Blog #2

Ashley Olson

Communication 160

Blog Post 2

9/26/17

“Men are not allowed to be afraid”

            In reading Man up by Gomez, the title really says it all. It solidifies my quote that I pulled from the reading. This quote, “men are not allowed to be afraid”, was the very first sentence in chapter 2. This specific quote is saying that men are not allowed to basically show emotion in the sense that they are feeling helpless, or uneasy of the outcomes. Gomez speaks on the fact that men everyday around the world are dealing with and struggling trying to conceal their fear.

            Men are perceived as these macho men that can take on the world, they don’t cry like women, they curse like a man, they can eat like a man, and can get through anything because they are simply a man. In this chapter, Gomez talks about how even as a young boy he is scared, and he means scared of everything. Men are ultimately afraid of appearing weak to everyone else especially other men and therefore why they try and out perform others. They stereotypical “box” flashes into every mans mind when they are instructed to “Man Up.” And even if we are just slightly outside of this box, insecurities begin to manifest them. Such a feeling of insecurity and shame cause men to curl in on themselves, controlling their personalities until their can squeeze themselves into that “box.”

            This article talks about how the “man up’ phrase could potentially be the most destructive phrase in modern culture. Gomez talks about how he had all these fears, like sleeping in the dark, afraid that he would never get married, and afraid that he would set goals and somehow fall short of them. This is the mindset that he had because of being told that he needs to be a man. He found himself saying "if I have these fears inside of me, then I will never be the man I am supposed to live up to, therefore I need to get rid of them now to save myself the trouble later.”

            What I essentially got out of this reading is that you need to take matters into your own hands and make it a life you want to live. If people don’t understand you, show them who you are. This is something that I have vowed to live by my entire life, and because I am not a man, I don’t have the stigma that I have to live up to of being a macho man.