"I'll Show You a Real Man!"

Children are precious, they really are. They are the future of the world, right? But as we also know, they are very impressionable. So when I see a child regurgitating what they have been taught, I never know if I'm supposed to laugh and think it's cute, or should I be concerned at the things they are putting out.

Yesterday, during my evening walk, I came across a young boy. He was probably around 6-8 years old, definitely younger than 10. From a distance I could hear him roaring. I initially thought that he was playing some animal safari game or pretending he was a lion. As I was passing him, he reached over to a huge stalk of flowers/field weeds and grabbed this huge stalk, uprooted it, lifted it over his head and roared again. I chuckled. Then, the young boy throws the stalk on the ground and yells, "I'll show your a real man!!" He then jumps on the stalk and starts to stomp the stalk to death as he continues to roar like the Incredible Hulk.

As I am walking away, I immediately stopped laughing. But I did turn around to observe. His father was sort of encouraging his beastly behavior. I began to think: why is it that this young boy think that being barbaric and beast-like is the definition of a "real man?" He was clearly equating super strength with being masculine as he uprooted the weeds. But he also connecting aggression and violence to being a man.

Sure he is just a child. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's just playing. I don't believe that. I believe that he is doing what he has been taught, whether it be by television, movies, or his father. At such a young age he was being taught "gender roles" as defined by most of society. It's happened to all of us. Many young boys used to role-play "Power Rangers" because fighting off the bad guys was masculine in the 90s--of course they always made me the female Pink Ranger though. I've said it before on this blog: are we really this far behind? I honestly don't feel like I'm taking the child's behavior beyond what I should be. This is very legit and very alarming. I don't want the future generations of men to think that to be masculine means you have to have super strength and be aggressively beast-like.