In the documentary “The Mask You Live In”, we see many aspects about how a ‘man’ should act and how he shouldn’t. In this documentary, there were a lot of boys who spoke about their experiences and talk about how they can’t act a certain way, like showing emotions or talking to friends about personal problems, and they talk about how bad it is for them.

The first point that got my attention in the documentary was how boys nowadays can’t follow their dreams because they’re pressured into doing something else as what they want to do is not ‘manly’. For example, arts can sometimes be considered to not be manly and someone who is interested and is talented at this could just lose it all to do something that makes him feel like he belongs, so peer and social pressure plays a big role in this.

Another point that they said in the documentary was that the way of parenting plays a big role in how the son turns out. If the parents are very supportive and show the son that he can always talk to them about whatever he wants to talk about, the boy will be more comfortable talking about his problems. But if he was raised with the attitude of ‘be a man’ or ‘don’t cry’, and also that showing emotions is not manly, then the boy will be very closed in his own problems and will not feel comfortable talking about it to anyone, as his own parents judged him about it.

When boys do have problems going on in their life and do not have someone to talk about, they usually turn to drugs and drinking, and sometimes even violence. And when they can’t take it no more, they start contemplating suicide.

The part from Carlos Gomez’s book where he says “Masculinity is a choke chain. It is a suffocating bar that will never be met” really stands out because what he is saying is true, that no one will ever be the toughest, the most brave, the most powerful and the most ‘manly’. And from when we are younger, we are always taught to be tough and strong and not to fear anything to become men, but it is very tiring as there is always someone who is stronger than you. And either way, physical strength is NOT what makes someone a man.