Deep Secrets Niobe Way Summary

Act like a lady, be a man, suck it up and drive on, would you act your age? Everyone who has grown up in present day America has been told some form of these statements, or at least understands very well what they mean. They all refer to the idea of what a model man or woman should be in accordance with societal standards, often with figures that represent model behavior serving as role models pop culture. Yet even in such short, simple statements such as these, a hefty weight of expectation is imposed upon the target of these criticisms, targets who are often young and impressionable. It is a hard truth, but there exists a massive pressure which American society forces onto its young members within it to adhere to its expectations of how they
In her work, Deep secrets: boys’ friendships and the crisis of connection, she details a study on teenage boys and the way their personalities changed as they progressed through high school. Most of them began the study displaying healthy, meaningful relationships with their other male friends, but this changed as time went on. Many of the boys began to show signs of dissatisfaction with their formerly healthy friendships with other males. Way explains this as essentially saying that these boys started to try and live like men are supposed to be perceived, stoic and uncaring about emotions, when in reality, they still cared for the deep connections through friendships they once had as children. It is because humans crave these connections at the core of our being, gender having nothing to do with it (Way 210-213). Yet society pressures boys to become “men” by disregarding these connections and it can cause serious problems for the young adults looking to be accepted in all the wrong ways. This way of thinking can even be traced back to 1976, in which the social psychologist Robert Brannon attempted to define the four principles of masculinity, and came up with rules similar to those the boys in this study attempted to live by (Kimmel
Women can have just as much pressure to act like proper ladies as men have pressure to act like brick walls with a face. I recently interviewed a good friend of mine, Quincey Wood, who has had struggles in the past with conforming to societal norms. Quincey is a bit of a tomboy, not one to shirk hard work or shy away from roughhousing, and thus has had difficulty growing up with people pressuring her to be more girly. One particular incident she related was when she reunited with some of her male friends after a summer apart to play football after school. They were happy to see each other again, yet when Quincey asked to be on a team, several of the boys laughed at her and made remarks that she would be better suited to cheer from the sidelines. “It was about that time that I realized I couldn’t just hang out with my guy friends anymore. It was like we were seeing each other as boy/girl instead of just friends who wanted to play together” (Wood). It does not take a genius to understand the difference between a few jerks being sexist and having childhood friends tell you that playing together is wrong. It is also easy to see that the latter option is significantly more life changing than the first, and will leave permanent changes to both parties