3 Most Damaging Words you can tell your Son

Rationale
In our current unit, we are focused on the topic of “Representation of Masculinity in the media” and how it is portrayed much differently to what it actually is. I will be writing as an analyst but also a parent who has gone through this time of where masculinity is the key to your success.
Through this written task, the aim is to inform the readers “3 most damaging words you can tell your son” and it how it affects the children. The intended audience for this textual analysis would be parents who try and tell their children to grow up and stop whining. This type of analysis could be found online particularly on blogs that have a direct link to the video.
In my written task, logos is the most effective stylistic device. For example, the statement “90% of students wrote pain and anger,” as a feeling they have oppressed due to societies influence on them. This statement makes the reader aware of the troubles they are putting their children though in order to raise them, as society wants them to turn out, engaging them to think of their past encounters with their children.
The stimulus text for this piece was a three minute video titled “the 3 most damaging word to tell your son,” as it was a direct relationship with our current unit of representation of masculinity in the media. Another stimulus text that I looked at was a blog site to find the conventions into writing a blog article.
Word Count – 253 words
Written Task

Over the course of countless decades, we’ve seen what is wanted out of the women, but lets look at the flip side, what does society expect from the males and the way this expectation has shaped their development. Through this textual analysis of this three minute video titled “ The 3 most damaging words you can tell your son,” we see what kids have been told i.e. “Be a man” “ Grow some balls”. This 3 minute video is subjected to be viewed by everyone but in particular to the men who aren’t really the men that society wants them to be.
In the opening 30 seconds of this clip, we see images of hundreds of young men and teenagers being told the three most damaging words, “be a man.” We see from a very young age that kids have been told to hide their feelings, hide their emotions because they say all of this makes you weak and if they do ever show their feelings out in public, these kids are being tormented by these three powerful words, “Be a man.” These three words, although small, can destroy a child’s confidence as they start to second guess every move that they are going to make. These children aren’t left to grow up in a free society where they can become their own person, rather they follow trends, trends that have been put up by the society. Through these “trends,” the child’s development into a unique person gets hindered.
Michael Kimmel, who is a sociologist and educator, says that United states has “constructed” an “ideal masculinity” that makes young boys feel “insecure” about their personal masculinity and thus the reason why young men, teens, go on to prove this ideal masculinity. This statement that Kimmel makes is true in the sense that teenagers go out to prove themselves to the society that they are the real man, they are the one people should respect and follow around, and this is what has become of American High Schools. The fight to be on top of the food chain. This is the reason kids get bullied in high school because they show something that society doesn’t want to see, a type of masculinity that has no place in society because of its weakness.
The video goes on to say that when everything’s normal, when everything is going good, guys will be the closest of people, but when things start to get rough, everything just falls apart and its as if you’re on your own. All a guy is asking for is closeness, but through asking for closeness, they unintentionally put on this mask which doesn’t show their feelings and keeps them hidden in a jar waiting to explode. This just shows us that if you give up your masculinity, chances are that you’ll be on your own, and that you’ll miss what you really wanted which is “closeness”.
Ashanti Branch tells us that kids wake up every morning and prepare their “masks” on how they will be walking to school, putting on their swagger, but continues on to say that a lot of them just “don’t know how to take that mask off.” In a survey, 90% of students wrote down something that they don’t want to show; which is, anger and pain. All of these feelings are locked up deep within trying to break through the thick skin of the mask that shows your masculinity. It just shows us that teenagers of this day and age are so pressurized to “be a man” that they are willing to harm themselves to be “respected.”
We live in a time when boys don’t value “caring, relationships, empathy,” people are going to go crazy. Boys are more likely to act out and become aggressive often leading to multiple infringements. People don’t see this as a society issue, rather they see it as misconduct, or an oppression or they just think that they are “bad kids.” But the truth is that its societies expectation of what a real man is that’s causing all these problems. Students who have spoken out say that they have had suicidal thoughts as early as 6th grade and felt alone for a really long time and had the feeling of taking their own life. “ Everyday 3 or more boys commit suicide in the US.” This is an astounding number of kids who have failed to live up to societies expectation of being a man and eventually ended up taking their own lives. People resort to these measures only because they feel ashamed or humiliated to live in a society that doesn’t accept them for who they are because they might be more in touch with their feminine side and don’t put on the mask of masculinity.
Every teenager goes through this process of being told to “man up” and that nobody should disrespect you and this is how you handle it as a man to earn respect. Well respect leads to violence as they are trying to show their dominance over the other through the means of violence or bullying. As a society, you are failing all the boys out there telling them to “be a man.” Over this 3 minute video we get an insight of what a boy is living through in this day and age. Society is hampering the creativity in the younger peoples brain and wants to make everyone the same instead of having billions of unique people, making them wear this false mask every single day of their lives.
Word Count: 925 words

Works Cited
"The 3 Most Damaging Words You Can Tell Your Son." The San Francisco Globe. N.p., 01 Mar. 2014. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.

Works Consulted
Cader, Roshan. "Peter Clarke--In Memoriam." AFRICA IS A COUNTRY. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2014. <http://africasacountry.com/rip-peter-clarke-artist-1929-2013/>.