tough 'guise'

I really enjoyed this movie about the pressures of being male. I think it is easy to focus on the pressures of being female and the oppression that women have suffered, but it's often hard to look at the pressures of being the majority. It is such a narrow box that we seem to put males in. It's scary what ramifications there are from that small box. The correlation to the school shootings were down-right scary; some of those boys were barely teenagers! It's depressing too--how can such an ingrained thing in our culture be changed?

I thought the movie was really well done. They had a good amount of evidence and images from our media. It was interesting how bulked up men and guns have gotten over the decades. I also liked at the end how they showed a lot of positive examples of media masculinity (mcguire & sosa).

It also made me look at the males I know really well and if I saw any of this pressure in them. Some yes, some no. I don't know why it affects some people differently--why do some feel the pressure so much that they start a school shooting and why are some able to live and learn from bullying/pressures to be manly? Nature vs. Nurture? who knows?