their recent endeavor Big Head Club and others, Kunis described the Stoner Cats project as allowing crypto users to buy NFTs featuring images of cats sometimes drinking and smoking marijuana - recreational cannabis has been legal in California since 2016. The token then allows them to "watch a five-minute long piece of entertainment."

"Everybody just did [the project] because they thought that it was different and fun and we all wanted to do it for the right reasons," said Kunis, who voices one of the cats. "It brings ownership of content back to the artist and cuts out the middleman."

Screenshot from Conan on TBS

The price of the tokens is not yet listed, but NFT offerings from celebrities have often netted millions in sales. Canadian musician Claire Elise Boucher, better known as Grimes, auctioned off her own line of NFTs in March - users paid $5.8 million for the tokenized artwork in 20 minutes.

According to Kunis, the cat NFTs will be available by early July.

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Calling the crypto space 'a very masculine area,' Mila Kunis launches NFT project

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An actress famous for her roles in That '70s Show and Family Guy, Mila Kunis has now launched an animation on the blockchain, which developed from an interest in crypto during the pandemic. Speaking with comedian Conan O'Brien on his Thursday show, Kunis said she had done a deep dive into cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, during her time in quarantine.

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Fellas, is it gay to redefine masculinity? Gen Z "femboys" on TikTok argue that it definitely isn't - and they're making that argument in cute tennis skirts, halter tops and crushed velour dresses.

Femboys - not to be confused with their slightly more sinister cyber-cousin, e-boys - are people who identify as male or non-binary but present themselves in more traditionally feminine ways, such as through their appearance, personality or general disposition.

Look through the #femboy hashtag and you'll find hundreds of young men wearing nail varnish, twirling in skirts, crop-tops and dresses, and generally just being really wholesome, Non-Threatening Boys.

Although the term femboy has been circulating cyberspace for a couple decades - mainly found on Reddit forums - it's been freshly adapted by young men on TikTok wanting to redefine what it means to be a man in today's world.

Seventeen-year-old femboy Seth went viral on TikTok overnight after posting a video of himself wearing a tennis skirt and nail polish, with the hashtag #femboyfriday. The video now has over a million views and has arguably paved the way for other non-conforming boys to follow suit. "I wasn't aware that there were tons of other boys like me, so the term [femboy] gave me a community," Seth tells VICE.

The community that Seth mentions has been crucial in providing other femboys a sense of belonging. Jaydden, 16, says: "When I first started posting my femboy TikToks, the community was so accepting and kind and even loving. Everyone loved what I posted and loved what I wore, which boosted my confidence immensely and made me feel accepted."

Although cross-dressing definitely isn't new, the femboy trend on TikTok has brought it to a whole new generation.

Twenty-one-year-old Moy had been wearing skirts and dresses for a few years before seeing the femboy trend on TikTok, and has been ridiculed by his peers and family members in the past. "My parents wouldn't let me wear skirts because they were scared people would think I was gay," he says. "I know my sexuality - I'm straight - but I still want to wear skirts and crop-tops, go to nail salons and feel pretty."

TikTok, says Moy, gave him a sense of validation: "Once I saw this femboy trend, I was like, 'Oh, I bet the world is finally ready!'"

While Moy mentions that dressing more femininely doesn't deter from his heterosexuality, Seth argues that his sexuality and femboy identity are not intrinsically linked: "Labels don't really matter to me - I think I could be attracted to anyone."

In such polarising times, it's nothing short of heartwarming that TikTok has provided a safe haven for young people to experiment with their gender expression. It's clear that many femboys have a lot of fun filming themselves dancing around to Kali Uchis songs in American Apparel-style skirts and crop-tops, and the trend's millions of views and likes confirm that people are enjoying watching them, too.

But not everyone is as accepting. Many femboys have been subjected to online abuse and hatred. Comments range from homophobic slurs - even though not all femboys define as queer - to genuine threats of violence. Femboys like Jaydden blame this on TikTok's algorithm, which filters popular trends to a wider audience.

"Over time, my videos reached the wrong side of TikTok and I received thousands of hateful and homophobic comments," he says. "It made me feel horrible for just being me and expressing myself."

Seth has received online abuse too, but tries not to let it deter him from being himself. "I'm able to recognise that people attack me for what I represent to them, not who I am as an individual, so it doesn't really bother me anymore."

Men and boys who feel threatened by those who challenge their rigid ideas of masculinity have a tendency to act out - it's patriarchy 101. But femboys argue that this way of thinking is wildly outdated. Men have been wearing feminine dress for decades, from David Bowie on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World to Jaden Smith and Young Thug's long-established love of dresses and skirts - with the latter saying: "When it comes to swag, there's no gender involved."

"The femboy trend on TikTok shows that more men nowadays are comfortable with their sexuality and masculinity, and that clothing does not define any of that," argues Jaydden. "People can wear what they want without threatening their masculinity."

Seth echoes the sentiment: "Men often conflate femininity with weakness, when that is not at all the case." Dressing femininely makes him feel liberated from societal restraints, he explains, and "people need to see men disregard traditional norms to deconstruct the toxic beliefs they've been taught - visibility is the first step necessary for change".

When I was growing up, gender non-conforming people were hugely ostracised, and it's something that still happens now, but TikTok's femboy trend is one of a few signs that suggest these oppressive gender norms are slowly breaking down, one cute dress at a time.

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Introducing 'Femboys', the Most Wholesome Trend On TikTok

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Fellas, is it gay to redefine masculinity? Gen Z "femboys" on TikTok argue that it definitely isn't - and they're making that argument in cute tennis skirts, halter tops and crushed velour dresses.

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Dad is praised by millions on TikTok after wearing an Elsa from Frozen costume alongside his little boy in public after he was bullied for playing with dolls

Scott Stuart wore a matching dress after his son wanted to dress-up as Elsa

He said his son has been obsessed with the film Frozen since he was three

Though he said breaking gender stereotypes has been challenging at times

He posted a video from the day on TikTok, which now has 4.2 million views

An Australian father has gone viral on TikTok after sharing footage of him wearing an Elsa from Frozen costume with his son who wanted to dress up to watch Frozen 2 at the cinema in 2019.

Scott Stuart, a graphic designer and children's author from Melbourne, said his son Colin has been 'obsessed' with Elsa since he was three years old and had an Elsa doll he took 'everywhere' - though Scott didn't start thinking about gender stereotypes until a situation arose in 2016.

Speaking to FEMAIL, Scott said the journey of breaking down these stereotypes began after Colin came home crying from childcare as another child told him 'dolls are for girls, not for boys'.

'When he came back from childcare, he was really upset and distraught because someone had said 'you shouldn't be playing with dolls' and he was absolutely devastated,' Scott said.

Since then Scott said he aims to 'change the conversation' surrounding gender stereotypes - which has inspired him to write a new children's book and post videos on TikTok.

In one video that has been viewed more than 4.2 million times, Scott wrote 'my son wanted to dress as Elsa to go to the cinema, I said there is no way you're doing that...alone', which sparked an influx of comments from users supporting his decision.

Scroll down for video

'This is what parenting is about,' one said online, another added: 'Dad of the year award!'

'You are the model of what every parent should be - bless you,' a third added.

At the cinema Colin, Scott and his wife all dressed up as Elsa to go see the movie, despite what others may have thought.

Scott said: 'I have a lot of people write to me and say "I have a daughter who likes to dress-up as Spiderman or Batman and people view this as empowering, but if a boy wants to dress-up as Elsa or Wonder Woman it's seen as shameful"'.

'And so I'm trying to change this conversation a bit,' he said, saying that it's okay for boys to wear dresses too.

When asked whether he was concerned about bullying, Colin says he isn't worried as he and his wife are teaching Colin to have the confidence to deal with bullies, rather than teaching him to avoid the situation by not being himself.

'Growing up I was very masculine - I played rugby, I was the captain of the rugby team and I still got bullied, so I don't think there's a way to avoid it in most cases,' he said.

Despite the praise from online TikTok users around the world, Scott received some backlash from his closest family members who, at first, disagreed with his decision to allow Colin to wear a dress in public.

In another TikTok video, Scott said 'accept my son for who he is, or don't be in his life', which he said was one of the hardest things he has ever had to say.

Scott said even though there were a few heated arguments, his family now fully supports his son for who he is.

When asked if he has any advice for other parents, Scott said it's a parents responsibility to understand who their own children truly are.

'You don't have to believe the things I believe, you don't have to think the same way I think, but I think it's a parent's responsibility to understand who their children are and to accept that, whether that's something that makes the parents comfortable or not,' he said.

Further to teaching his son to accept himself, Scott and his wife are also teaching Colin to be grateful by asking three questions each night at dinner.

'We ask what are you grateful for today, how were you kind today and how can you help someone tomorrow?' he said.

'These simple questions focus on taking the positive aspects out of each day while also acknowledging the negative,' he said.

Colin has also inspired Scott to write a children's book titled My Shadow is Pink, which is an uplifting picture book about 'daring to be different and having the courage to be yourself'.

The book will launch on August 1 and will be available to purchase online or in selected book stores.

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Supportive father wears dress to match son's Elsa costume

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Scott Stuart wore a matching dress after his son wanted to dress-up as Elsa He said his son has been obsessed with the film Frozen since he was three Though he said breaking gender stereotypes has been challenging at times He posted a video from the day on TikTok, which now has 4.2 million views An Australian father has gone viral on TikTok after sharing footage of him wearing an Elsa from Frozen costume with his son who wanted to dress up to watch Frozen 2 at the cinema in 2019.

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Opinion

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Asher Learmonth stood before his schoolboy peers this week to talk about masculinity and rape culture. Labelling it the "endemic issue of sexual assault", the Cranbrook head prefect spoke in response to the circulation of an online petition launched by a former Kambala girl, which has generated more than 3000 testimonies by young women of assault and harassment, and in which Asher's school featured prominently and unfavourably. All while our national Parliament is consumed by young women's allegations of sexual assault by a ministerial staffer.

Asher Learmonth, head prefect at Cranbrook: "You don't need a sister or mother to understand this. Women are people just like you."

Asher spoke of a male view of women unchanged since I was at high school. His is a privileged, all-boys school, but don't think this is a problem confined to the rich and entitled. Mine was an all-boys local Catholic high school until year 10, then co-ed in our final two years. Our daily contact with girls, at last, did not arrest our infantile and dehumanising way of considering them. We'd make lists of the girls in our grade according to their attractiveness. We'd compare hook-up stories from the weekend.

Though I was heartened and inspired by Asher's brave words, I soon felt deflated by a sobering truth. The head prefect confronted it himself in his address: "Despite the regular, valuable and powerful talks we have received about consent and respect over the years, sadly, it appears that these speeches haven't had the intended and crucial impact. I've thought incredibly hard about why - and to be frank, I'm still not quite sure what the real answer is."

The answer, I fear, starts with a truth I have learned: that the young men who need to hear it most will not heed the message that Asher, and others, have found the courage to deliver. While I understand Asher received overwhelming applause from the Cranbrook assembly, and while the impact on those boys may well be lasting, I am more concerned about the responses we will not hear, the silences that will follow. Because too many men and boys do not like to talk about masculinity. Their eyes glaze at the mention of the word.

At 23, I was the only male in a gender studies class at university. Our tutor asked me, in words to effect: "When did you first realise what it meant to be boy, how it affected your life?" I was stumped. In the years since, however, I've thought a lot about that question. What is it to be a man?

Maybe it's that we males don't feel a pressing need to be conscious of our maleness, and how that influences our lives? That we need not fear walking along a footpath at night. That we don't walk with our car keys gripped between our knuckles, in case they might be our best defence. Maybe a stranger on the bus has never told us we're too stuck up, too emotional, to smile.

Or maybe it's the language we use, the media we consume, and the existence we live. They all normalise maleness so deeply that we never come to question what it is.

We witnessed the Prime Minister's failure of empathy in the case of Brittany Higgins when she spoke out about her alleged sexual assault in a ministerial office. Scott Morrison's awakening came when his wife "clarified" things for him. Imagine, she implored her husband, if that happened to one of our daughters. And suddenly he got it. As a husband and father, he got it. Too bad if he was neither. As Asher told the Cranbrook boys: "You don't need a sister or mother to understand this. Women are people just like you."

In our male-centric culture, too many men and boys see value only in the things that affect them. If this is their natural order of things, they can't conceive of how it might be different for the other half of the world.

Add to this a distinctly 21st century challenge. Hard-core pornography is now instantly available to almost any boy via a constant accessory, his phone. Boys 12 and younger can, and do, watch porn. Many watch it in the playground, in the classroom. It can only corrupt their expectations of sex, but also of girls and women. After decades of advances, albeit too slow, towards gender equality, this regression into a digital dark age provokes alarmingly little discussion.

We need to rethink masculinity. It has been about power hierarchies and boys' clubs that have harboured the toxic misogyny which, at its extreme, manifests as sexual assault. Too often it has exiled those who have dared to speak out. Let's hope that won't happen to Asher and his generation. But any education that challenges entrenched notions of masculinity must understand its machinery is much bigger than any one person. It needs rewiring, reprogramming.

That's why men at the top of the old male hegemony - business, sports, political leaders - must dare to speak out. They need to be as brave as Asher.

In rallying his schoolmates, Asher did not pretend he was above them. The head prefect admitted his own lapses. He made clear that he was still one of the boys. But with boys like Asher, that need not be a shameful condition.
Brandon Jack is a Sydney writer.

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Brandon Jack is a writer and former Sydney Swan

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Men, be brave like young Asher, and help him redefine masculinity

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Opinion Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Asher Learmonth stood before his schoolboy peers this week to talk about masculinity and rape culture.

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NEW YORK (AP) - Is it Mr. Potato Head or not?

Hasbro created confusion Thursday when it announced that it would drop the "Mr." from the brand's name in order to be more inclusive and so all could feel "welcome in the Potato Head world." It also said it would sell a new playset this fall without the Mr. and Mrs. designations that will let kids create their own type of potato families, including two moms or two dads.

But in a tweet later that afternoon, Hasbro clarified that while the brand is changing, the actual Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters will still live on and be sold in stores. In a picture posted on Twitter, the "Mr." and "Mrs." names are less prominently displayed at the bottom of the box, instead of the top.

"While it was announced today that the POTATO HEAD brand name & logo are dropping the 'MR.' I yam proud to confirm that MR. & MRS. POTATO HEAD aren't going anywhere and will remain MR. & MRS. POTATO HEAD," the company tweeted.

The tweet came after news of the brand name change exploded on Twitter, with people asking if Barbie will change her name next. "I think Hasbro needs to drop the "Bro" and just be "Has,'" another person tweeted.

Hasbro appears to want to have it both ways: expand the brand, while not killing off its most iconic characters, which appeared in the "Toy Story" films.

"They are looking to broaden the franchise," said Robert Passikoff, founder of marketing consultancy Brand Keys. "You take the focus of what is essentially one character and now allow it to be a platform for many characters."

Kimberly Boyd, a senior vice president at Hasbro, said the intention of the brand name change was to be more inclusive and to have the characters still live within the Potato Head universe.

"It created a lot of excitement," she said about the reaction.

GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group, applauded the more inclusive Potato playset.

"Hasbro is helping kids to simply see toys as toys, which encourages them to be their authentic selves outside of the pressures of traditional gender norms," said Rich Ferraro, GLAAD's chief communications officer, in a statement.

Many toymakers have been updating their classic brands in recent years, hoping to relate to today's kids and reflect more modern families.

"It's a potato," said Ali Mierzejewski, editor in chief at toy review site The Toy Insider, about the new playset. "But kids like to see themselves in the toys they are playing with."

Barbie, for example, has tried to shed its blonde image and now comes in multiple skin tones and body shapes. The Thomas the Tank Engine toy line added more girl characters. And American Girl is now selling a boy doll.

Mr. Potato Head first hit the toy scene in 1952, when it didn't even come with a plastic potato - kids had to supply their own vegetable to poke eyes, a nose or mustache into. Hasbro, which also makes Monopoly and My Little Pony, bought the brand and eventually added a plastic spud.

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Mr. Potato Head drops the mister, sort of

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NEW YORK (AP) - Is it Mr. Potato Head or not? Hasbro created confusion Thursday when it announced that it would drop the "Mr." from the brand's name in order to be more inclusive and so all could feel "welcome in the Potato Head world."

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The gender wars of household chores: a feminist comic

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French comic artist Emma introduces the concept of the mental load. When a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, he is viewing her as the manager of their household chores

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In one of the exhibition's six sections, "Disrupting the Archetype," artists deconstruct entrenched images of heteronormative and hegemonic masculinity. There's a series of four color photographs of Portuguese forcado bullfighters who must work together to overpower the animal. These portraits, however, by

, show the men alone and bloodied; captured not in the midst of their fight but after the act, they appear torn, raw, and exhausted. Stereotypically masculine qualities-strength, bravery, domination, violence-are acknowledged and unraveled, too. 2017 series "Deep Springs" examines the mythology of the cowboy and the American West. The images are the result of four years that Contis spent deeply involved in an all-male liberal arts college in California.

Contis's work connects to other photographs in the exhibition that highlight the spaces and places where women are excluded-and where masculinity can become toxic. Frat houses feature in 2007 video work Fraternity (filmed inside Yale's Delta Kappa Epsilon) and in Andrew Moisey's 2018 photobook The American Fraternity.

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How Photographers Have Challenged What Masculinity Looks Like

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In one of the exhibition's six sections, "Disrupting the Archetype," artists deconstruct entrenched images of heteronormative and hegemonic masculinity. There's a series of four color photographs of Portuguese forcado bullfighters who must work together to overpower the animal.

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From the perspective of most scholars who focus on the topic, there is a clear causal story that links media representations of black men and boys to real-world outcomes. The story can be summarized as follows:

For various reasons, media of all types collectively offer a distorted representation of the lives and reality of black males.

In turn, media consumption negatively affects the public's understandings and attitudes related to black males (sometimes including the understandings and attitudes of black males themselves)

Finally, these distorted understandings and attitudes towards black males lead to negative real-world consequences for them.

Taken as a whole, this is a rich area of study, which many scholars believe is central to understanding and addressing the stubborn challenges faced by black boys and men in American society. (Note that many studies refer to race without explicitly addressing gender, but many patterns, such as exaggerated associations with violence or sports, are clearly more relevant to males than to females.)

For advocates and other communicators concerned with issues related to black male achievement, it is important to be sharply aware of this story, and the findings that support it, so that they can address the problem in an informed way.

Note that other important components of the black male dilemma do not fall within the scope of this paper. Historical legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, the material and economic disparities related to that and other forms of historical racism, the role of the criminal justice system in controlling black males, the flow of resources toward and away from black males, and so on, are all important issues for understanding the current situation for black males in America. They will not be addressed here, however, except insofar as the distorted images in media make it easier for many Americans to tolerate, perpetuate, ignore or discount the many real disadvantages that black males face.

This paper breaks the story down into five "links in the chain" (some of which have been studied and discussed more than others):

Distorted portrayal of black (male) lives/experience

Why media patterns are distorted

Causal link between media and public attitudes

Documentations of the public's bias - both conscious and unconscious - against black males

Practical consequences for the lives of black males

Distorted patterns of portrayal

In a wide range of ways, the overall presentation of black males in the media is distorted, exaggerating some dimensions while omitting others. Many scholars have contributed to a robust body of research documenting these distortions, which have several aspects.

Underrepresentation in media portrayals

A number of researchers have essentially conducted "censuses" (of representations overall, of fictional characters, of characters in ads, and so forth) and compared these findings to the numbers of black men and boys that would be expected if racial bias were not at work. As this research has progressed, analysts have grown more sophisticated in the distinctions that they draw about where black males do and do not appear in the media. A pattern reported again and again is that African Americans are underrepresented in various facets of the media's portrayal of the world.

For example, although characters of color in video games have been increasing over time, blacks in general tend to be underrepresented especially as active, playable characters in video games. They are more likely to be stock characters in the story.

...outside of sports games, the representation of African Americans [in popular video games] drops precipitously, with many of the remaining featured as gangsters and street people ... (Williams et al., 2009)

Black males also tend to be underrepresented as experts called in to offer commentary and analysis in the news. News programs frequently include "talking heads" invited to help clarify a given topic, but these tend not to be black males. In a 1997 sample of network news clips, black speakers accounted for less than 3 percent of the statements made by experts commenting on various issues. (Entman & Rojecki, 2000, p. 69)

Black males are underrepresented in the roles of computer users or technical experts in television commercials, instead tending to appear in roles that put less emphasis on intellectuality (see below). (Kinnick & White, 2001) African Americans are also underrepresented as users of luxury items in commercials, instead being featured using more pedestrian consumer products. (Henderson & Baldasty, 2003)

In short, the studies paint a picture of an American media landscape that includes fewer black males overall, few associated with technical and other intellectual pursuits, and few who fit Tucker's description of "competent, capable, and successful members of businesses and families who have attained some degree of material wealth." (Tucker, 2007, p. 69)

More subtly, as Entman and Rojecki (2000) point out, even in the cases when blacks appear in the media as sympathetic and competent figures, they tend not to be "relatable" figures with whom the audience is asked to truly identify. They may not have names (black crime victims are often unnamed, as opposed to their white counterparts who are named); they may lack visible family lives (there are many fewer competent and successful black male fiction characters, compared with white characters); and so forth.

In the world as portrayed by the media, life is lived primarily by white (or other non-black) people, with black males, more or less sympathetic, in the background. (See also Bogle, 2003.)

Negative associations exaggerated

While many aspects of black males' real lived experience tend to be missing from the collective media portrayal, some aspects are very much present, and are, in fact, exaggerated.

Perhaps the most-discussed pattern is the association between black males and criminality, particularly in television news - where they are not only likely to appear as criminals, but likely to be shown in ways that make them seem particularly threatening (compared with white criminals, for instance).

Blacks are overrepresented as perpetrators of violent crime when news coverage is compared with arrest rates [but are underrepresented in the more sympathetic roles of victim, law enforcer]. (Entman & Gross, 2008, p. 98, citing Travis L. Dixon & Daniel Linz, 2000)

...[in a small sample of local Chicago TV news from 1993-1994] stories about Blacks were four times more likely to include mug shots [than stories about Whites accused of crimes]. (Entman & Rojecki, 2000, p. 82)

African Americans are disproportionately represented in news stories about poverty, and these stories tend to paint a picture that is particularly likely to reinforce stereotypes and make it hard to identify with black males. For example, low-income blacks in news stories are more likely to live in slums or urban areas, as opposed to rural areas, than real-world averages would suggest; more likely be entirely unemployed and "idle" (as opposed to working); and so forth. The idle black male on the street corner is not the "true face" of poverty in America, but he is the dominant one in media portrayal. (Clawson & Trice, 2000, updated and confirmed in Clawson et al., 2007)

In the entertainment media as well, these and other associations continue to be systematically perpetuated. Analysts have gone into great detail about the way in which negative images of black males continue to be used for entertainment purposes, whether through traditional imagery of black inferiority (Bogle, 2003) or by using black male characters disproportionately to represent both the victims and perpetrators of violence. For example, one study examined music video violence statistically, for its impacts on adolescents:

Compared with United States demographics, blacks were overrepresented as aggressors and victims, whereas whites were underrepresented. White females were most frequently victims. Music videos may be reinforcing false stereotypes of aggressive black males and victimized white females. These observations raise concern for the effect of music videos on adolescents' normative expectations about conflict resolution, race, and male-female relationships. (Rich et al., 1998)

Positive associations limited

As discussed, even when black males are presented sympathetically, they tend to be absent from some important types of roles, e.g., as fathers in parenting situations that audiences can relate to. On the other hand, black males are highly visible in other types of roles that can be considered positive. In the world as depicted by the media, blacks frequently excel in sports, and more generally, are associated with physicality and physical achievement - as well as the aggressiveness that usually goes along with this type of success.

In films, their characters tend to have "macho" qualities that are valued by Americans; however, these film representations can also exclude or obscure other everyday virtues.

... men of color are faced with achieving masculinity [in media representations] through their corporal selves as physical threats ( i.e., as athlete or gang member) as opposed to their intellectual contributions. ... To be viewed as assertive and aggressive is valued in the culture but comes at the expense of other highly valued qualities ... (Messineo, 2008, p. 755)

Black men [in mainstream print ads], with rare exceptions, are represented as workers, athletes, laborers, entertainers, criminals, or some combination thereof. (Tucker, 2007, p. 70) ²

In short, the media world is populated by some black males we admire, but these tend to be associated with a relatively limited range of qualities, such as physical ability and/or entertainment skills.

The "problem" frame

A consumer of most of American media can hardly help thinking of black males in terms of problems. This is not only because of distortions in the collective media presentation of black males (discussed previously), but also due to patterns that characterize sympathetic and accurate portrayals. For valid and important reasons, mass media, advocacy, and policy-making discourses tend to focus on (real) problems of black males - relating to educational and economic outcomes, family life, or the criminal justice system, for instance.

What are the implications when Americans as a whole strongly associate black males with intractable problems? The challenge, discussed in greater detail in later sections, is that frequent repetition of the problems of black males can obscure other, more positive dimensions of their reality, and worse, can end up reinforcing prejudicial stereotypes. The literature suggests - and the authors' own research experience on a wide range of issues confirms - that an emphasis on negative outcomes often ends up triggering default (false) assumptions about how those problems arose, particularly due to faulty personal choices.

Even if the proportion of Black victims and criminals were to reflect defensibly "accurate" readings of actual crime patterns, in the absence of contextual explanations, the heavy prominence of a racial minority in these stories of violence may worsen negative stereotyping. (Entman & Rojecki, 2000, p. 81)

Negative stereotyping of minorities is often (if inadvertently) reinforced in newspaper reporting that addresses race-based health disparities. For example, [an article on high HIV rates among black males] reinforces negative stereotypes of Black men as threats not only to their own women and children, but to society at large . . . Because the article does not offer any underlying, structural reasons for the disparities mentioned . . . it ends up reinforcing negative racial stereotypes about Black criminality, drug use, destructive sexuality, and inadequate fatherhood. (Aubrun et al., 2007)

Advocates need to carefully consider the costs of such narratives, if they predominate to the exclusion of more positive narratives and images. (See discussion of "Dilemmas and Deep Challenges.")

Missing stories

The media are principally in the business of storytelling, whether through journalism, fictional narrative and entertainment, reality TV, and even advertising, video games and music videos. Some analysts have tried to look not only at the kinds of characters that black males do or do not play, but also the kinds of stories that are told about them, or not told about them. Although we do not find much in the way of systematic or statistical censuses in the sociological literature, there are a couple of observations that seem clear.

Just as important as the patterns of distortion and exaggeration discussed so far is the fact that many important dimensions of black males' stories are largely untold in the media - in particular how the lives of black men and boys are affected by larger contexts, such as historical antecedents of black economic disadvantage, persistence of anti-black male bias, and relative disconnection from the social networks that help create wealth and opportunity.

The media contribute to the denial component of racial sentiments mostly by what they usually omit. Examples include: the pervasiveness of present-day discrimination and, given the importance of capital accumulation, the enormous financial harm still imposed today by discrimination against past generations; the role that poverty and joblessness play in raising crime rates and lowering marriage rates among YMC [young men of color]; and the part played by larger structural changes in the global economy. (Entman, 2006, p. 13)

In short, according to the world as it is presented by the media, the suffering black males can easily be presumed to be solely responsible for their own fates. Without knowing these larger stories, the average person is left to assume that black males are innately or culturally inclined towards low achievement, criminality, and broken families.

In the authors' own analysis of the stories that mass media tell about race, ³ we found that:

The descriptions in the coverage tend to create and reinforce concrete images of people and families who are doing poorly and people who are "behaving badly." While the focus on tangible, day-to-day problems such as sickness and poverty may help give readers a more vivid picture of disparities, this vividness actually works against bigger-picture understanding which would include more about causes, contexts, and solutions. (Aubrun et al., 2005)

Of course, stories addressing big-picture causality are not entirely absent from the media. For instance, they are a regular topic in the social network site BlackPlanet.com. ⁴ They also appear sometimes in mainstream media discussions; enough, in fact, to be decried by racial conservatives such as African-American radio host Larry Elder:

The mostly well-intentioned but condescending members of the mainsrream media go the extra mile to avoid having charges of "racist" directed at themselves, so they seldom challenge "black leaders" when these race-baiters confuse equal rights with equal results. Thus, lower black college enrollment becomes "underrepresentation" in higher education; the fact that white net worth exceeds black net worth becomes "disproportionate"; data showing banks decline black loans more readily than loans to whites becomes "discrimination"; blah, blah, blah. (Elder, 2008, p. xv)

But the social science literature makes the overall pattern clear: Consumers of mainstream media receive overwhelmingly more "information" about individual African-American males than about the broader forces that shape their experience.

If advocates are working to help foster a different media environment, and the benefits that would follow, they cannot ignore these missing dimensions of the black male story - even if telling the stories is difficult and often triggers resistance.

Causal link between media and public attitudes

Why study media portrayals? Of course, the reason that so much attention is devoted to media representations (in the broadest sense) is that the collective image of blacks and black males has important effects. Researchers state - sometimes with rigorous evidence, other times through common sense inference - that representations in the media affect viewers' perceptions and, specifically, that distorted portrayals lead to distorted and/or negative perceptions. (Note that some of the evidence comes from studies of other ethnic groups.)

For instance:

Patterns in portrayals of black men and boys can be expected to promote antagonism towards them.

[We] can predict what watching local news might do to us. If subliminal flashes of black male faces can raise our frustration, as shown by the Computer Crash study [in which subjects responded with greater hostility to a crashed computer after being shown subliminal images of black faces], would it be surprising that consciously received messages couched in violent visual context have impact, too? (Kang, 2005, p. 1551)

... White Americans tend to develop negative stereotypes towards Hispanic Americans when they depend on television to learn about them. This finding indicates that people are influenced by television images. The more negative images are shown on television, the more likely the viewers pick up the images and develop their stereotypes. (Dong & Murrillo, 2007)

Patterns in portrayals of black males can be expected to promote exaggerated views of, expectations of, and tolerance for race-based socioeconomic disparities.
[M]edia content - not just news but entertainment and "infotainment" - usually promotes White privilege and the idea that Whites occupy the top of a racial hierarchy wherein Blacks are largely and naturally relegated to the bottom. (Entman & Gross, 2008, p. 97)

Patterns in portrayals of black males can be expected to promote exaggerated views related to criminality and violence.

Patterns in portrayals of black males can be expected to work against identification with them.
See Entman and Rojecki's discussion of how television ads are much less likely to place African Americans in positions the audience relates strongly to (for instance, in close-ups, addressing the audience directly, first or last to appear on screen). (Entman & Rojecki, 2000, p. 168)

Patterns in portrayals of black males can be expected to reduce attention to structural and other big-picture factors.
Films that ameliorate White anxieties about Black men by turning them into comics or criminals to be laughed at and/or condemned further the state of racial denial that plagues the United States. ... They ease White America's discomfort and make it easy to sidestep its responsibility to acknowledge and to address persistent racial inequalities and conflicts. (Tucker, 2007, p. 102, drawing on Guerrero, 1993)

Patterns in portrayals of black males can be expected to promote public support for punitive approaches to problems.
For instance, presumably due to cumulative effects of viewing TV news that associates black males with crime, "heavy news viewers" in one study were more likely to support the death penalty after viewing crime news stories that did not even identify the race of the suspects. (Dixon & Azocar, 2007, p. 229)

An important research question has been whether media representations only reflect popular understandings that are already out there - or if they help create those understandings through repetition and exposure. A few studies help to directly establish this causal link.

It has been confirmed experimentally that exposure to stereotypical African-American characters and behaviors in entertainment programs has negative impacts on beliefs and attitudes about African Americans, as well as towards affirmative action policies. (Ramasubramanian, 2011)

If media consumption creates distorted understandings and attitudes, then more consumption should lead to more distortion. This is exactly the pattern observed in some studies, particularly when amount of consumption is balanced against amount of real-world experience with black males (or other ethnicities). Media images have the most impact on perceptions when viewers have less real-world experience with the topic.

[P]ersonal contact is critical to the development of a better understanding of other ethnicities. The more individuals interacted with other people who have different cultural backgrounds, the more likely these individuals could see the positive traits and characteristics of the other people. This finding suggests that human interaction and direct contact are keys to understanding between people and, in particular, among those who have different cultural backgrounds. (Dong & Murrillo, 2007)

[T]he more television White viewers consumed, the more their evaluations of Latinos reflected their [negative] TV characterization - markedly so when viewers' real-world contact with Latinos was not close, resulting in a greater reliance on televised images in decision making. (Mastro et al., 2007, p. 362) ⁵

Impacts on thinking of black males themselves

While black males obviously draw on far more experience than others to form images of themselves and their peers, they are not immune to the influence of the media portrayals, which they consume like other Americans. One of the most important general findings relevant to black males' own thinking is that so-called "stereotype threat" is an important cause of black males' relatively lower performance in certain contexts, such as standardized testing.

Research into stereotype threat usually involves giving people measurable tasks, while at the same time subtly reminding them of the stereotypes that might apply to them. A growing body of research led by Joshua Aronson, Claude Steele, and others shows that when a member of a group that suffers from stereotyping comes into a situation where that stereotype is highly relevant, they experience a number of effects that reduce performance. Increased anxiety, self-consciousness about performance, and efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions all use up mental resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. (Schmader et al., 2008) The more intense the stereotype threat, the more pronounced the impacts on the individual. (Aronson & Steele, 2005) For example, an elderly person, when reminded of how people often associate age with memory loss, will struggle more with memory tests. (Rahhal et al., 2001) Asian-American schoolgirls did worse than usual on math tests in situations that emphasized their gender (the stereotypical idea is that girls are supposed to be worse at math), and better than usual in situations that emphasized their Asian heritage (Asian Americans are "supposed to be" better at math). (Ambady et al., 2004)

Of course, black males are aware of stereotypes that peg them as unintelligent or under-achieving, and they consistently suffer from the self-handicapping that results from stereotype threat in contexts such as testing or job interviewing.

Interestingly, whites are also subject to a kind of stereotype threat. An experiment showed that when stereotypes about white racism were triggered, white males tended to place more physical and social distance between themselves and blacks, thereby acting in a manner that served to confirm the stereotype. (Goff et al., 2008)

Besides stereotype threat, researchers have also pointed to other damaging effects of media on the thinking of African Americans generally, and black males in particular. For instance, it has been shown that stereotypic images of black women increase their domestic victimization by their black male partners (Gillum, 2002), presumably by shaping males' views of black female characters.

Another study focused on African Americans and "social capital." There are a great many definitions of social capital in the literature, but most will agree that the term refers to people's connections to each other in social networks (both virtual and actual), which provide financial, social, and other opportunities and important benefits. Telephone survey interviews conducted in St. Louis and Kansas City showed that African Americans are particularly vulnerable to diminishment of social capital as a result of media consumption (see Beaudoin & Thorson, 2006). Since blacks tend to watch more television overall, and tend to be especially attuned to representations of blacks (who are often framed negatively), their attitudes towards the people and community around them is negatively impacted, relative to white viewers. The survey showed that those who watched more television had less trust in and interaction with neighbors, lower likelihood of joining groups, and worse perceptions of the town they lived in. Together, these attitudes amount to a loss of social capital, making it less likely that blacks in these communities will be connected to others in ways that lead to improving life chances.

More generally, scholars find that images in the media have a negative impact on black people's perceptions of self and of their communities, though there is no shared consensus on how exactly this plays out. Various mechanisms may be at play:

Negative stereotypes (thugs, criminals, fools, and other disadvantaged types) are demoralizing and reduce self-esteem and expectations.

The most common "role models" depicted in media (e.g., rap stars or NBA players) present limited, often unrealistic, options.

More positive or realistic role models tend to be lacking.

When certain types of negative or limiting images are produced by "black sources," the impact can be particularly strong.

When these images of sex object and aggressive male are presented as part of the dominant ideology, men and women of color can reject the imagery as imposed from outside. However, when this imagery is presented as from the ingroup, the risks of self-objectification are heightened. (Messineo, 2008, p. 755)

Researchers also have confirmed that the media creates rather than reflects negative understanding, finding, for example, that the higher the consumption of media, the lower the self-esteem among African Americans. (Tan & Tan, 1979)

Psychological and developmental studies have also begun to look at particular times of life (such as childhood and adolescence) when black boys are most susceptible to media influences, and the psychological strengths or stresses that seem to affect how deeply these influences impact them. (Martin, 2008; Banks & Grambs, 1972)

Documentations of bias - conscious and unconscious - against black males

Another robust and profoundly important area of study focuses on mapping current attitudes towards blacks and black males, whether conscious or unconscious. Most importantly, a rich set of studies, including cleverly designed psychology experiments (especially Implicit Association Tests), makes it clear that many if not most non-blacks have negative unconscious associations with black males, even if they have no consciously biased attitudes. And many African Americans share these negative associations toward their own group.

As Kang observes in an extensive review of "the remarkable findings of social cognition," among other topics:

Not only do they provide a more precise, particularized, and empirically grounded picture of how race functions in our minds, and thus in our societies, they also rattle us out of a complacency enjoyed after the demise of de jure discrimination. (Kang, 2005, p. 1495)

In this section we review several examples of the findings from this type of literature as well as more traditional investigations of attitude. While the topic of bias per se is not part of the scope of this review, it is worth keeping in mind the overall force of these studies, since conscious and unconscious attitudes are certainly shaped at least in part by what people take in from the media.

Unconscious patterns

A variety of reported patterns made use of experimental measures that revealed associations and attitudes we may not even be consciously aware of. For instance:

Automatic responses

At the most fundamental level, there is evidence that the amygdala, a region of the brain that is associated with experiencing fear, tends to be more active when whites view an unfamiliar black male face than an unfamiliar white male face, regardless of their conscious reports about racial attitudes (see Phelps et al., 2000).

Hostility

The "Computer Crash" study mentioned previously suggests that whites, on average, have greater feelings of hostility after seeing the face of an unknown black person, flashed at subliminal speeds, than they do after seeing a white face.

Another experiment involved white participants playing a "Password"-type guessing game. Whenever one player on a two-person team was subliminally primed with a black face, both players on the team ended up exhibiting greater hostility as the frustrations of the difficult game mounted, thanks to a vicious circle in which overall social cohesion, cooperativeness, and benefit of the doubt were hindered.

General negative evaluation

Many studies have confirmed that whites tend to more easily associate positive words ( e.g., laughter, peace, joy, friend, wonderful, love, happy, and pleasure) with unknown white faces and negative words ( e.g., terrible, failure, horrible, evil, agony, war, nasty, and awful) with unknown black faces, such as in the study reported by Smith-McLallen et al. in 2006.

African Americans' own implicit biases

Some studies have indicated that many blacks have an implicit bias against unknown faces of their own race, similar to the reactions of whites (e.g., see Livingston, 2002).

Conscious patterns

Whether surprisingly or not, research suggests that the election of Barack Obama does not reflect a sea change in attitudes towards African Americans or racial policies in the United States. For instance, Hutchings concludes that "there is no evidence that White support for racial preferences has changed [between 1988 and 2008]." He bases this conclusion on a comparison between responses in these two years to questions such as whether the Federal government should take more active steps to address unfair treatment of African Americans in the job market. In both years, roughly 90 percent of blacks supported that idea, while roughly 50 percent of whites did. Furthermore, "on matters of public policy dealing explicitly with race, there is little evidence that the racial divide is declining among younger cohorts." (Hutchings, 2009, p. 929)

Despite the widely held idea that racism has become socially unacceptable, large percentages of the population harbor very traditional prejudiced views in which black males tend more than non-blacks toward violence, criminality, irresponsibility, hypersexuality, and so on.
Note that the companion piece to this social science literature review will assess key patterns in recent polls and surveys, including much more detail on explicit (as opposed to implicit or unconscious) racial attitudes.

Practical consequences in lives of black males

Usually implicit in the literature, but sometimes explicitly discussed, is the idea that attitudes and biases can lead to real, practical consequences for black men and boys. These attitudes and biases can affect a black male's fate when it depends on how he is perceived by others, even including other blacks, and on what kind of rapport they have with him.

For instance, attitudes (shaped to some degree by media) can and do:

directly affect the likelihood of being hired or promoted;

directly affect the likelihood of school admission;

directly affect school grades;

directly affect treatment within the justice system;

directly affect chances of getting loans;

end up affecting health and life expectancy;

end up affecting self-realization and individual development;

end up affecting the state of social policy (e.g., punitive laws and police practices that impact communities).

Scholars have repeatedly documented the range of implications:

We find that judges harbor the same kinds of implicit biases as others; that these biases can influence their judgment; but that given sufficient motivation, judges can compensate for the influence of these biases. (Rachlinski et al., 2009)

Biased interpretation can have substantial real-world consequences. Consider a teacher whose schema inclines her to set lower expectations for some students, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or a grade school teacher who must decide who started the fight during recess. Or a jury who must decide a similar question, including the reasonableness of force and self-defense. Or students who must evaluate an outgroup teacher, especially if she has been critical of their performance. (Kang, 2005, pp. 1518-1519)

[M]ediated images have many impacts on young men of color that work through their effects on White leaders and White citizens. These are people whose decisions on everything from hiring, to granting bank loans, to teaching or medically treating YMC [young men of color], to voting for officials who make public policies, are influenced by their conscious and unconscious racial views. In turn, those policies have important effects on the relationships, careers, and physical and psychological health of men of color during their youth and throughout their lives. There are well-known, self-reinforcing connections that link together under-funded schools in minority neighborhoods, the disappearance of jobs from the same communities due to global and domestic outsourcing, discrimination by employers who assume that YMC applicants are unreliable, higher rates of crime, lower rates of marital stability, and higher levels of medical problems (including premature death). ... [M]edia images play an integral role in perpetuating these vicious circles ... . (Entman, 2006, p. 21)

The most serious possible consequence of negative attitudes concerns the ultimate questions of life and death. Besides the fact that black men are more likely to be sentenced to death than white men for the same crime, several suggestive experimental studies have shown that subjects in a video police simulation are more likely to "shoot" black men (holding objects that may or may not be guns) than white men under the same circumstances ( e.g., see Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003).

Why media patterns are distorted

Given the long list of negative effects for black males and for society at large, the question remains: "Why does the media perpetuate this destructive set of images and stereotypes?" Racism is often explicitly condemned in the media, yet black males continue to be underrepresented as positive forces in the mainstream, framed in negative ways, offered limited roles in both fiction and news contexts, and so forth. Why? If communicators are to make a positive difference, they must grapple with the roots of the problem.

The recent research on this question is relatively sparse compared to other topics covered in this review, but a number of scholars have offered suggestions about the causal factors that lead to the distortions. Understanding the causes behind these patterns is an important step towards altering them, or at least contending with them more effectively.

Bias among producers of media

The most obvious potential factor is that the people responsible for media content are deliberately presenting a distorted, biased view. This is certainly a historical fact, at least:

The media have not been kind to African American males. Throughout America's history, black men, teenagers, and boys too often have been depicted as buffoons, criminals, or oversexed animal-like creatures who lust after white women. That followed a design in this country to maintain an inferior, second-class status for black people, dating from slavery on through the twentieth century. (Diuguid & Rivers, 2000)

Scholars have also pointed to a variety of reasons media representations might be biased and distorted, even in the absence of conscious bias or malicious intent on the part of media elites.

Audience preferences

In some cases, scholars assert that viewer preferences drive the distorted portrayals of black males in the media. Most directly, white audiences, according to one perspective, tend only to be comfortable with a certain range of presentations of black males - i.e., presentations that confirm their own fears and prejudices or reassure them that black males are not achieving "undue" power and status.

How does one create and market a product to an audience [ i.e., the White majority film audience] willing to pay only to see counterfeit representations of African Americans? (Tucker, 2007, p. 103, drawing on Guerrero, 1993)

Less directly but perhaps equally damaging, the pressures to attract an audience lead to a focus on violence and other attention-grabbing topics, that "happen to be" associated with black males.

These findings [about patterns in news coverage] should not surprise us, given the strong financial incentives to focus on sensationalistic stories such as violent crimes. Financial success of broadcast stations requires high ratings, in order to sell more advertisements at higher rates. ... Violent crime news stories frequently involve racial minorities, especially African Americans. (Kang, 2005, pp. 1550-1551)

Incorrect assumptions about what audiences want

If some media content producers are right about what their audiences are interested in, the scholarship suggests that in other cases portrayals of black men are incomplete and distorted because producers of media content have faulty assumptions about demand. For instance, video game developers tend to create game characters that mirror stereotypes of players as young white males, rather than the actual market demographics, which include a significant percent of black men and boys.

[T]he most likely cause for the representation patterns [in popular video games] is a combination of developer demographics [ i.e., developers create characters more like themselves] and perceived ideas about game players [ i.e., developers create characters that mirror their imagined audience]. (Williams et al., 2009, pp. 830-831)

Lack of input from African Americans

Another clear and compelling hypothesis about distorted media presentations concerns the lack of black input - in various forms - into the production of content. This dearth of representation includes, for instance, limited African-American TV station ownership, and an underrepresentative share of African-American producers, journalists, and experts invited to contribute content.

Perhaps the most important prerequisite to achieving the journalistic ideal of balance is the requirement of having reliable, legitimate, and credible sources competing to advance alternative narratives ... contending elite forces working to impose different frames on the coverage of an issue ... . (Entman & Gross, 2008, p. 95)

A Knight Foundation report shows that women and people of color continue to be underrepresented in the positions of journalist and editor. Even as other organizations have succeeded in bringing diversity to the workplace, the news media has lagged. In a 2002 census, over 90 percent of journalists were white. (Lehrman, 2005)

Political motivations to traffic in stereotypes

Scholars point out that communicators can score political points, for example, when they promote resentment about social program spending by tapping into racial bias, a kind of generalized "Southern strategy." For instance, Lucy Williams describes how stereotyped images and misinformation were intentionally inserted into the debate about welfare reform during the Clinton Administration, including:

the use of direct mail scare tactics, the use of the media through televangelists and talk shows... the rightist critique of media as "liberal," (Herman & Chomsky, 1988), the pressuring of mainstream media through boycotts of advertisers' products and letter-writing campaigns, (Hardisty, 1995) the encouraging of think tank staff and "scholars" to write op-ed pieces - all toward the goal of "stirring up hostilities" and "organizing discontent" (Smith, 1991). ... Right spokespersons became regular media stars and newspaper columnists. (Williams, 1997)

Mistaken understandings

Finally, it is worth noting that people may traffic in these stereotypes simply because they have mistaken impressions of the facts. Without being conscious of biased attitudes, producers of media content of all kinds may, consciously or unconsciously, assume that people with low incomes tend to be black, or looking at this another way, that households with black males are likely to be dysfunctional, that discrimination against black males is limited to isolated acts of racial discrimination, and so on.

² See also Eschholz et al., 2002.

³ The analysis was based on a review of "over one hundred articles collected by the Center for Media and Public Affairs during May and June of 2004 from newspapers in various parts of the country, from Miami to Seattle to San Antonio to Washington, DC."

⁴ See Byrne, 2008.

⁵ Also see Hawkins and Pingree, 1990.

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Media Portrayals and Black Male Outcomes

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From the perspective of most scholars who focus on the topic, there is a clear causal story that links media representations of black men and boys to real-world outcomes. The story can be summarized as follows: For various reasons, media of all types collectively offer a distorted representation of the lives and reality of black males.

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Hollywood Insider - News Entertainment & Culture

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Photo: 'Euphoria'/HBO MAX

I think a lot of people can relate to having elaborate fantasies about, say, a gun-wielding lunatic barging into their classroom or workplace and, through a series of awesome and powerful maneuvers, taking down the assailant to emerge a righteous hero.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had a hilarious take on this in their season 9 episode "The Gang Saves the Day," in which each of the protagonists, whilst hiding from a robber who's holding up the convenience store they're in, have elaborate fantasies about what they would do. Mac (A.K.A. Ronald Mcdonald, played by Rob McElhenney ) imagines himself fighting off a horde of Yakuza ninjas in the style of Steven Seagal . He saves the day but dies a heroic death, being greeted in Heaven by a shirtless, sexy, muscular God and two equally sexy angels.

(For those unfamiliar, Mac is a closeted gay man whose inability to come to terms with his identity, combined with his obsession with presenting himself as a tough, manly man, is a recurring joke.)

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Nate Jacobs - Toxic Masculinity in USA

In HBO's Euphoria , high schooler Nate Jacobs ( Jacob Elordi ) is also shown to be prone to violent ideations. As part of his character introduction at the beginning of episode 2, "Stuntin' Like My Daddy," we see that he often fantasizes about killing men who kidnap or endanger his girlfriend Maddy Perez ( Alexa Demie ). He tells her, "If anyone ever tried to hurt you, I'd kill them."

Of course, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia plays it all for laughs. It's an episodic comedy about a group of amoral, narcissistic friends, once commonly referred to as "Seinfeld on crack." , while also being about a group of people trapped in a toxic environment, is an entirely different show. It's a twisted, moody, anxiety-ridden story that follows the lives of troubled suburban high schoolers going through a variety of identity crises.

At the end of the day, I'm not a huge fan of how glamorous the parties and how beautiful their attendees are-the coolest parties I ever went to were still poorly lit and filled with average-looking, outwardly awkward teenagers (myself included). However, what sets apart is its honest and unflinching portrayal of modern cultural realities, as well as its normalization of things that film & television have hitherto struggled to portray .
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The very first scene, in which the narrator and protagonist Rue Bennett ( Zendaya) is born three days after 9/11, establishes the fact that is not just a story about troubled high schoolers, but one that is firmly grounded in the present day and whose characters are both victims and perpetrators of the modern American landscape.

In this review, I specifically focus on Nate Jacobs and the concept of his toxic masculinity , but it's important for me to clarify that I don't believe the term "toxic masculinity" does justice to the complexities of his character-I think its widespread usage has actually hampered the popular discussion of our problematic gender norms by providing a catch-all term referring only to specific behaviors of men, even though masculinity is not only unique between different cultures but also influenced by other factors such as socioeconomic status and race.

This is why Nate Jacobs is more than a boring caricature and why has earned my highest respect. Its authentic portrayal of the American youth culture is not only laudable in and of itself, but is important because its characters and their struggles are unique, direct consequents of this culture. In this way, the setting complements the emotional journeys of the characters, while the characters both reflect and criticize the culture to which they belong.

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Intersectional Masculinity

We're shown that Nate's sense of masculinity was nurtured from a young age by his father, Cal Jacobs ( ). When Nate is just a child, Cal tells him that "no one in this world will ever root for [him]," and although it's not explicitly stated, this adds a racial component to his identity complex.

It's not a new concept and he didn't invent it, but Former President Barack Obama recently expressed the idea that white men believe themselves to be victims . I believe a similar pathology occurs in Nate, who is the epitome of a privileged white man. It's interesting because, throughout the show, we never see anybody hate Nate purely for who he is. In fact, it's the opposite-he's a tall, handsome star athlete, quarterback of the football team, who gets away with an infuriating amount of evil shenanigans. Therefore, this persecution mentality is instilled in him at a young age and influences his development despite being divorced from reality.

Additionally, Cal himself is a closeted gay who secretly tapes his frequent hook-ups with young men and trans women. Nate discovers and watches these at a young age, but still adheres to his father's philosophy of strength and emotional repression. He grows up with deeply embedded misogyny and homophobia, which eventually causes emotional turmoil as he, too, has closeted gay tendencies.

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By the time of the show's present, we see how Nate has learned to deal with his twisted and repressed identity concepts. He's outwardly misogynistic and homophobic, as well as having a serious anger problem. This is all in line with the accepted scientific literature on hegemonic masculinity , such as that of the esteemed Raewyn Connell , who pioneered the concept that our culture's stereotypic ideal of a man results in ruthless, angry, homophobic, misogynistic men.

It's important to talk about how Nate is as much a victim of circumstance as he is a perpetrator of toxic masculinity, and I'm not only talking about his father's socialization, nor do I mean to say that he's ultimately the victim and not a villain because he certainly is. I'm talking about things like being highly valued in modern American culture and how Nate's success as a quarterback reaffirms his drive to be a "strong man." It's things like his girlfriend Maddy playing into Nate's dominant fantasies and telling him he's "the sweetest guy ever" when he tells her that he'd kill anyone who tried to hurt her.

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In this way, the show is an incredible examination of how "toxic masculinity" is not just something that men perpetrate among men, but a constantly reinforced aspect of our culture that is as much a symptom as it is a cause. However, Nate is a powerful villain not only because he embodies toxic traits, but because he has the necessary physical strength, social status, and sociopathic qualities to impose these on other characters.

Men Dominating Men to Affirm their Manliness

What really cemented Nate as an incredible villain for me was when he actually carried out one of his violent fantasies. In the pilot episode, we're introduced to Nate and Maddy at a party in the midst of some petty, temporary break-up. Both flirt and make-out with others in front of each other to elicit jealousy, but Maddy takes it a step further and persuades (with little effort) a random college student named Tyler ( ) to have sex in the pool, in full view of everyone there.
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Unfortunately for Tyler, Nate takes out his frustration on him. Sometime after the party, Tyler comes home to find Nate waiting for him on his couch. Nate calmly tells him that he's already collected the kitchen knives and baseball bat that Tyler keeps in his room, demonstrating his methodical, premeditating nature. He gets up and walks at Tyler, who is smaller and weaker, and tells him that there's no use resisting. He's going to do to him what he's going to do, and Tyler won't press charges because if he does, Nate will turn him in for "raping" Maddy at the party, for which there were dozens of witnesses. After all, Tyler is 22 years old and Maddy is only 17. Tyler can only beg for mercy as Nate steps forward with the cold determination of a Terminator.

Related article: 'God's Own Country' is a Must Watch for Fans of 'Call Me By Your Name'

Nate beats him within an inch of his life. Later, we see that Tyler has suffered severe, permanent damage-he's partially blind, suffers from migraines, and can no longer effectively breathe through his nose. Nate, reclining casually in Tyler's chair, listens with unsympathetic bemusement before cutting him off to tell him that he doesn't care about Tyler's condition. Instead, he offers a proposition-Tyler will go to the police station and turn himself in for beating Maddy (which had been Nate's doing after Maddy insinuated he was gay), or else Maddy will turn him in for the aforementioned "rape."

In this way, we see that Nate is not merely an angry guy with identity issues, but a dangerous sociopath with the intelligence and ability to wield his privilege and manipulate those around him. We also see how he interacts with other men and thinks nothing of those who are "weak." In the course of obsessively fulfilling his ideals, he dehumanizes those who don't adhere to the same. Of course, this only causes severe emotional distress when he himself can't live up to his standards.

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Conclusion

gets pretty grim. It tackles a lot of things aside from masculinity, such as female sexuality and mental illness , and each of the characters is a complex, authentic reflection of the kinds of issues that teenagers/young adults experience today.

And yet, it's important to remember that toxic masculinity is not purely a male phenomenon. Gender norms and ideas come from our collective interactions with each other and with society, and does an excellent job of showing how specific aspects of our culture negatively affect the mental health of its adherents.
By Daniel Choi
HBO renewed the show for a second season but filming has been delayed due to the ongoing pandemic. I wonder if, moving forward, Nate will find peace within himself or descend further into violence.

Click here to read Hollywood Insider's CEO Pritan Ambroase's love letter to Black Lives Matter, in which he tackles more than just police reform, press freedom and more - click here.

An excerpt from the love letter: Hollywood Insider's CEO/editor-in-chief Pritan Ambroase affirms, "Hollywood Insider fully supports the much-needed Black Lives Matter movement. We are actively, physically and digitally a part of this global movement. We will continue reporting on this major issue of police brutality and legal murders of Black people to hold the system accountable. We will continue reporting on this major issue with kindness and respect to all Black people, as each and every one of them are seen and heard. Just a reminder, that the Black Lives Matter movement is about more than just police brutality and extends into banking, housing, education, medical, infrastructure, etc. We have the space and time for all your stories. We believe in peaceful/non-violent protests and I would like to request the rest of media to focus on 95% of the protests that are peaceful and working effectively with positive changes happening daily. Media has a responsibility to better the world and Hollywood Insider will continue to do so."

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Zendaya's 'Euphoria': Nate Jacobs is Perfect Representation of Self-Loathing And Toxic Masculinity in USA - Hollywood Insider

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Photo: 'Euphoria'/HBO MAX I think a lot of people can relate to having elaborate fantasies about, say, a gun-wielding lunatic barging into their classroom or workplace and, through a series of awesome and powerful maneuvers, taking down the assailant to emerge a righteous hero.

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Disney and Pixar's Luca | Teaser Trailer

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female teachers and pop culture made boys “weak, inferior and timid.”

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female teachers and pop culture made boys “weak, inferior and timid.”

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The Education Ministry plans to beef up gym classes after a top official said female teachers and pop culture had made boys "weak, inferior and timid."

An after-school training program in Beijing in 2018, aimed at correcting a perceived "lack of masculinity" among boys. Credit... Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

HONG KONG - Government officials in China believe that boys are getting more effeminate and want to toughen them up.

In the latest attempt to tackle what academics and news outlets call a "masculinity crisis," the Education Ministry has proposed emphasizing the "spirit of yang," or male attributes, by hiring more sports instructors and redesigning physical education classes in elementary and secondary schools.

The plan, a response to a top official's call to "prevent the feminization of male youths," was released last week. It included no timeline and few other details, but it prompted an outcry online and is still stirring fierce debate on social media. One hashtag has been viewed 1.5 billion times on Weibo, a popular microblogging platform.

Some social media users expressed support for the proposal, with one writing, "It's hard to imagine such effeminate boys can defend their country when an outside invasion looms." But others saw evidence of sexual discrimination and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes.

Even state news media seemed to question the ministry's proposal. CCTV, the state broadcaster, wrote on its Weibo account Saturday: "Education is not simply about cultivating 'men' and 'women.' It's more important to develop a willingness to take responsibility."

The broadcaster also offered a loose interpretation of yang, writing, "Men show 'the spirit of yang' in bearing, spirit and physique, which is a kind of beauty, but 'the spirit of yang' does not simply mean 'masculine behavior.'"

Image

Physical education in Xiamen, China, in 2019. Credit... Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

In recent years, as the country has sought to bolster its military and reckon with pampered children, mostly boys, born under its one-child policy, a more stringent idea of masculinity has emerged. Television censors have blurred the pierced ears of male pop stars. Well-groomed actors have been publicly derided as " little fresh meat," and parents have enrolled boys in boot camps, hoping they will become "real men."

The Education Ministry's plan is in response to a proposal made in May by Si Zefu, a top delegate of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee. Called a "Proposal to Prevent the Feminization of Male Youths," Mr. Si's proposal said that "many, many more" men should be hired as physical education teachers to exert a "masculine influence" in schools.

In a statement, Mr. Si said the prevalence of female teachers in kindergartens and elementary schools and the popularity of "pretty boys" in pop culture had made boys "weak, inferior and timid." He also lamented that boys no longer wanted to become war heroes, warning that such a trend could endanger the Chinese people.

Last year, Xinhua, a state-run news agency, reported on the gender imbalance of physical education teachers and the difficulties of luring men into the low-paying profession, which is currently dominated by women. In the past, state news media has also blamed video games, masturbation and a lack of exercise for making many young men unfit for the military.

Mark Ma, an 18-year-old high school student in Shenzhen, said that he welcomed an overhaul of physical education but didn't think it would have a huge effect in shaping masculinity.

"Physical education at the junior high level definitely needs to be improved because a lot of people don't care about this. They only care about academics," he said. "I remember a lot of classmates sitting on the sidelines during P.E. lessons, doing their homework."

Soccer practice in Binzhou, China, in October. Credit... Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

He added that he did not believe that "physical education teachers are highly valued in schools; these new policies and better benefits may attract more people to this field."

As for engendering "the spirit of yang" in boys, he said, "I think the main focus of this is about increasing physical strength, and what they mean by 'masculinity' is unclear." He added: "I think it's more important to come from one's upbringing and daily habits. I personally don't think using this label will have much effect on physical education habits."

While the Education Ministry's new plan did not explicitly propose different treatment for boys and girls, educators like Liu Wenli, a professor at Beijing Normal University and an expert in health and sex education, see some perils. Ms. Liu said that even the reference to "feminization of male youths" could lead to more bullying of students because of their gender expression, identity or sexual orientation.

"Educators cannot call for the prevention of bullying in schools while nurturing the soil for bullying in schools," she wrote on Weibo.

While some Chinese high schools separate students based on physical ability and others allow them to choose their sports classes, most physical education classes at the elementary level are mixed. But fitness classes are increasingly seen by officials as a solution to the perceived problem of weak boys.

Chunxiao Li, a university researcher who studies inclusive physical education, said by telephone on Thursday that it was important to create an inclusive environment. "Overly emphasizing masculinity, femininity or physical disabilities is actually detrimental to society's diversity and inclusivity," he said. "It can create a label or a stereotype."

Dr. Li said that, in the end, physical education teachers should instead focus on developing a well-rounded student.

Elsie Chen contributed reporting.

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A 'Masculinity Crisis'? China Says the Boys Are Not All Right

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The Education Ministry plans to beef up gym classes after a top official said female teachers and pop culture had made boys "weak, inferior and timid." HONG KONG - Government officials in China believe that boys are getting more effeminate and want to toughen them up.

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Insider

"Put on your big boy pants", and "grow some balls" - the treatment of some of this hit show's male contestants makes for uncomfortable viewing. Chris Cotonou picks apart the toxic masculinity on our screens and asks what makes a 'real man' these days anyway?

Susie and Billy at a commitment ceremony
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A while back in the before-times, I woke up from an impromptu one-night-stand with an ex-girlfriend. It had been a few years since our short romance at university.

"The thing is," she said, as we discussed what went wrong, "I wanted you, but got tired of waiting for you to read the signals and take the lead." And then the clincher: "Why didn't you just rip my clothes off... be more of the man?"

I recall her words almost a decade later; as I binge episodes of the cult reality-show Married at First Sight: Australia (or MAFSA), which pits hopefuls on an extreme, nuptial version of Blind Date. Of all the frustrating match-ups, satisfying bust-ups, and finger-pointing between the sexes, the dynamic and importance of traditional gender-roles comes up more often than in, say, First Dates. One of the questions it asks is: what does it mean to be 'the man' in a straight relationship?

Dino is a soft-spoken, spiritual bloke from Perth. Paired with a partner, Melissa, who openly talks about not having had sex since Basshunter topped the charts, he squirms and sweats as the other participants tell him to get on with it. She wants to get laid - or 'slammed' in her own parlance - and that's his problem now. Get on with it, Dino.

Melissa and Dino
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"Why can't he just make the move, already?" I blurt to the screen, like everyone else on the show. Once he finally caves, he distances and shrinks within himself. His marriage falls apart.

Related

If the roles were reversed, Dino would be a creepy sex pest and Melissa a victim. It's an unspoken double-standard; another we see between shy virgin Matt (mentioned so often, I thought 'Virgin' was his job) and Loz. After taking Matt's virginity, Loz - perhaps unfairly matched - admits that something isn't working. She tells us that she wants Matt to throw her on the bed and rip her clothes off. She asks him what he thinks about swinger parties.

Dino and Melissa
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Matt and Dino blame themselves for being unable to accommodate their partners' urges. You can see it in their faces: an insecurity, almost a sense of impotency, surfacing. Matt openly asks the camera whether "there's something wrong" with him.

There is nothing wrong with Matt. For a lot of men, a deeply-coded instinct to 'man up' in bed stems from fear of disappointment. I recall a house party a few years back where a girl took me upstairs. As I spoke, spluttering, near-vomiting, drunk, "I don't think I can, I feel rough..." she carried on lifting off my shirt. Where I ought to have insisted on leaving, a devil-on-the-shoulder kept muttering, "do it... or she'll think you're a wimp."

There's a nagging implication that Dino and Matt are somewhat less manly, wimpish, or something is wrong with them for not wanting to tear their wives' clothes off. Men are so often discussed as being 'dominant' in the bedroom, it seems off when we refrain from sex. We struggle to communicate these feelings; fearing in real life, as in MAFSA, that it might end in emasculation (or mockery). Like barista Billy, when he's told to "man up."

Lauren and Matt
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Billy is a nice guy. He's so nice, in fact, that he's boring. The problem Billy has is that he's paired with Susie, who doesn't want a nice guy. Billy's lack of assertiveness gets on Susie's nerves. So, she asks him to "man up", "put on his big boy pants", and "grow some balls."

I don't trust blokes like Billy. Their 'nice guy' schtick is one-part entitlement and one-part premature self-defeat. But if he asked Susie to be more feminine; to play the traditional housewife while he enacted a sort of growling, macho Stanley Kowalski, he'd be cancelled. And quite rightly.

But instead, he becomes a joke. And whenever he cries, she laughs. Sometimes, we laugh too. We want Billy to get a grip; we want him to be more of a man.

In 2021, the man might have changed, but what's expected of him hasn't.

Thankfully, #MeToo made giant steps: but with its overdue triumph (for both sexes) came an awkward, temporary rift. Since 2016, men have been trying to figure out exactly what part traditional masculinity, and masculine traits, play in a progressive culture. With gender-fluidity having a more mainstream role in society, masculinity is accepted to have become somewhat malleable in half the time it takes George R. R. Martin to write a book.

It's what a lot of straight men like me, or my friends, in their mid-twenties to early thirties try to keep up with. Stuck between a time when we were taught to take the lead, approach women, pay for meals, and make the first move (to 'man up'); to an era where any of that can be deemed inappropriate or toxic. Not that it matters in MAFSA, of course, where the stakes are too high. The participants are getting married here, you see, and that means forever; whether forever is seventy years from now or the next commitment ceremony. They aren't going to compromise on being progressive.

Even if society expects men to be better, to play a less dominant role, when it comes to who we love, the expectations we and our partners' may have for ourselves are much the same. So, when some of the women on MAFSA talk about a 'real man' - whether it's 1991 or 2021 - you know exactly who, and what, they mean.

And it isn't Billy. Or Matt. Or even Dino. But perhaps next time it should be.

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Is it still ok to tell men like Dino, Matt and Billy to 'man up?'

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"Put on your big boy pants", and "grow some balls" - the treatment of some of this hit show's male contestants makes for uncomfortable viewing. Chris Cotonou picks apart the toxic masculinity on our screens and asks what makes a 'real man' these days anyway?

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"I almost cried five times."

John Mayer is facing backlash for his comments following the reflections he made on male privilege in the music industry following Framing Britney Spears.

Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images

"I almost cried five times during that," John told Andy Cohen on SiriusXM. "I mean, I was on the edge of tears five times, because if you understand what this business/industry/lifestyle does to a person. To go through this and come out the other side OK, is to have infinite grace for those who struggle with it."

Jason Merritt / Getty Images

"I came out OK... I have a very strong feeling that part of that is because I'm a man," he continued. "And I have a very strong feeling that a lot of these things that happen to female performers is endemic to being female."

However, some people weren't buying John's comments - given his own treatment of women in the public eye.

The first name many pointed to was Jessica Simpson, who John dated on and off during the '00s.

John previously made derogatory comments about Jessica, telling Playboy in 2010, "Sexually it was crazy. That's all I'll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. Did you ever say, 'I want to quit my life and just fucking snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I would start selling all my shit just to keep fucking you.'"

Kevin Mazur / WireImage / Getty Images

As for Jessica, she wrote in her memoir of John: "Again and again, he told me he was obsessed with me, sexually and emotionally."

L. Cohen / Getty Images

Jessica refers to it as, "The start of me relying on alcohol to mask my nerves." Jessica then says she told John she drank too much, but he reportedly just gave her Xanax.

Another name that people mentioned was Taylor Swift, who John dated when he was 32 and she was 19 years old.

Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images

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People Are Calling Out John Mayer For His Comments On Male Privilege After His Treatment Of Jessica Simpson And Taylor Swift

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"I almost cried five times." "I came out OK... I have a very strong feeling that part of that is because I'm a man," he continued. "And I have a very strong feeling that a lot of these things that happen to female performers is endemic to being female."

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Ethan Hawke is an actor, writer and director, star of the films Dead Poets Society, Training Day and Boyhood. He has been nominated for Academy Awards for his acting, and for his writing on Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Hawke describes theatre as his first love and has featured in a number of plays by Sam Shepard, as well as in productions of work by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and his own second cousin twice-removed, Tennessee Williams.

Hawke's first novel, The Hottest State, was published in 1996. His second, Ash Wednesday, came out in 2002. Now, with A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke brings us a novel that is structured around a stage production of Henry IV, Part 1. The book's narrator, William Harding, is a hard-drinking film star who seeks to overcome a period of personal turmoil by throwing himself into his role as Henry Percy.

Hawke lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters. He has two older children by a previous marriage.

Did you ever think how your life might have turned out if you'd committed yourself fully to books?
One of the strange things about turning 50 is that you do feel that the path has been carved. There's a lot of road behind you. To my shock, here I stand at 50 as a really young novelist. I'm a really old actor - I know all the tricks. My life as a writer is touching base with a much younger me. When I was younger, I was really passionate about writing. What's beautiful about writing is that it's something you can be in charge of. When I'm acting, I can be on a film set with Paweł Pawlikowski or in a rehearsal room with Sam Shepard. Now, that's rewarding. But the rest of it - auditions, the hyperbole of celebrity - all that's a big fat bore and leads most people to a pretty frivolous life. My goal was never to be Tom Cruise.

This book seems to play games with the divide between the narrator's life and your own. Was that intentional?
When I wrote Ash Wednesday it was my attempt to prove that I wasn't a dilettante. I was thrown by the reaction to the book. Critics were always trying to break down the scaffolding I put up, and ask "Where is the actor here?" I met a German publisher on my book tour back then who told me: "If you want to write a serious novel you have to run into acting, not away from it. At the moment you're just a famous person who writes. You're not a famous writer. To do that you have to stare down the demon that's in your way." So I got on the plane back from Germany and the idea came to me in a flash. But then 20 years went by. Had my acting career not been as rewarding as it turned out to be, I'd have got around to this much sooner.

If critics don't like my novels then really they just don't like the way my brain works, and I'm OK with that

It's a book in which sex is described regularly and frankly. [The protagonist has a relationship with a much younger woman.] Did you find this difficult in the current environment?
Our sexual identity and the relationship we have through it, to ourselves and to others, is defining in our lives. And in the light of cancel culture and shaming - while a lot of this moment is very helpful - it's a difficult time to say: "I want to be open about the idiosyncrasies of human sexuality." What's that great Mark Twain line? "The aim of art is to alleviate shame." We're in this period now when you can't even write about bad behaviour because it might seem like you're condoning it. You have to be able to create a character who does things they wish they didn't do. I went back and forth on it, because it's just a petrifying time to speak about male sexuality. If you can't shine a light into dark corners, the demons that live there will never go away.

How do you respond to bad reviews of your novels?
I can take bad reviews as a writer, because if critics don't like it then really they just don't like the way my brain works, and I'm OK with that. I meet people in restaurants that hate me. And 70 million people voted for Trump. There's no accounting for taste.

Who's your favourite living writer?
I guess because we feel ourselves in a moment of history, Doris Kearns Goodwin jumps to mind. I've gained so much knowledge from her research into the history of American presidents. Her book No Ordinary Time about Franklin and Eleanor [Roosevelt] is extremely inspiring.

How are your books organised?
Really poorly. It is a source of much trouble to me. When I was younger I had a bookcase full of the books I liked - James Baldwin and Salinger and Mark Twain. I have grownup kids now, I have a 19-year-old and a 22-year-old who are reading, and they steal all my books and I can't find anything. If I had a magic elf I'd have them rearrange everything alphabetically.

How did lockdown change your reading habits?
My reading habits have been demolished by an acting career and children. If we were best friends, the thing I'd confess to you, a thing that really hurts, is how few books I read. And it has decreased in recent years, because I have so many scripts that people want me to read. Every time I want to open up a novel, I'm haunted by the fact that I haven't read those four scripts that my friends sent me. So lockdown has enabled me to do some reading for pleasure.

What book would you give to a 10-year-old?
Randall Jarrell's The Animal Family. I don't know if it's in print any more. That book floored me. My kids are at various different ages, and I'd read it to my older kids 10 years ago, but the first thing we did when the pandemic happened was we all sat around, I lit a fire and my wife read it to all of us. It was so wonderful.

* A Bright Ray of Darkness is published by Cornerstone (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

* A Night in With Ethan Hawke will be streamed globally from the Southbank Centre, London, on 8 February; tickets are on sale now

Topics

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Ethan Hawke: 'It's just a petrifying time to speak about male sexuality'

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Ethan Hawke is an actor, writer and director, star of the films Dead Poets Society, Training Day and Boyhood. He has been nominated for Academy Awards for his acting, and for his writing on Before Sunset and Before Midnight.

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The popstar's cross-dressing is not an attack on men and masculinity.

Harry Styles looked awesome in that dress.

Seriously, many have tried it before but he really did pull it off. Yet how, in 2020, when every major corporation and government support this kind of 'rebellion', does it still come across as edgy?

It is precisely because - somehow - it still provokes the type of reaction we witnessed online earlier this week: boring old conservatives becoming apoplectic and claiming the images could spark the 'end of Western man' and lead teenagers astray, or something.

Even culture-warrior-in-chief Piers Morgan waded in, pretending to be shocked, branding the former One Direction singer 'weird'. The Guardian, meanwhile, was quick to hail Styles as a 'vanguard' - the new 'face of gender-neutral fashion'.

But all of this is actually a very, very old and tiresomely familiar cultural tussle. From Muscadins and dandy boys of the 17th and 18th centuries to Ziggy Stardust and the New Romantics in the 20th, some young men have messed with gender norms and have flirted with crossdressing because, well, because they can.

Remember David Beckham in the sarong? Kanye in a leather skirt? Nikki Sixx and his eyeliner? Marilyn Manson declaring himself a shapeshifter? Prince? Kurt Cobain? Literally everyone in 2005 wearing their sister's skinny jeans?

It's fun and it's part of how younger generations provoke older ones and find their cultural identity. Fashion, sexual preferences, and yes, even gender norms, are not static and they have clearly shifted throughout history.

And this is not just true of the 'rebels' and punks. Entire histories of androgynous fashion have been written, mainstream department stores have had unisex sections since the 1960s (Selfridges on Oxford Street now has three floors of gender-neutral shopping areas), and some have even theorised that many of history's best male fashion trends migrated over from female looks. Anyone acting like Harry Styles is doing something new or uniquely shocking should look up Pharaoh Akhenaten IV, or just the Ancient Greeks generally. This is literally ancient history.

Candace Owens, right-wing US commentator, was the one who really got the debate going on Twitter. She said the images, published in Vogue, were part of the 'steady feminisation of our men' and 'an outright attack' on men and the West. Other prominent commentators echoed this, claiming it was part of a wider assault on masculinity.

It is absolutely true that masculinity is, in many ways, being repeatedly and unfairly denigrated for ideological and cultural reasons. But Harry Styles in a dress is not that. In fact, if masculinity is worth fighting for at all, it should be able to look and feel awesome in a dress. Boys are falling behind for complex reasons, and they need support. But a cross-dressing pop star is not part of the problem.

Frustratingly, some of the commentators who have been making important contributions to the debate around the Gender Recognition Act and related issues are now using the legitimacy of those arguments to try to breathe new life into the type of boring old bigotry which attacks men who like to wear dresses. There is a complex and important legal and social discussion going on around transgenderism, biological sex and women's single-sex spaces right now. But men in dresses, drag queens, David Bowie and Harry Styles have little to do with it.

I really am no fan of the constant attacks on 'toxic masculinity' and the increasingly common idea that men and boys are somehow intrinsically dangerous to society. Beer-chugging, sports-obsessed, 'lads lads lads' hyper-masculinity is fun and cool. And so is Harry Styles in a dress.

These expressions of masculinity are not new and they have never posed a threat to each other.

Liam Deacon is the Brexit Party's former head of press.
Picture by: Getty. spiked has never been more needed
The pandemic has exposed the conformity of the media. Many journalists and broadcasters seem to think scrutinising the government just means demanding to know why lockdown wasn't implemented sooner. Meanwhile, the toll of lockdown on people's jobs and liberties barely gets a look-in. This is why spiked has never been more needed. Our unflinching defence of freedom, democracy and dissent, in these uniquely authoritarian times, marks us out - even among alternative media. We will continue to challenge the New Normal. But to do so we need your help. spiked is free. But only because our generous readers chip in. One-off donations are a huge help. But monthly donations, even just £5 per month, are the best way to support us and help us grow. If you can afford it, please do consider setting up a regular donation today. Thank you all for your support.
To enquire about republishing spiked's content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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The popstar's cross-dressing is not an attack on men and masculinity. Harry Styles looked awesome in that dress. Seriously, many have tried it before but he really did pull it off. Yet how, in 2020, when every major corporation and government support this kind of 'rebellion', does it still come across as edgy?

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@jonathanjoly
Do what makes you happy #sacconejolys
♬ Home - Edith Whiskers

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People with masculine features like a square jaw, strong brow and a broad nose are viewed to be better at their job than those with feminine looks

Testosterone creates a square jaw, strong brow, thin lips and a broader nose

All of these are features are seen as assertive and markers of virility

More testosterone is directly correlated with perceived competence in men

However, the same trait in women created a view that they were 'inefficient'

High levels of testosterone lead to the ultra-masculine look of George Clooney or Idris Elba and less produces the softer look of Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt

A square jaw, strong brow, thin lips and a broader nose are seen as signs of talent and competence, a new study has found.

The features, associated with increased levels of the male hormone testosterone, are seen as assertive and markers of virility indicative of professional prowess.

Members of the public were asked to rate images on a range of criteria, with men scoring more highly for competence than women.

Experts say their study highlights the prejudice ingrained in society that women face on a daily basis.

Scroll down for video

First author Dr DongWon Oh, from Princeton University, said: 'Our research sheds light on the pernicious gender bias in how we perceive others.

'We judge masculine looking people as competent - a judgement that can affect our leadership choices.'

High levels of testosterone lead to the ultra-masculine look of George Clooney or Idris Elba, whereas less of the hormone produces the softer features of Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt.

Increased testosterone levels was found to be directly correlated with perceived competence in men.

However, the same trait in women created a view that they were 'inefficient'.

Dr Oh said this is important as it affects who we choose to lead us and how we see them.

For example, previous studies have shown individuals with rugged jawlines are more likely to become high-ranking politicians or heads of large companies.

But Dr Oh said: 'Problematically, how competent someone appears does not guarantee their actual competence.

'Needless to say these gender biases pose a threat to social justice - creating unfair environments for everyone.'

WHAT IS TESTOSTERONE?

Source: Medical News Today

Dr Oh and colleagues assessed the 'visual ingredients' that influence how people view another person's talent level on appearance alone.

Participants in a study were asked to rate a variety of different faces on how competent they thought the person was based on appearance alone.

By collecting and breaking down all the data they were then able to identify the features which were most heavily associated with competence.

They then built a computer model that allowed them to digitally alter faces based on these specific guidelines.

One experiment involving 33 participants found faces designed to look more efficient were rated as such - and as more attractive.

Dr Oh, of Princeton University in New Jersey, said: 'Using the computational methods we developed for visualising appearance stereotypes, we can literally remove the attractiveness of the competent-looking faces.

'We can then test whether 'competent' faces still appear competent and inspect what visual properties other than attractiveness drive the competence impressions.'

Another online test revealed a clear gender bias. When asked to identify the gender of faces participants tended to rate more competent looking ones as male.

Finally the researchers manipulated 'photo-realistic' images of male and female faces so they varied in masculinity and got 250 participants to rate their competence online.

Again, the data suggested a gender bias in first impressions. As male faces increased in masculinity, so did their perceived competence.

For female faces this relationship only held up to a point - after which more masculine female faces were actually perceived as less competent.

Dr Oh and colleagues hope to expand on the study published in Psychological Science by exploring the origins of this gender bias and how it could be combated.

They are also investigating whether there are systematic differences in the impressions we have of male and female faces.

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People with masculine features are viewed to be better at their job

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Testosterone creates a square jaw, strong brow, thin lips and a broader nose All of these are features are seen as assertive and markers of virility More testosterone is directly correlated with perceived competence in men However, the same trait in women created a view that they were 'inefficient' High levels of testosterone lead to the ultra-masculine look of George Clooney or Idris Elba and less produces the softer look of Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt A square jaw, strong brow, thin lips and a broader nose are seen as signs of talent and competence, a new study has found.

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Lifestyle

Figures suggest that men are more likely to refuse to wear face coverings than women. Olivia Petter investigates a gender imbalance in approaches to the pandemic

Thursday 22 October 2020 15:28

A

ndrew, 46, from London, has not worn a face covering once during the coronavirus pandemic. He doesn't even own one. "The science around masks is conflicted," he says, insisting that most masks are "ineffective" despite the fact that masks have been scientifically proven to reduce the spread of Covid-19 in numerous studies. "I agree that vulnerable people may want to take precautionary measures, but that is their choice," he adds before citing incorrect facts and figures, which he stands by even when countered. What happens when people question Andrew's bare face in restaurants or on public transport, where masks are compulsory? "I politely tell them I'm exempt."

Face coverings are paramount to reducing the spread of coronavirus. They have been mandatory on public transport in England since 15 June, save for a few exemptions for health conditions, with a new law extending the rule to shops and other indoor spaces in July. The World Health Organisation has been urging people around the world to wear masks since June - by which point they had already been mandated in several countries - and a scientific review published in July in the Journal of the American Medical Association described face coverings as a "critical tool" in the fight against Covid-19.

The review, prompted Robert Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, to dub face coverings "one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus." In light of all of this, there are an alarming number of people who, like Andrew, refuse to wear masks. What's more, the evidence shows the majority of these people seem to be men.

Watch more

In May, a survey of 2,459 people in the US conducted by two academics at Middlesex University, London, and the University of Berkeley, California, found that not only were men less likely to wear face masks in public than women, they were also more likely to agree that wearing one was "shameful, not cool and a sign of weakness" - a view that Fox Nation personality Tomi Lahren seemingly perpetuated when she said that US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden "might as well carry a purse with [his] mask". A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a US NGO focused on public health issues, also found that 68 per cent of women frequently wore a mask outside the home compared to 49 per cent of men. These figures have been well-documented, leading some to label face coverings the " condoms of the face ".

"This is a trend we've seen in previous epidemics, with men showing more reluctance to adopt safety precautions than women" says Emma Lygnerud Boberg, gender and programme development advisor, at the International Media Support, Denmark. It's consistent with other data, she notes, that suggests men are less likely than women to wear seatbelts and visit their GP when they're unwell. Previous studies have also shown that men are more likely to drive recklessly, either by speeding or by driving drunk.

Mask-wearing can be interpreted as showing weakness among some men

That men seem willing to take greater risk in day-to-day life, says Peter Glick, bias and discrimination expert at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, boils down to harmful gender stereotypes that condition men to glorify strength and fear vulnerability. "Men are socialised to be dominant and independent," he tells The Independent. "These traits all serve to reinforce patriarchal norms that present masculinity as a performance. For these reasons, mask-wearing can be interpreted as showing weakness among some men. It suggests they fear the virus in a very public manner, which, in turn, punctures the bravado." It's no wonder researchers have blamed male gender norms for having a negative impact on men's health.

Even after contracting Covid-19, and being hospitalised, President Donald Trump was keen to show he didn't need a mask - removing it on the steps of the White House after returning from hospital. It was a moment that perfectly summed up the pandemic political theatre of 2020. Trump has used the idea that mask-wearing is a sign of weakness to further his political agenda. "I don't wear masks like him," the president said of Biden at a debate against him on 29 September. "Every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen." The implication seems to be that by not wearing a mask, Trump exudes greater strength than his opponent. The president furthered this idea again earlier this week when he teased House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi by tweeting, "Wear your mask in the 'beauty' parlour, Nancy!"

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There is a long history of venerating stereotypical masculinity norms on the political right, explains Glick. "Conservatives seem to be reacting to a broader sense of the erosion of male privilege and dominance in society, and they therefore look up to male leaders who embrace masculine stereotypes. The masculine leaders they elect are very protective of their macho image, making them anti-maskers," he says. Glick's theory is supported by research. In June, a study by the Pew Research Center in June found that 76 per cent of Democrat voters reported wearing a mask "all or most of the time in stores and other businesses" while 53 per cent of Republicans said the same.

Stereotypical gender norms are exacerbated when you pair them with Conservatism. "The reluctance to wear a mask is the result of internalised masculinity norms," adds Boberg. "Politically speaking, libertarian-leaning people on the right hold freedom as a core value. Those on the left, however, are much more invested in the care foundation, ie protecting the vulnerable. This might explain why men on the right, politically speaking, perhaps see mask-wearing as an infringement on their masculinity to a higher degree than those men to the left."

For the most part, those who refuse to wear masks do seem to attempt to justify their decision in science, albeit mostly misinformation, rather than just outright refuse to comply. "Coronavirus is a mild illness," says Ewell, 26, from Sheffield, who believes that coronavirus poses no threat to him, so doesn't require a mask. "There is little to no evidence that masks work," says Joe*, 42, from Anglesea, in Wales, who ignores my requests for evidence. "Only 0.06 per cent of the population will die from Covid-19," says Tom*, 44, from London, who also failed to provide the research he cited in our conversation.

People who do not wear face coverings where they are mandated can be fined £100 or more. The latest figures show that almost 400 fines have been issued to people refusing to wear masks on public transport in England thus far (the figures are not broken down by gender). But the risk of being penalised isn't stopping people from not wearing masks. "I have to set an example [to others] that Covid is nothing to be feared for the majority of people," says Tim, 18, in London. "I am less worried about the prospect about the monetary fine than I am by the very fact that the government has the power to police social decisions such as what we wear," adds Ewell.

Are these men not concerned that by refusing to wear masks they are contributing to the rising death toll from Covid-19? "Has anyone considered that wearing masks may be contributing to the rising cases?" says Ewell. "We have more cases now than in March, before mask-wearing became compulsory, so how can it be that masks are an effective way of reducing infections?"

The reluctance to wear a mask is the result of internalised masculinity norms

The dangers of all this are clear to see. Not only are men more likely to be infected with coronavirus, but countless studies have shown they are also more likely to die after contracting the virus. In Europe, the World Health Organization reports that 70 per cent of all intensive care admissions related to Covid-19 were men, with men accounting for 57 per cent of all deaths. Meanwhile, research published in March by the British Medical Journal also found that the proportion of Covid-19 deaths were higher in men across China, Iran and South Korea. Additionally, data collated by Global Health 50/50 shows that, in the vast majority of other countries, men are consistently dying from coronavirus at a higher rate than women.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like anything is changing any time soon. Particularly not when you consider the fact that world leaders continue to downplay the virus. Since recovering from Covid-19, Trump has returned to hosting campaign rallies with mostly maskless crowds. Naturally, he, too, is maskless. And consider Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who described coronavirus as "a little flu". American comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan recently said that "only b****es wear face masks". But perhaps the solution is easier than we think. At least, that's what one recent article in the Los Angeles Times would have us believe. If we make face masks more "masculine", it suggested, men might be more inclined to wear them.

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The link between masculinity and face coverings

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The link between masculinity and face coverings

You can be fined £100 for not wearing a mask on public transport in England.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

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'Real men don't wear masks': The link between masculinity and face coverings

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Lifestyle Figures suggest that men are more likely to refuse to wear face coverings than women. Olivia Petter investigates a gender imbalance in approaches to the pandemic Thursday 22 October 2020 15:28 A ndrew, 46, from London, has not worn a face covering once during the coronavirus pandemic.

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One in five men in the UK don't believe that gender inequality is still a reality in society today, according to new research into toxic masculinity and gender issues.

The research, which was conducted by YouGov on the behalf of the University of Glasgow and FutureLearn, also found that there was a generational gap between views on gender inequality.

One in five (22 per cent) of under 35s believe gender inequality doesn't exist compared to nearly one in three (30 per cent) over over 35 year olds.

And 23 per cent of under 35s don't believe toxic masculinity has never existed, while 27 per cent of over 35s agree it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, 37 per cent of men and 52 per cent of women reported that they did believe toxic masculinity was a big issue in modern society.

Respondents to the survey - which was conducted in October of more than 2,000 people - were also asked about the causes of toxic masculinity, and 38 per cent answered that a stereotypical image of what it means to be "masculine" is responsible.

And one in ten said it was an environment that allows for misogyny that enables it to continue.

It was also found that 8.9 million Brits viewed themselves as lacking knowledge about the issue itself.

The research was commissioned as FutureLearn and the university launch a free online course on gender history, equality and stereotypes, titled "A Global History Of Sex and Gender".

"Gender and sexual inequality is a central issue in today's global culture wars - from the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo, to reproductive justice and trans rights," Dr Tanya Cheadle, a lecturer in gender history at University of Glasgow.

Gay and trans rights will also be studied as part of the course, after 7.8 million respondents also admitted to not knowing enough about LGBTQ+ rights.

"This course provides the vital historical perspective necessary to enact meaning social change," adds Dr Tanya Cheadle.

"Reaching a wide audience through this accessible online platform allows us a real opportunity to inform and progress the conversation, sharing with a broad, international audience the very latest research on the rich and sometimes surprising history of past attitudes and activism on sex and gender."

The course has been available remotely since 26 October.

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One in five men don't believe gender inequality is a reality, study finds

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One in five men in the UK don't believe that gender inequality is still a reality in society today, according to new research into toxic masculinity and gender issues. The research, which was conducted by YouGov on the behalf of the University of Glasgow and FutureLearn, also found that there was a generational gap between views on gender inequality.

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Femboys are gracing us with their dazzling skirts, flowing dresses, cute tops, and nail polish. We take a look at the history and influence of TikTok's sweetest trend.

If you haven't downloaded TikTok yet, you may be unaware of the emerging community of Femboyssweeping the platform. A popular term for cisgender or non-binary users breaking traditional norms of masculinity, Femboys are bringing a non-conformist, self-confident attitude to the surface and people are loving it.

However, the roots of this trend run a lot deeper than the average TikToker may be aware of.

History of the femboy

Before we jump into the viral vids, it's worth looking at where the term began. In the late '90s, 'femboy' was a word used to belittle men who didn't fit into traditional standards of masculinity. In the 21st century, however, the term has been reclaimed as a positive means of self-identification. Beginning on the ever-grinding cogs of Reddit and ending up on TikTok, a community using the term to subvert the norms of gender have quickly grown into a viral sensation.

The hashtag #femboyfriday has over 250 million views on TikTok and it's showing no signs of slowing down.

TikTok user @thatsusboi has been largely credited with bringing the femboy to the attention of TikTok's 800 million users.

Seth's gender-bending style was an overnight success, with his killer videos racking up over a million views. In an interview with VICE, the seventeen-year-old stated, "the term [femboy] gave me a community."

Meanwhile, in the music world...

While femboys continued to populate online spaces, redefining masculinity to great avail, one particular celebrity was making very similar waves. His name? Harry fucking Styles. And it must be said, combating toxic-masculinity had never looked quite this good.

In between dropping stunning music videos such as Treat People With Kindness, Harry has been posing for the likes of Vogue Magazine, advocating for free self-expression and upsetting squares in the process.

In discussion with the magazine, the former 1D singer gave some intriguing insight into his new style: "I think with music it's so important to evolve - and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That's why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust, or the Beatles are their different eras - that fearlessness is super inspiring."

As he mentions, Harry isn't the first celebrity to rep the femboy name either; think Jaden Smith, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, to name a few.

Femboy criticism

Unfortunately, freedom of gender expression is still looked down on by many small-minded people in society. This outdated rhetoric prevents many people from feeling safe to live as themselves, something which TikTok user Jaydden discussed to VICE. "Over time, my videos reached the wrong side of TikTok, and I received thousands of hateful and homophobic comments," Jaydden explained.

"It made me feel horrible for just being me and expressing myself." To minimise the sort of bigotry Jaydden experienced, the best thing we can do is call out unwarranted behaviour. As Young Thug says: "When it comes to swag, there's no gender involved."

Our 10 Favourite TikTok Femboys

To show our support for the movement, we've scoured TikTok for some, especially memorable Femboys. Below are some of the more popular users:

Check out their vids and TikTok accounts below!
#10 - @johnsupnik (John Supnik)
Likeable personality, great style, fun cinematography. No complaints here for femboy no. 10.
#9 - @ricardomfv (Ricard0)
@ricardomfvAl menos los he usado para fotos en IG😝💕. ¿Les gustaría que hiciera parte 2? ##parati ##femboyfriday ##stunningchallenge ##fyp♬ Stunnin' (feat. Harm Franklin) - Curtis Waters

Ricardo makes a spot on the list for rocking outfits such a wide range of outfits, all with killer flair. Watch out, Harry Styles.
#8 - @cokesbath
Cokesbath is a real team player, compiling vids of different femboys together to show support and help grow the community.
#7 - @heybaokhanhh
@heybaokhanhhTata tata ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##asian ##femboys ##femboyfriday ##femboysarevalid♬ suono originale - LaMaryrose

@heybaokhanhh consistently showcases some stellar outfits on TikTok, as well as creating plenty of comedy sketches for your endless scrolling needs.
#6 - @imnotrozi (rozi)
Rozi took a break from being an icon of the #femboyfriday movement to call out the narrow-minded dudes trying to turn the movement into a joke. That alone is worthy of a mention.

@plumsojuI'm trying my best, what else do you need? ##alt ##boysinskirts ##boysindresses ##boysinskirts ##maidoutfit ##asian ##cropttop ##femboyfriday ##altgirlfriend♬ original sound - Jiayang

Jiayang's viral TikTok achieved two things at once. 1. Provided a hilarious take on the crop top and skirt wearing trends. 2. Assisted in normalising said trends.
#4 - @flawlesskevin (Kevin Ninh)
@flawlesskevinDefinitely vibing with the Kuro fit 😍 DC: Red Velvet #haikyuu #mystyle #kuro #weeb♬ YRN (tik tok) - Tyler April

One fateful day, a women's section top accidentally made its way into Kevin's shopping basket. He bought it anyway and hasn't looked back - big props.
#3 - @.jvdd (Judd Anderson)
@.jvddfeeling like it's friday #fyp #jvdd #lilpeep vc:@griffinspremium♬ mud on my gucci - griffin mark

The charismatic Judd Anderson was inspired to wear whatever he wanted by Nirvana frontman and feminist Kurt Cobain, who sported dresses and skirts at live shows.
#2 - @moysilk
@moysilkIM READY 4 MY FIRST DAY AT FEMBOY HOOTERS...CLOTHES HAVE NO GENDER 😝#MakeSomeoneSmile #prettyboy #boysinskirts #femboyhooters♬ original sound - MOY SILK

@moysilk is a key player in the femboy movement as well as being a pretty talented designer and artist. Shop his closet on GRAILED @MOYSILK
#1 - @thatsusboi (Seth)
@thatsusboi#femboyfriday♬ original sound - billy

Seth popularised the #femboyfriday movement and still uploads quality femboy material frequently, making him the obvious no. 1 pick.

Up next: Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens whinge over Harry Styles' Vogue cover, feel the wrath of his fanbase

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Femboy is the TikTok trend shaking up gender norms

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If you haven't downloaded TikTok yet, you may be unaware of the emerging community of Femboyssweeping the platform. A popular term for cisgender or non-binary users breaking traditional norms of masculinity, Femboys are bringing a non-conformist, self-confident attitude to the surface and people are loving it.

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On Monday, former president Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen launched the first two episodes of an eight-episode podcast collaboration called " Renegades: Born in the USA" on Spotify.

Springsteen and Obama have been friends for over a decade, and the podcast features them, as Spotify put it, "in deep and revealing conversation," which took place in Springsteen's New Jersey recording studio.

"On the surface, Bruce and I don't have a lot in common," Obama said in the introduction to the first episode. "He's a white guy from a small town in Jersey. I'm a Black guy of mixed race born in Hawaii with a childhood that took me around the world. He's a rock n' roll icon. I'm a lawyer and politician - not as cool."

He continued: "But over the years, what we've found is that we've got a shared sensibility. About work, about family and about America."

The first two episodes of "Renegades" are primarily centered on race and racism. Obama talked about feeling like an outsider in Hawaii. Springsteen discussed the racial makeup of Freehold, New Jersey, and integrated neighborhoods. Both talked about the life and legacy of civil rights activist John Lewis.

But a thread that already runs through "Renegades," and is slated to be discussed specifically in a future episode of the podcast, is what modern masculinity can and should look like - a topic that was brought to the cultural forefront throughout Trump's presidency, which was, in many ways, guided by his own pugilistic, narrow definition of manhood.

Take this section from the first episode of the podcast, in which Springsteen and Obama discussed that their wives, Patti Scialfa and Michelle Obama, had hit it off.

"Michelle was very pleased in the insights you had about your failings as a man," Obama said with a laugh. "And after we would leave a dinner, or a party, or a conversation, she'd say, 'You see how Bruce understands his shortcomings and has come to terms with them in a way that you have not? Uh, you should spend some more time with Bruce, because he's put in the work.' So there was also a little of the sense that I needed to be coached in how to be a proper husband."

Springsteen, also laughing, responds: "It's been my pleasure."

Already some key tenets of their shared understanding of masculinity come to light through that simple exchange: respecting your spouse as a partner, being cognizant of and owning up to your limitations, and continuting to work to become a better man and husband, which often means shedding some of the more toxic trappings of American masculinity.

Both men have discussed the concept of toxic masculinity before. During a 2016 interview with NPR's "Fresh Air," Springsteen detailed how he had to shed the idea that there is a singular pathway to being recognized as a man.

"You're young and you're always in pursuit of your young manhood," he said. "You're trying to figure out, what does that mean? There's a lot of pressure on young men to sort that out and we tend to gravitate towards one-dimensional iconography as far as what it means to be a fully grown man."

He also clarified to "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross that his early on-stage persona was just that.

"If you just looked at the outside, it's pretty alpha-male, which is a little ironic, because that was personally never exactly really me," Springsteen said. "I think I created my particular stage persona out of my dad's life and perhaps I even built it to suit him to some degree."

Several years later, during a 2019 conference for his My Brother's Keeper initiative in Oakland, Obama spoke about how racism plays a role in perpetuating toxic masculinity.

"Racism historically in this society sends a message that you are 'less than,'" Obama said. "We feel we have to compensate by exaggerating stereotypical ways men are supposed to act. And that's a trap."

Later in the presentation, he said that "the notion that somehow defining yourself as a man is dependent on, are you able to put somebody else down - able to dominate - that is an old view."

But it's a view that did define Trump's presidency.

From shrugging off his " grab 'em by the pussy" rhetoric as "locker room talk," to talking about his literal testosterone count, to portraying wearing a mask to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus as a form of weakness - and then allegedly wanting to rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman t-shirt after leaving Walter Reed after he was hospitalized for coronavirus -Trump's form of masculinity was a kind of caricatured machismo.

"Donald's masculinity is a cartoon version of masculinity - it is all bluster," author Tom Digby told Salon in 2020. "Donald is all about bravado; he never demonstrates actual bravery. From his reliance on fake bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam War to his present attempt to escape political defeat by sabotaging the Postal Service, Donald has consistently demonstrated a total absence of courage."

However, as Salon's Matthew Rozsa reported in January, a recent study found that support for a dominating style of masculinity could be used to predict one's love for Trump. "Trump strategically used rhetoric in both his 2016 presidential campaign and during his presidency that evoked elements of hegemonic masculinity and attempted to position him as the 'ideal man," Schermerhorn wrote to Salon at the time.

These limited views on what masculinity entails - stoicism, virility, dominance - can contribute to a fear of social and political movements that would upend current gender, race, and class-based status quos, which can result in aggression and violence. Through this lens, it's not a surprise that Trump's presidency culminated in an attempted insurrection at the United States Capitol.

"Renegades: Born in the USA" promises to be a balm for that. At a time when the country is so fractured, due, in large part, to a president who refused to admit he was wrong, it's refreshing to hear two men - who both represent America in their own ways - enthusiastically discuss overcoming their shortcomings and coming out better on the other side. As Springsteen puts it in the podcast, to change, you've got to forsake ego and "empty out and become a vessel" for empathy.
Episodes of "Renegades: Born in the USA" will be released weekly on Mondays on Spotify.

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At its heart, Obama and Springsteen's podcast is redefining the toxic masculinity upheld by Trump

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On Monday, former president Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen launched the first two episodes of an eight-episode podcast collaboration called " Renegades: Born in the USA" on Spotify. Springsteen and Obama have been friends for over a decade, and the podcast features them, as Spotify put it, "in deep and revealing conversation," which took place in Springsteen's New Jersey recording studio.

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BrightSide - Inspiration. Creativity. Wonder.

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The ideal man who has a muscular body and is as wise as an elder and as brave as a warrior lives only in internet posts. Each woman has her own handsomeness criteria, but scientists keep trying to find the image of the ideal man.

Today Bright Side is going to tell you about 11 features of a man's attractiveness from a scientific point of view. Some of the facts are true, and some are just surprising.

11. Thick eyebrows and square chin

These are the main traits of masculine men. Women prefer men with these features when they look for a long-term relationship. We hope men aren't going to dye their eyebrows as women do after reading this scientific statement.

If men want to be more handsome, their smile should be coy. It's even better if there is a trace of shame and dignity on their faces. Scientists think this explains why women like bad guys. Scientists also proved that a woman's smile is a powerful tool when it comes to stealing a man's heart.

4. Red clothes

3. Playing a musical instrument

One more useful experiment. One and the same man solicited for women's phone numbers. In different situations, he was empty-handed, with a guitar, and with a gym bag.

35% of women who were solicited by the man holding a guitar gave their phone numbers. 14% of women who were solicited by an empty-handed man answered positively. Only 9% of women shared their numbers with a guy holding a gym bag. But what if he'd had an accordion?

2. Body odor after eating garlic

1. Sense of humor

In a bar, there were some guys (actors) and an ordinary girl sitting at the next table. One guy told a joke, then went up to the girl and asked for her phone number. Then they waited for another girl to arrive. One of the guys told a joke once again, but the other (not the teller) guy went up to a girl. They repeated their experiment 60 times.

All in all, the man who told a joke was more successful in getting numbers. Girls gave their phone numbers because the guys seemed to be attractive and even intelligent. We completely agree with the results. And what do you think?

Bonus: Here's how the ideal man looks from a scientific point of view.

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Scientists Reveal 11 Qualities of the Ideal Man, and They Are Not What We Expected

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The ideal man who has a muscular body and is as wise as an elder and as brave as a warrior lives only in internet posts. Each woman has her own handsomeness criteria, but scientists keep trying to find the image of the ideal man.

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DaBaby’s “INTRO” Explained | Song Stories

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Earlier this week, the former One Direction star was targeted by conservative commentators in the US for wearing a blue lace Gucci ballgown as he became the first man to appear solo on the cover of the fashion magazine.

On Tuesday, Styles' mother, Anne Twist, made an appearance on ITV's Lorraine show, during which she admitted she may have played a part in the singer's decision to wear a dress and took the opportunity to defend him against the trolls.

"I think maybe I had something to do with it," Twist said.

"I was always a big fan of doing fancy dress with them when they were smaller, which [Harry's sister] Gemma always hated but Harry always embraced."

She continued: "But who doesn't love playing dress-up?"

"There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminisation of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence," she wrote on Twitter. "It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men."

Fellow Republican supporter Ben Shapiro also commented: "Pretending that men dressing like women does not feminise men is ridiculous, particularly coming from the same people who are celebrating Styles BECAUSE he is feminising masculinity.

"The Left knows this, of course. The POINT of Styles doing this photo shoot is to feminise masculinity. Otherwise why would it be headline-worthy for Styles to don a dress?"

Following the backlash, a number of celebrities spoke out in support of Styles, including Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood, who wrote on Twitter: "I think you've missed the definition of what a man is. masculinity alone does not make a man. In fact it's got nothing to do with it".

Olivia Wilde - who is currently directing Styles in upcoming movie Don't Worry Darling - also joined the debate, calling Owens' comments "pathetic".

"I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has - truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity - is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world," she wrote.

In the accompanying interview for US Vogue, Styles said there is "no such thing" as being overdressed.

"I'll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don't feel crazy wearing it," he said.

"I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it's like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with."

You can read more from Styles' interview with US Vogue here.

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Harry Styles' mother praises him for wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue

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Earlier this week, the former One Direction star was targeted by conservative commentators in the US for wearing a blue lace Gucci ballgown as he became the first man to appear solo on the cover of the fashion magazine.

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The suicide rate for men in England and Wales is at its highest rate for two decades, worrying new figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found there were 5,691 suicides registered in 2019 and that men accounted for around three quarters of them.

The male suicide rate of 16.9 deaths per 100,000 is the highest it has been since 2000, though it has remained in line with the 2018 rate.

Charities have called on the government to put additional support in place, with the pandemic feared to be adding to the UK's mental health crisis.

The ONS said it is unclear what impact coronavirus lockdown has had on suicide rates in 2020 due to delays to inquests.

Figures show that last year, men aged between 45 to 49 were the worst affected, while a break down by region showed the suicide rate was highest in Yorkshire and the Humber for both men and women.

Statisticians said that higher rates of suicide among middle-aged men might be because of economic hardship, isolation and alcoholism, and men in this category may be less likely to seek help.

Across England and Wales, the suicide rate for women was 5.3 deaths per 100,000, the highest since 2004. Deaths have increased 'significantly' in females aged between 10 to 24, from 81 in 2012 to 159 in 2019.

Responding to the latest figures, Samaritans CEO Ruth Sutherland said middle-aged men being most at risk 'is a worrying trend that has persisted for decades'.

She also said it was concerning to see a continued increase in suicide rates among young people, 'especially women under 25'.

She has called for 'a comprehensive national real time surveillance system' to monitor and respond to suicide rates 'before it's too late, to save lives.'

Ms Sutherland warned: 'It is not inevitable that suicide rates will go up as a result of coronavirus, but we know that the pandemic is impacting on lots of people's lives and exacerbating some known risk factors for suicide for some people who are already vulnerable.

'Undoubtedly, the pandemic has affected everyone in society, but Samaritans is particularly worried about three groups: people with pre-existing mental health conditions, young people who self-harm, and less well-off middle-aged men. It is essential that these groups are given the support they need before people reach crisis point. Suicide prevention must be a priority right now, so we can save lives.'

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Male suicide at highest rate in 20 years

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The suicide rate for men in England and Wales is at its highest rate for two decades, worrying new figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found there were 5,691 suicides registered in 2019 and that men accounted for around three quarters of them.

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By Kathryn Hogan

You're a man. A manly man. At least, aspiring to be a manly man. Sort of manly? You've definitely got some manly things going on. You're tough, you're kind, you're driven. And you're sick.

Really sick.

And so you're stuck.

We all know that men are tough, manly, unstoppable, practically bullet proof physical fortresses that could never be slowed down - let alone stopped - by a measly virus. No virus could get in the way of his productivity, protection of the innocent, providing for his loved ones, or moving of massive pieces of furniture with nothing more than his wildly masculine muscles and sheer grit.

According to the stereotypes, men will use any excuse to opt out of contributing, such that a mild cold becomes The Nuclear Death Flu when a man has it, at least in the eyes of those around him. The Man Flu is when he's not seen as someone sick deserving of care and empathy, but as someone moping and sniffling over-dramatically and being utterly, pathetically, infuriatingly helpless, meaning even MORE work for his hapless (and let's face it, much tougher) female mate, who still got the bathroom clean when SHE was sick, thank you very much.

Of course, that's what the Man Flu is: it's not a real thing. It's simply a way of shaming men for not being the impossible Bastions of Powerful Strength and Masculinity that our culture expects them to be.

Can a Man Be Human, Have Needs and Be Vulnerable, Without Letting The World Down?

The suffering of men is traditionally viewed through one of two lenses. The first is the traditional view of heroic masculinity, an impossible standard against which all men are measured and none measure up to. The second is the newer view of men as a failure to meet that masculinity - the lazy deadbeat, with a selfishness, a lack of emotional self awareness, an immaturity, is seen in implied contrast with the mythical heroic man who shows up fully and provides.

Ironically, our world rings with one of the most painful questions of our age: Where are the good men, the men we need? Often, that question is asking about that first stereotype of heroic masculinity, embodied by Aragorn son of Arathorn, heir to the line of Numenor and throne of Gondor, or by Superman, or male leads in romance novels. By holding an impossible standard of what good masculinity is, we're making it impossible to be a good man. The ways that men can fail to live up to that standard are practically limitless; such that even being sick and admitting you're in need is seen as failure. Sure, it's 'just a joke', but it's one that hits men where it hurts... and that has serious disappointment and heartbreak fueling it, from a world desperate for the presence of healthy masculinity, a world that feels disappointed again and again, through no fault of individual men.

Whether the stereotype at play is about the impossible standard of heroic masculinity, or the tragic stereotype of the loser who won't step up and do what's needed, the effect is the same: meeting the real, valid needs and suffering of men with derision, scorn and emasculation instead of love, care, understanding and empathy... when these men are at their most vulnerable. In both cases, these stereotypes about the great things men are supposed to be (and the terrible things we assume they are instead) colour our perception of male suffering: they tell us that if a man is suffering and in need, then he isn't much of a man at all.

What if there's something else entirely going on?

Relationship with Needs and The Hero's Journey

When we have an impossible cultural standard of good, or heroic masculinity, no one can meet it.

That's literally what impossible means.

But in reality, the heroic masculine IS present in a man who chooses to take the rest he needs and care for himself when he's sick: this is a man who is living the archetype of the heroic masculine by being realistic about his limitations, doing what needs to be done within those limitations, and overcoming a challenge so that he can get back to his other responsibilities.

Why is it that we mock a man for doing something heroic when it involves resting, taking care of himself, and asking for help from loved ones? Partly because we are relying on stereotypes about what needs we are allowed to have, and what needs we are allowed to acknowledge. Being needless, tough, selfless and productive is an ideal that is imposed on all of us, regardless of gender. For men, their very identity as a worthwhile man is at risk in the equation.

Another part relates to the implicit and unconscious ways we learn it is acceptable for us to relate to our own needs, and each others' needs, based on our gender. While gender roles and gendered behaviors continue to change, evolve and dissolve, there is still a tendency for men and women to approach their own needs in subtly, but substantially different ways. To be very general, men often relate to their needs with immediacy: when they're hungry, they eat; when they're tired, they sleep; when they're sick, they rest and ask for soup. But women are often valourized for relating to their needs in relation to the needs of others, often prioritizing the needs of their partner, children, friends, colleagues or community over their own, even for fundamental needs like food and sleep. There are of course exceptions and a broad spectrum of variation here, but in general, it's more likely for women to accommodate and give precedence to others, even at the cost of their own health, in certain situations.

Like, for example, when they have the flu.

Resentment: It's Not You, It's Me

The Man Flu isn't about men being sick or women being tough. Underneath it all, even underneath the stereotypes and gender roles, this is about resentment.

A woman who's sick will often force herself to get up and contribute to the needs of others. She's supposed to, and is even celebrated for doing so. She's a nurturer after all! Our culture is built on a fundamental myth that we must earn our right to exist through self sacrifice and working hard. As a result of this fundamental rejection of the feminine principle of receptivity, pushing herself even when she's sick is often motivated by a perception that the needs of those around her outweigh her own, not because they are more important, but because she hasn't yet learned to validate and prioritize her own health and happiness. This isn't her fault: it is a common thing for all of us in our culture to internalize a kind of martyr's attitude when it comes to needs, and to believe on a subconscious level that we'll only be worthy of love if we provide for others, even at great cost to ourselves.

When a woman does that and a man doesn't return the favor, she is likely to feel resentment.

The thing about resentment is, that you don't really resent the other person. You always actually resent yourself. The Man Flu stereotype isn't about men being sick; it's about how we are taught not to validate our own needs, not having those needs met as a result, and then watching as someone we've sacrificed for doesn't do the same, and feeling terrible: why did I hurt myself? I thought I had to. Now I discover that something else is possible... it must be wrong! It can't be that I hurt myself so deeply for nothing.

It's about society valorizing martyrdom and lack of healthy boundaries, holding self sacrifice at any cost as a gold standard that all should meet, and believing that women meet it better than men do. It's about shaming men not just for having needs, but for having the audacity to respect those needs and meet them with self love. Not just for being vulnerable, but for not meeting the impossible standard of invulnerability. This also has to do with nurturing: part of what we celebrate about women is our ability to nurture. Men are often portrayed as substandard nurturers by comparison. Often women won't ask for nurturing for the same reason they will prioritize the needs of others above their own: because of a false belief that they need to EARN that nurturing, instead of realizing that we all already deserve it. As I've learned from living with chronic pain, men are more than capable of providing incredible nurturing for those they care about, just as capable as women!

When a woman talks about the man flu and the resentment she feels that a man in her life isn't forcing himself out of bed in spite of being sick, she's really feeling resentment about the fact that she forced herself out of bed when she really needed the rest. Shaming each other for taking care of our own needs, for being gentle with our own vulnerabilities, perpetuates that cycle of self-disrespect and resentment.

The Fear of Not Being Good Enough

Stereotypes like the Man Flu also perpetuate the cycle of the absent/wounded heroic masculine. All men have that heroic masculine within, and expressing vulnerability is a vital part of developing it. When we as a culture make that impossible, we shouldn't be surprised that the heroes and good men all around us harden their hearts instead of opening them, hide their softness instead of sharing it, and hold back on nurturing and caring for fear of being deemed not good enough.

When men are sick, they are not weak, but they are vulnerable. In that vulnerability, there is a profound opportunity for healing. Being with men, with anyone, involves seeing and accepting and appreciating the good; not withholding even basic empathy lest this man ends up not being perfect. Believe me: he isn't perfect, and he deserves empathy anyways. It's easy to shame and emasculate someone when they're vulnerable. But emasculation is a vital word to understand here, because truly, stereotypes like the Man Flu take away a man's ability to stand strong in powerful, healthy masculine... the very thing that so many of us need, the thing that many of us resent men for not providing. We are desperate for their realness, for their openness, for them to be authentic with us, and we resent them for not doing so. But resentment is really about ourselves, remember? Authenticity requires vulnerability, and if we as a society viciously emasculate men when they're physically vulnerable, how are they supposed to be emotionally vulnerable?

The next time a man you know is sicker than you think he should be, you have the opportunity to 'cut him down to size' by mocking him about having a Man Flu, to remind him that he doesn't deserve care unless he works hard and sacrifices for it, to undermine the heroic masculine in him.

Or you could bring him soup, rub his feet, and remind him of his strength... just as you would with a weary hero, returning from the fight to rest.

You'll be amazed at how powerful and good men can be when given the opportunity. I know I am.

From my heart,

Kathryn

*The topic of receptivity and bringing out the heroic in men is a big part of my work on Feminine Energy. If you're feeling resentful of men, blocked in your relationships with masculine people, and generally frustrated in your life, it's possible that working with your internal Feminine Energy will help you overcome those blocks and begin receiving abundance in your life and relationships beyond anything you can imagine now. You deserve it! Check out my Facebook page to receive free resources and updates on Receive Everything, my upcoming book about embracing the power of feminine energy.

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Man-Flu May Be Real, But It's the Stereotypes We Should Stop Spreading

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By Kathryn Hogan You're a man. A manly man. At least, aspiring to be a manly man. Sort of manly? You've definitely got some manly things going on. You're tough, you're kind, you're driven. And you're sick. Really sick. And so you're stuck.

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The Guardian's Modern Masculinity project has been a great success since its launch in 2019, garnering huge numbers of views and large amounts of engagement, and being nominated for a Royal Television Society award. Here, we speak to its creator and presenter, Iman Amrani, about how it came about, and what it reveals about how men think about a wide range of topics ranging from male circumcision to fatherhood, role models and wellbeing.

The series has been running for nearly two years now. What inspired you to start it? What did you hope to achieve?

Prior to 2019, I had done a lot of journalism in male-dominated spaces and this laid the groundwork for the series. I had reported on the Bataclan attacks in Paris and other terrorist incidents across Europe, and had interviewed men about the effect of these events on their communities. I spoke to a lot of disillusioned young men. In 2017-18 I was covering knife crime in London, features on social issues in the UK, culture pieces on drill music and football - I was really just following my own interests. And then the #MeToo movement arrived and more questions were raised around masculinity. The Guardian is great at covering women's issues, but the more I spoke to men and became aware of the issues being faced by young men in different contexts and different walks of life, the more urgent certain issues felt, and the more it felt like we needed to build bridges.

All this conspired to make me keen to have an open, non-judgmental conversation about masculinity, and open a dialogue that could help us understand how we got to where we are, and how we can do better.

How do you decide which topics to focus on?

I'm quite personally invested in the series - it comes naturally because I'm incredibly curious about the subject matter and keen to learn more. For example, I have more of an idea of what motherhood is about as women have spoken freely about that experience around me for as long as I can remember but I have less reference points for how fathers feel. I don't think we hear or see that as often. So I was keen to do an episode on fatherhood and how dads have coped in lockdown. As journalists, I think it's vital we exit our comfort zones, look beyond ourselves and people like us, speak to people whose paths we might not normally cross, and be open to having conversations and hearing responses that we might not usually encounter. There is so much negativity out there, so I just wanted to help create something positive and authentic.

Is there an episode that has particularly stayed with you?

I'm very aware of the issues that feed into wider conversations about class and race, and I've felt comfortable. I remember speaking to Jon Snow - he's an older gentleman, he's in the media, a little bit of an establishment figure ... and he opened up about his experience at boarding school, and the abuse that went on. It made me realise that even the so-called "privileged" among us have a story, something they have had to struggle with.

I also spoke to an ex-army guy in Liverpool, who has chronic PTSD. He explained how the gyms being closed during the lockdown had affected his mental health. He said he feels he's a much better man when he has had the release that exercise offers. I was suddenly able to better understand why issues like stress arise among men, and why in some men, in some circumstances, that stress or frustration could manifest as anger, or even violence.

Iman Amrani: 'Mental health conversations can feel a bit daunting to start, so it can be good to start small'

You have spoken about some quite taboo subjects. Have you found that the video medium lends itself better to these types of conversations than the written word could?

I feel that lots of people still, today, don't really have the tools to break down their mental health issues. I find that when people are shown other individuals who are struggling, it makes starting those initial conversations much easier. It creates a safe space and an environment where men can let their guard down. We don't always make enough time to connect with people, and now we do have the time, but not really the freedom - so it's up to all of us to do what we can to reach out and check on people.

I get messages from viewers almost daily and I feel very privileged that people have felt that level of engagement and trust with what we've done. Sometimes they share their personal stories with me and I just wish I had more time to properly respond. There's something about video as a medium that means people feel really close to the subject, and close to me too in some ways. It's much better than words on a page when it comes to conveying nuance, too. Which is great, because these are real, rounded human beings and it's important to communicate that. A bit of a community has evolved around the series, and it's taken on something of a life of its own, which is really special. We also have a bit more time and space to delve into whichever topics we're focusing on.

What more can be done to encourage candid conversations?

There's so much I could say here, but I do think the first step is just to initiate honest conversations, and to create fun, positive spaces where support is provided and conversations can start. I really respect the work of organisations like Football Beyond Borders - they start with fun football lessons and then use this as a springboard to help young men better understand themselves, develop friendships, leadership skills etc.

I just wanted to reach out my hand to men and say 'we're here and we want to listen'

Things don't have to be so directly, obviously about the specific issues themselves - sometimes mental health conversations can feel a bit daunting to start, so it can be good to start small.

How has the pandemic affected your work on this series?

The last episode of series two went out in March 2020, when the world was changing. So I had done two series in the pre-pandemic world and continuing the coverage during lockdown felt like the right way to go. Mental health felt like an urgent topic from the start. We know now that men are more prone to certain types of mental health issues, and in these incredibly challenging times, I really just wanted to reach out my hand to men and say "we're here and we want to listen to whatever you've got to say".

What's next for the series?

The logistics of filming in lockdown have made it difficult to produce a lot of coverage, but we've got two forthcoming episodes. One looks at dads in lockdown - it's not about men and women competing, it's about symbioticism at home. There are so many modern dads who want to be good, emotionally available fathers and husbands, but then other aspects of their lives can suffer as a result.

We've also got an episode exploring the experiences of men in the mental health system - especially those with more serious issues like schizophrenia, psychosis and bipolar disorder.

There are so many more issues facing masculinity that I'd love to explore, and hopefully when lockdown starts to lift I'll be able to go out and have more conversations. I never fail to find them inspiring.

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Making Modern Masculinity: 'It felt like we needed to build bridges'

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The Guardian's Modern Masculinity project has been a great success since its launch in 2019, garnering huge numbers of views and large amounts of engagement, and being nominated for a Royal Television Society award.

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Most Australians recognise that traditional gender stereotypes are limiting and harmful for boys and men, a new national survey has found. And perhaps contrary to popular belief, many Australians are receptive to messages about alternative, healthy versions of masculinity.

The survey of 1,619 respondents, commissioned by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, sought to gauge people's attitudes towards men and masculinity. The sample was representative of the Australian population by age, state and gender.

Most people agreed on a few basic principles:

traditional gender stereotypes are limiting and harmful for boys and men

there is pressure on men to live up to traditional masculine stereotypes

masculine expectations or outdated ideas of masculinity prevent men from living full lives

boys need both women and men as role models, rather than only men.

Masculinity is enforced more by men than women

The survey revealed a consistent gender gap in attitudes toward men's roles in society and perceptions of masculinity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the survey showed that compared to women, men are less supportive of gender equality, less likely to see sexism as extensive and systematic, and more likely to endorse men's dominance in relationships and families.

Ironically, the male respondents in the survey were also less aware than the female respondents of the pressure society places on men to conform to a certain ideal of masculinity.

Read more: Inside the 'man box': how rigid ideas of 'manning up' harm young men and those around them

One of the most interesting findings was the attitudes of younger men. Young men (aged 16-17) generally had more progressive attitudes than older men on traditional gender roles and how they are limiting, outdated and contribute to poor health. Yet, they also had the highest levels of endorsement of men's use of violence, homophobia, breadwinner roles and men's patriarchal power and control in relationships.

Such regressive attitudes may reflect the intensified pressure they feel among male peers to prove themselves as men, sexist online culture or other factors.

Conversely, young women's attitudes were the most progressive of all respondents, creating a large gap between them and their male peers.

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Who is a real man?

There was little support overall in the survey for traditional definitions of masculinity based on homophobia. About one-quarter of young men and one-fifth of adult men agreed with the statement, "a gay guy isn't a real man". (Even fewer women agreed with this statement.)

There was also little support for the idea men should dominate and control women in relationships, although large minorities of men and particularly young men do support this.

Asked whether "a man should always have the final say about decisions in his relationship or marriage," 30% of young men and 19% of adult men agreed, compared to just 13% of young women and 9% of adult women.

Read more: Women aren't better multitaskers than men - they're just doing more work

Among our respondents, there was broad recognition that gender is socially constructed - in other words, that boys' and men's lives and relations are shaped by social forces as much as they are by biology.

At the same time, many respondents also believed there were "natural" differences between men and women, especially when phrased in these terms.

We also saw widespread recognition of the need to open up gender roles for men, especially because they constrain men's own health and wellbeing.

There was strong agreement, for instance, that men and boys should be free to explore who they are without the pressures of gender stereotypes. Most people also agreed progress towards gender equality and breaking free of gender stereotypes would be good for men.

And though domestic and sexual violence continues to be a major concern, especially during the pandemic, it was encouraging to see almost universal agreement among people in Australia that men can play a role in preventing violence against women.

Gender norms are improving

The VicHealth survey complements a growing body of Australian research on people's attitudes toward men, masculinity and gender.

This includes a national survey of young Australian men's conformity to the "Man Box" (stereotypical masculine attitudes), a national survey of Australians' attitudes to gender equality issues and a rolling national survey of awareness and attitudes regarding violence against women.

Other data tell us gender norms in Australia are changing, largely for the better.

Attitudes improved in the 1980s and 1990s, and although progress stalled after this, there have been steady improvements in the past decade.

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Messages for healthier views on masculinity

One of the key findings of our survey is that framing matters. How messages about gender are phrased affects whether people agree with them - that is, what messages they will support.

For example, when people are presented with messages that men are currently "under attack", substantial proportions of the population will endorse them - particularly those with pre-existing conservative views.

On the other hand, when statements on gender are framed in progressive or feminist terms - for example, men and boys are restricted by masculine stereotypes and should be freed from them - those with conservative views have similar levels of agreement to middle-of-the-road people.

Read more: Gillette has it right: advertisers can't just celebrate masculinity and ignore the #metoo movement

VicHealth's research also tested various messages for promoting healthy masculinity to identify those most likely to inspire positive change.

Among the key recommendations for community and health providers to better engage with men:

focus on progressive ideas that will appeal to the vast majority of people, rather than pandering to men with traditionally masculine language or focusing on myth-busting

emphasise the need to free men from outdated masculine stereotypes

focus less on the problem, and more on the solution.

There is a wealth of evidence that conformity to traditional masculine stereotypes is limiting for men and boys and harmful to those around them.

Most Australians agree. It is time to foster positive alternatives, to improve health and wellbeing for everyone.

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Who is a real man? Most Australians believe outdated ideals of masculinity are holding men back

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Most Australians recognise that traditional gender stereotypes are limiting and harmful for boys and men, a new national survey has found. And perhaps contrary to popular belief, many Australians are receptive to messages about alternative, healthy versions of masculinity. The survey of 1,619 respondents, commissioned by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, sought to gauge people's attitudes towards men and masculinity.

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On the heels of the wildly entertaining 30 Coins,HBO Europe continues to deliver solid early-year dramas with Beartown, a five-part Swedish adaptation of author Fredrik Backman's novel of the same name about a small town whose infatuation with youth hockey is put to the test when a horrific crime takes place, and everyone in the community is forced to take sides. Icy and enraged, it's a sobering portrait of tragedy wrought from not only toxic masculinity, but from the equally noxious-and potentially more deadly-systems that nurture, amplify, and protect it.

Directed by Peter Grönlund and written by Anders Weidemann, Antonia Pyk and Linn Gottfridsson, Beartown (premiering Feb. 22 on HBO) teases a mystery from the outset, via a prologue in which an indistinct figure chases another through the snowy forest outside Beartown, culminating with the pursuer aiming a gun at the fallen-to-their-knees target. The question of who these individuals are is answered at the end of the first chapter. However, finding out why they're in this situation isn't revealed until the climactic moments of episode two, at which point the story comes into total focus. Yet even if clarity isn't immediately forthcoming, the series proves instantly gripping, thanks to vivid storytelling that lays out the interpersonal dynamics of its many players.

At the forefront of the action is Peter Andersson (Ulf Stenberg), a former NHL star who returns to his frostbitten hometown to coach the local adult team. Recognizing that they're all washed-up "geriatrics," he swiftly opts to take the reins of the more promising youth club led by star-in-the-making Kevin Erdahl (Oliver Dufåker). This ruffles the feathers of prior coach David (Tomas Bergström), who's relegated to working as Peter's assistant, as well as grates on Kevin's businessman-father Mats (Tobias Zilliacus), a former teammate of Peter's who holds a grudge for having his own playing days cut short by an adolescent prank pulled by Peter and his friends. Complicating matters further, Peter is still grappling with alcoholism and the death of his young son, not to mention the pressure of having to win right away with his new team, since the entire future of the club-and the town-hinges on their success this season.

Peter is a mess, and he's smartly portrayed by Stenberg as a man whose blunt, no-nonsense approach to coaching is both warranted by the circumstances (and effective), and also more than a bit unpleasant. Just because Peter is right doesn't mean he's always in the right. The refusal to cast him as merely a noble tough-love savior is central to Beartown, especially as his clan settles in and his lawyer-wife Mira (Aliette Opheim) decides, without discussing it with her husband, to turn down a new job because she knows-after years of being an NHL star's wife, and shouldering the burden of familial grief over their deceased son-that she comes second to her spouse. Even as the show goes through routine plot motions, most of them having to do with the one-dimensional Mats, Grönlund and company lay a foundation of ubiquitous male privilege that will soon become its guiding concern.

[Inevitable spoilers follow]

While Peter's efforts on behalf of the club take early center ice, Beartown soon divides its attention between the coach and his teenage daughter Maya (Miriam Ingrid), who can see next-door-neighbor Kevin practicing hockey outside from her window, and who soon develops a reciprocated crush on the athlete. At a post-win party at Kevin's house, they're set to consummate their feelings for each other, but Kevin violently oversteps his boundaries, perpetrating an assault that's witnessed by Amat (Najdat Rustom), a speedy young team recruit whose mother is the janitor at the arena in which they all practice. On the eve of the championship game, this horrible incident comes to public light, and things just about explode in Beartown, given that everyone-players, coaches, officials, and parents-all have a vested interest in protecting the hockey squad and, by extension, Kevin.

Beartown 's subplot about Amat's uneasy attempt to curry favor with his boorish, intolerant white comrades is complemented by a secondary thread involving Kevin's teammate/friend Benji (Otto Fahlgren), who secretly pines for Kevin and is carrying on a clandestine romance with a boy in a nearby town. The corrupting consequences of power structures like Beartown's hockey program-which teaches boys that they're all-important, that winning is everything, and that being big, tough, profane, and mean is the way to accomplish one's goals-are visible everywhere, including in Kevin. To its credit, the series sharply taps into the mixture of entitlement, embarrassment, egotism, and anger that Kevin has been imbued with by his father, all while refusing to let him off the hook for his heinous conduct.

"The corrupting consequences of power structures like Beartown's hockey program-which teaches boys that they're all-important, that winning is everything, and that being big, tough, profane, and mean is the way to accomplish one's goals-are visible everywhere..."

In its later installments, Beartown takes a few contrived melodramatic turns designed to set up its neat-and-tidy conclusion. Still, it's hard to quibble too much about that comforting wrap-up in light of the fact that the material so perceptively gets to the real heart of the sexual-assault issue. With blood-boiling accuracy, it takes direct aim at the sorts of environments that cultivate and embolden ugly male ideas about their own preeminent self-worth, and the inferiority of those not like them. The bros in this sordid and anguished tale are a familiar bunch, yet Weidemann, Pyk, and Gottfridsson are less interested in critiquing one particular type of abusive cretin than in censuring the world order that lets them operate with reckless abandon and little fear of repercussion.

In that regard, Grönlund's series only appears standard-issue on its surface. Courtesy of touches big and small, as well as sturdy performances from its leads (especially Stenberg and Ingrid), it damns intertwined social, economic, and legal systems for their warped priorities, which beget crimes, allow for victim-shaming, and persuade everyone to let culprits off the hook. "Can you tell the difference between predator and prey?" Maya's friend Ana (Sanna Niemi) asks her early on, and Beartown poses this query not as an invitation to guess the identity of its story's Big Bad, but to encourage viewers to see just how many potential monsters are in our midst.

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HBO's Stunning Examination of Rape and Toxic Masculinity

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On the heels of the wildly entertaining 30 Coins ,HBO Europe continues to deliver solid early-year dramas with Beartown, a five-part Swedish adaptation of author Fredrik Backman's novel of the same name about a small town whose infatuation with youth hockey is put to the test when a horrific crime takes place, and everyone in the community is forced to take sides.

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Slowthai’s album - explore 2 sides to masculinity in current media

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discourse on men thinking women aren’t funny

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Petey - DON'T TELL THE BOYS (Official Video)