Masculinity Madness

In class recently, we have been talking a great deal of femininity in the media. In the documentary we watched today, Miss Representation, it talks about the role of women in society today and how media has made women out to be thoughtless, invaluable creatures. But, while on the topic, I could not help but think to myself that men are getting the same types of messages. Women receive messages about how their value is determined by their beauty. Which is terrible and needs to be put to an end. But men are getting harmful messages as well. From a young age, boys are taught that they have to be strong, smart, and entitled. As they get older, they get these same messages, but also contradictory ones as well. They are taught to defy women and treat them as objects. But then, when they are ready to have children, they must find a "good" woman to marry and have children with and to provide for her and his children under any circumstances or he is seen as a failure. Now how is that an effective message? Telling teenage and college aged boys that you should sleep with as many girls as possible to be seen as cool and powerful. Power. Such a significant and almost undeniable term in the masculine world. When young boys are playing cops and robbers to playing sports in high school to competing in the job market, men are programmed and trained to believe that they must be the best. All in all, I think the male population needs help too. There needs to be some pressure taken off them to let them grow into the men THEY want to be, not what society THINKS they should be.