Been away from the steemit community for TOOOO long! Thought my first post back would be a paper I submitted for one of my psychology courses. It takes a look at how mass media has been prevalent in molding masculinity throughout the years, and the problems it has created.
When society imagines masculinity, it is often visualized as the hyper-masculine “macho-man” persona, but how did this ever get to be the norm? How did men unwillingly lose control of their own “trait”? As soon as a baby is born, they are categorized by color to indicate what sex they are, meaning from birth they are already put into their sex specific category of masculine or feminine.
Studies have revealed that parents treat male and female babies differently after birth. Boys are handled more roughly prior to three months of age; receive less physical touch from their parents, and get scolded more harshly when they don’t play with “gender specific” toys (Stern, 502).
From a young age, it seems boys have more of a tough time finding where they fit on the masculinity scale, and often times it can come with consequences. Having this early friction of where they stand on this scale can result in friendship conflicts, relationship problems, and lower self esteem. These young boys are not out of the woods once they grow older; in fact the pressures of society and social norms in terms of masculinity are going to affect these young boys for the rest of their lives, and will continuously become harder and harder to live up to later down the road. This is where major problems can arise later in life. Young boys who are already confused on what it means to be masculine can inadvertently be taught “masculinity” through other means, and in today’s world that mean is almost always social media. Mass social media can affect a society’s norms/beliefs, and ultimately affect how masculinity is molded. I will go into more detail below.
Some of the earliest wide-case examples of how mass social media, or in this case just mass media, can affect what it means to be masculine came from ads in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The ads from this period portrayed men as the superior spouse, alluding to women as nothing more than mere objects. For example, in a 1954 advertisement it shows a man lounging in a chair as his wife brings him beer in an apron and nothing else, and in the ad it says “Learn to train your wife in five easy lessons” (Durand). This also shows a strong distinction in role theory at the time, trying to express how masculinity was, and should be. Men were portrayed as always in control, the dominant figure, getting what they want when they want, having women adore them, etc. Sexism, both hostile and benevolent, were in full effect because of the power that men thought they controlled over women,
“Power was central to social definitions of masculinity” (Kilmartin, 110).
Kilmartin is stating that society views power over others as the desired product of masculinity in the past. What force would cause males to think they need power over women in order to feel more masculine? The answer can stem down to what they are in visual contact with almost every day of their lives, mass media.
In 1957, James Vicary and Frances Thayer unknowingly to others presented subliminal (unconscious) messages presenting the phrases “eat popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” throughout a movie, and in the films release popcorn sales increased 58% and Coca-Cola sales by 18% (Zimmerman).
Their plan to unconsciously control people, to a certain degree, worked well. Knowing this, one can argue that old advertisements inadvertently created subliminal messages, creating the masculine presence that Kilmartin says thrived on power. Unknowingly, they may have changed men’s ideals of what it meant to be masculine, and possibly have set back gender equality for decades.
As talked about previously, most boys start off at a young age confused about masculinity and what it means. Most of the time, a good father/father figure would help his son/son figure distinguish between desirable masculine traits from undesired ones. What happens if this young and confused boy does not have a father or father figure to help guide them?
Most of them often turn to friends or social media for their masculine identity. When it comes to kids looking to their friends as a father figure, most of the time it is because the parent(s) is/are either incarcerated, or there is financial problems within the family (Gang).
This often leads them into an initiation with a gang. The other outlet, social media, may be just as detrimental to a young boy’s understanding of masculinity. Just like how advertisement in the middle of the 20th century may have inadvertently caused men to change their social ideology of masculinity, it may be happening again today with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. At a click of a button, a young, naïve, and unsupervised mind can be flooded with a million forms of masculinity that are both common and foreign to them. Allowing social media to fuel his knowledge in masculinity he can stumble across many negative masculine traits that have since become popular.
Often in rap music videos there is some form of women degradation, whether it be with their slim to none clothing, getting referred to as “bitch” “hoe” “slut”, or highly over sexualized dancing (Materialism).
This is just one example, but compound this with many other provocative accounts/people/businesses that do/promote the exact same thing. This can be compared to the early advertisements, because these people/accounts on social media are inadvertently teaching these young minds that this is an acceptable way to behave in public and private with a significant other.
At the end of the day, masculinity is as fluid as water. The name alone does not justify any man being above someone else. Just because you may not be 100 percent masculine, does not mean you are any less of a man. Not all men were created to be the “All-American” masculine man like the media and social media tend to want us all to strive for. We should be the best “us” that we can be and strive for the positive masculine traits that both men and women can possess. This is the ideology of masculinity that should be taught to young boys who are trying to navigate through this tough time. You can like “girly” things growing up and still be considered masculine. Who cares? We need to broaden our horizon on what it means to be masculine, even if it crosses into the realm of femininity.
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