The world is full of confusing constrictions and ambiguous societal guidelines when it comes to defining what is a man and what is a woman. From an early age, women are taught to be ladylike and classy, and men are taught to man up and bottle up their feelings, only letting wisps of hot steam creep out while years of emotions stay in. Emma Watson refreshed the idea of feminism in her speech for the UN Women's HeforShe movement. “Gender equality is your issue too,” as “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.” And as the world is recognizing that there is still a lot do be done to level the playing field for women, it should be acknowledged that there is also a masculinity crisis across the globe. Just as the image of the ideal women is twisted and contorted into the stereotypical, emotional, '50s housewife, so is the ideal male as one who hates to cook, loves to work out, and never cries as he is encouraged to have the “emotional range of a teaspoon.” Why are we advocating for half of the world to keep in their emotions and call it strength while allowing the other half to let it out and call it weakness? In my brief time on Earth, I already feel very cynical on the matter of gender roles.

As a child I never heard any one say to me “woman up” or “you throw like a man,” but I have heard directed to boys of my age “man up” and “you throw like a girl.” Those two phrases are damaging beyond belief. Who has the right to tell someone who they should or should not be when the human condition is one that is complicated and has so many variables. “Man up” essentially means “stop showing the emotions that you were showing,” but it never really tells a child what it means to be a man. An article in Psychology Today echoes this thought, saying, “The phrase 'man up' now loses its aggressive and shaming meaning since there are so many ways to be a man.” While the world is slowly accepting that a woman can be defined as anything from a stay-at-home mom to a physicist or any combination of the two extremes, it also needs to be understood that there is more than one type of man besides Ernest Hemingway’s code hero who is, "a man who lives correctly, following the ideals of honor, courage and endurance in a world that is sometimes chaotic, often stressful, and always painful." It should be okay for a woman to be the main provider for the family if the dad chooses to stay home and raise children. It should be okay for boys to like dolls, and for pink to be their favorite color without their father's worrying if they are gay as that's just another shade of the male condition. It should also be okay if sports are unappealing to boys because not everyone likes tackling people and running laps.

I would also like to note how using girls to characterize a moment of weakness in a boy's life is extremely insulting to the female imagination as it infers that in many things (especially athletic situations), girls are very much inferior. When Tony Porter, an author, educator and activist discussed in his TED Talk how when he asked a young male athlete how he would feel if someone told him that he played like a girl, the boy responded that he "would be destroyed."
When reflecting on this conversation in his talk, Tony asked, "God, if it would destroy him to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?" I have observed what young boys are being taught about girls, and among many things, it appears that boys are being taught that women are weak and allergic to anything athletic unless they are characterized with the negative connotation of a “jock.” In my senior gym class, I was one of a handful of females that were outnumbered by at least 20 fairly athletic males who excluded us from almost every activity we did. In that class, not only we were assigned athletic activities, but as an “advanced gym class,” we had a lot of class periods that were about strategy, such as how to get everyone over a rope stretched across the room about five feet off the ground without touching it. I am one to participate in every class, and I always gravitate towards positions of leadership in group projects, but I found that my opinions and ideas, as well as the ideas of other girls, were patronized or almost wholly ignored whenever an opinion was expressed. Not only did this hurt, it eventually crushed my spirit and will to participate in the class completely. I stood to the side of any competitive field game we played, and I stopped trying to strategize with the boys during our critical thinking activities. I hated that class despite my innovative and enthusiastic teacher, to the point that I, now an English major, preferred my pre-calculus class to it. Whether it was intentional or not, I felt that I was valued less by the boys who seemed to register my athletic and cognitive abilities as extremely low when they in fact were not.

In my gym class I felt that I was held to a standard much lower than I should've been, and when women are held to lower standards they become an other. Traditionally, when a group of people are treated as others, whether it's a race or a culture, they are viewed as something less than human; something that can be possessed, and today, a major problem is the objectification of women by men. It's in music videos, pornography, and on social media posts among many things. Because men are taught to be dominating in nature, the only place for women to go is below them, which is of course a huge injustice. Women are not men's shiny toys that can be seduced into a one-night stand and used for their bodies, and we are not meant to be hung on dorm room walls clad in bikinis. We are meant to be friends, soulmates, and a legitimate source of competition in the work force. When men objectify women things such as domestic abuse occurs which Porter in his TED talk claims, “The center for disease control says that men's violence against women is at epidemic proportions, is the number-one health concern for women in this country and abroad.” In my view, this is not a need for feminism in the way that the majority of the world understands it today. It is a need for the redefining of what constitutes masculinity, and for me, masculinity can mean anything as long as it includes respecting women.