(by Mary Liebig)

Last week, Bryn (I believe?) did an In The News presentation on an article that talked about how boys who grew up interacting with Disney Princess content displayed less toxic masculinity later in life. This time study got me thinking about the timeline of toxic masculinity. Is there a time in mens’ lives when they are more affected by the restraints masculinity places on them? Is there a time when they are less affected? If so: when, and how come?

The common taglines of toxic masculinity — “be a man!” or “man up” — imply that masculinity plays a greater role later in boys’ lives. This is somewhat consistent with my understanding (as a cis-female, so take this with a grain of salt) of young boys’ experiences. For the most part, it seems like really young boys — say, toddlers through early elementary school — have more freedom to do whatever just simply because they are so young. Their community — other young kids — don’t really have coherent thoughts enough to judge others, and adults are more worried about raising them day-to-day than they are about little choices their kids might make that seem more feminine. 

There are of course various stipulations to this. For one, this varies a lot on a case-by-case basis. There are absolutely parents in the world who begin imposing the standards of masculinity on their children as early as they can. This can be as discreet as steering their kids away from forming hobbies or interests in things that are too feminine, or even making comments regarding what boys should or should not act like in the vicinity of the kid, implanting that idea in their mind. 

A personal experience I had when I was much younger comes to mind, although again this isn’t entirely applicable because I am a girl. I was maybe four or five years old and my mom and I had gone clothes shopping at the mall. I had gotten a bunch of Iowa Hawkeye (the local football team) shirts and I was pretty excited about them, but when we got home and showed my dad he was angry. Later, my mom told me he was upset because I didn’t get enough “girl clothes.” I was very young when this happened, but it is something that has stuck with me for my entire life, and something that I think about a lot. This is all to say that even really young boys are capable of being deeply affected by masculinities just by hearing their parents reflect them, and since adults often think kids aren’t really present for that early period of their life, they might be extra careless about what they say in front of their children. 

Another thing to think about with regard to extremely young boys is that in the same way that their peers are in touch enough yet to judge them, these boys haven’t come to their senses enough to really understand their own indulgences. The ability to live freely when you’re younger is nice, but you don’t have the wherewithal to really enjoy that leisure. 

I think it is almost universally agreed upon that the period from middle school to high school just absolutely blows. Everyone is insecure, and because of it they are all mean and terrible. By my observation, this is the time period when boys can’t get away with even a little deviation from the masculine norm. At least when I was growing up, if you were a boy with long hair in elementary or middle school, you were a girl. God forbid you did anything even more radical, like wear a skirt or take dancing lessons. If boys wanted to explore these kinds of inclinations in high school, they could kiss goodbye any semblance of “normal” social life or acceptance. If I had to guess, I would guess that this period of time is the absolute worst time for boys (and girls, but that’s a different story).

All of that changes in college. Or, rather, it has the potential to change. This part I think definitely depends on where you choose to go to school, and I have limited knowledge of different college experiences, so I can’t comment on that personally. Rice isn’t perfect by any means, but I do feel like here there is a space for everyone. People who I know to have been bullied in high school have been able to form great connections at Rice, as well as communities, and are able to explore their identity even further. In general, I think college is a more accepting environment simply because there are fewer constraints. You are more free to find your people and do your own thing. However, I could imagine that this would be different at a larger school, or at one with more Greek Life. I did a report for my Sport Ethics class on Ohio University, the “#1 party school in the nation,” and my research into the experience at this school showed that there continued to be a strong norm at the school that if you didn’t fit it, you weren’t going to have a positive college experience. I think this is common in the Fraternity system. The expectation that to “be a real man” and earn a solid community of “brothers” you have to be able to drink a lot, party a lot, and have sex with a lot of women is a very confining narrative that I would imagine inhibits boys from developing their own identities confidently. 

After college, you enter into actual “manhood,” or rather, adulthood. This seems to me to rival middle school and high school for the time period when masculinity might hit the hardest. Again, this varies case-by-case. However, masculinity was developed by adults and I think hides prevalent in many aspects of adulthood. For example, the expectations of fathers to “support their families,” by being the working parent and making more money than their spouse. Additionally, men’s expectations within their jobs may constrict them from pursuing the things they are actually passionate about. 

As an adult, men are hypothetically the freest they have been their entire lives, in that their life is their own and they can choose what to do with it. However, society makes the fewest excuses for them when it comes to holding them to the standards that masculinity imposes.