Masculinity Analysis

Mascularity is a characteristic that most men possess. For the most part masculine men try to act strong, confident, etc. Men often become masculine figures without trying to. It is a characteristic that boys are born with in their genes, and as times passes their masculine traits starts coming out little by little. These traits become essential in a man’s personality. They influence how a man will act or be in their everyday life.Two authors named, Michael Chabon and Frank PIttman, wrote about how they believed masculinity impacted men. Everyone has a different point of view towards the idea of masculinity including myself. Based on my own personal experiences based on muscularity I have noticed that men do masculine things because they
believe they have too. As men become adults the last thing they want to be known as is immature scared men. Men instead act strong and confident during tough times. This makes me remember about the phrase “Men do not cry”. This phrase resembles a man's masculine behaviors when it comes to crying because in their eyes masculine men are not supposed to cry or show much emotion. Girls and or women are the ones who are supposed to be the emotional. A clear example of masculine behavior is my grandfather. His body was half paralyzed from a stroke that he had many years ago, but he has never showed any type of sad emotion because of this incident. He never asks for help even if it is very difficult for him to move around. He much rather struggle than to ask someone to help him out. I now understand it is because of his pride and masculine persona he wants people to know him by. He does not want to show weakness at whatever cost. Another personal experience that I recall about myself being masculine is going on the superman in six flags. I did not want to ride that ride because it freaked me out, but then my friends started to mock me because all of the girls were going on it. I did not like the peer pressure I was receiving from them, so I decided to go in it. The muscularity inside of me took over and I decided I would rather take on the roller coaster than to look bad infront of people. Masculinity can often push a man to do things he does not want to do and because of this it can be a very dangerous and bad trait for men to possess. We make our lives more difficult than they should be just because of an image we want to represent to other people when in reality we are not even representing who we truly are. The author Frank Pittman, In the story “The Masculine Mystique”explains to us what he believes being masculine is all about.
Pittman states, “ Maybe we’ll look like a boy if we’re ugly dirty or sloppy or scuffed up, if we keep a snake or a knife (or lately a gun) in our pocket”(2). This shows us that men go out of their way to distinguish themselves in order to make themselves feel different from girls. Men want to be the dominant of the two sexes. Even if they have to look bad or act hard by carrying a deadly weapon. All of this is necessary in order for them to look like a older man and not a weak young boy that could have possibly been mistaken for a girl. Pittman in the story states, “I had to gain acceptance by risking my life in various exploits, by getting drunk throughout my teens, and by making obligatory sexual efforts with women I didn’t know, didn’t like, didn’t want”(5). Growing up for a boy can be extremely difficult. He is faced with challenges he has to accomplish in order to stay in the group he desires at school, and if he does not follow his last years in school will the worst of his life and he does not want to be remembered as the cowardly little boy. These boys instead decide that they will do whatever they have to even if it is against his will to do. He later states, “I’m glad I’ll never again have to make love with someone I don’t love”(5). He was putting his boy and sexual parts in play against his will because he did not want to show that he was
inferior to them. Masculinity is a scary thing that men have to encounter, but instead of facing it they rather go along with the flow of it because they are too terrified of the consequences of not showing their masculine figure to the women and especially men around them. The author Michael Chabon, also included his thoughts of masculinity in the story he wrote “Faking it”. Chabon states, “I have no doubt the male impulse to downplays his own lack of fitness for a job, to refuse to acknowledge his inadequacy, insufficiency, or lack, or preparation, has been and continues to be responsible for a large share of the world’s woes, in the form of accidents, errors, and calamities that result from specific acts of faking it”(716). When men do something they act like they know what they are doing at all times without realizing that the repercussions of being wrong can be seriously dangerous. It would be better to hire someone who is qualified to fix something that broke instead of trying to fix it and making the damages worse, but they will rather continue to try at it because they want to fix it at whatever cost even if they do not know what they are doing. Their masculinity does not want to allow them to fail because it is not manly to fail. Chabon states, “I looked as if I knew what I was doing. And though I gripped the wheel with bloodless hand and prayed wildly to the gods of the interstate trucker whom I carefully tailed all the way to Idaho”(718). His masculinity is such a strong trait for him that he would rather put his family on the line than to admit that he did not know where he was going and that he was actually terrified while driving through the blizzard. If a person would rather put his own family on the line just in order to prove to himself that he could drive through the harsh weather it is sad to acknowledge that his masculinity can even be more important than his loved ones. A man’s masculinity represents what he wants people to see him as, but it is not necessarily who he is.
It simply becomes an image, and nothing more than that. Overall, there comes a lot more bad than good when a man tries to be as masculine as possible. It becomes a code that makes your life harder, makes you struggle, makes you do things you do not want to, and that you should never do. It is a powerful trait that gets deep inside your head and blocks reasoning. Your image as a man should never be strong enough that you are willing to hurt the people you love the
most.