The manly man

There have been many class periods were we discussed what media says it is to be a women and what it is to be a man. This blog post will focus almost entirely on how men are portrayed in the media. I personally believe that men in the media do not get nearly enough attention. People are always talking about how unfairly women are portrayed and how we are pressured into certain stereotypes. All of this is true, but I think it’s time to shed some light on how men are suffering through the same ordeals but are often overlooked. In one article the author pointed out that there are only two types of men in the media “manly men” and the “sissy men”. In class we talked about how in media men are either tough and stupid, or have way too many emotions and hit like girls. These unrealistic stereotypes don’t give the average man, who is kind of tough but still has some human decency, very much room to exist. Not only does the media not allow a man to have feelings without being a called a girl, there are very few overweight male stars in the media- this puts men under the exact same pressure that women face every day. There have been some progresses in the media in regards to men- such as the hit show glee portraying an openly gay character as the kicker on the football team, they are trying to merge the two types of men together. Even though there have been some improvements, men face just as much pressure from the media, and we need to learn to acknowledge it and stop it from happening.