The Meaning of Being a Man in Nowadays Culture

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it”. This means that men have a stereotype by default and are supposed to fulfill the expectative. Men feeling like they are not real men, not feeing enough or feeling weak. Stereotypes create a false image of someone or something. The danger of a single story makes people victim of someone else’s opinion just like what happened to Adichie “The consequence of the single story is that it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult and it emphasizes that we are different rather than how we are similar”. Adichie was a victim of a single story, she’s from Nigeria and moved to the US, her roommate assumed that she could not use a stove or speak English because that was what she saw on the media. Her roommate saw that Africa was just poverty and people starving waiting for someone to save them. There’s a single story everywhere and thist happens with masculinity as well, there’s a single story about being a man. 

In today’s culture being a man can be hard because a “real man” is supposed to be tough, and successful “The first lie every boy learn is that we associate masculinity with the athletic, size, strength or some kind of skills”. Being a man in today’s culture with the fitness industry, big men playing sports all those things make some men not feeling like a real man. Personally, I joined the gym because of these stereotypes I used to weight like 230 pounds and I said to myself that it wasn’t how man was supposed to look like because I saw all those fit men in TV or Football players, athletic men basically. Adichie, in her speech she states that “It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power”. A man is associated with success “The year I turned 26, as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.' This is the stereotype of a real man, successful and tough and put everyone else after him “What does a man do, Walter? A man provides, he simply bears up, and he does it because he’s a man no matter what”. We can see stereotypes everywhere as we can appreciate in this quote. The media is the major stereotype spreader because it only shows the bad situations.

“The single story creates stereotype and the problem with stereotype is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story”. As this quote by Adichie says, stereotypes are incomplete, they only say one part of the story and there’s when everything gets messed up. With masculinity a man is supposed to be tough and just try to face everything by himself because a man doesn’t need help especially when it comes to how he feels “ I keep my feelings to myself cause somewhere I learned that’s what it means to be a male'. I feel related to this quote and I think that many other males feel related to it because that’s what we learn. Like if a boy cries, he’s “gay” but if a girl cries, she’s just expressing her emotions. For a man, looking weak or thinking that he’s weak can be really bad, a man needs to be the alpha male to meet the expectations of everyone else because the alpha male is the strongest, and everyone else have respect for them and look down when the alpha male is in front of them, and that’s the stereotype of a man, but not all of the men feel like that and sometimes it gets overwhelming. “According to research, men are less likely to seek mental health services compared to their female counterparts one of the factors that contribute to this underuse of seeking professional help is masculinity norms. It is often viewed that it is not okay for boys and men to express or discuss their emotions”. Usually men do not express their emotion because they’re afraid of what people would say about them, usually think that if they express their emotions automatically, they’re weak because a man is a sing of strong and brave or that’s what the media and everything that surround us says. and I think most of the men have been through this, no sissy stuff” (men should avoid anything feminine or associated with females) “the big wheel” (men should strive for success and achievement) “the sturdy oak” (men should not show weakness and handle their problems independently). 

The rules of masculinity, suppressing emotions among the men is pretty normal since men are supposed to have everything under control and it’s there when the abuse of alcohol or other substances get in the way “men tend to use more alcohol as opposed to women when they are stressed. “Men tend to use more alcohol as opposed to women when they are stressed. We can see higher rates of substance abuse in males because of that anger and emotional response”. For many men those are escapes from their problems that’s how they solve everything because men don’t want to talk about their problems. 

Being a man in this culture where we’re supposed to be though and have everything under control is part of a single story. Mental health is also involved, not feeling enough, of something can lead to some mental health illness. Gender stereotyping can contribute to a decline in men’s health over time.