Blog Post 2

The article "Man Up" gave me a deeper understanding of the social pressures that men deal with. Being a girl and being encouraged to be affectionate, emotional, and gentle is sometimes hard to recognize how men feel in regards to sometimes having to deny their emotions, act bold and masculine all the time. In the article Andres Gomez gives us an insight that for the most part men and women do process things the same, I could tell he was socially driven to not let his Father down and how he struggled to live up to being the best when circumstances didn't go his way. I was able to understand that self identity is constructed through social expectations and how we should do our gender. Now days as a girl I too feel pressured that I need to be more like the boys, to break the stereotype that girls can compete and keep up with the boys. The pressures are always changing but the pressure is always there. After reading this article it reminded me of my siblings. My older brother was in the military, he grew up doing sports and competing, and his friend group always did manly things. I noticed that he bonded better with Amy who was the less girly of the three sisters. My and my older sister were similar in terms of being more sensitive and girly. And throughout the years there was always a pressure from my brother that his sisters needed to be more like him and join the military to gain those skills of toughness. I love my brother, but reflecting back I question what his thought process is about going about doing the things he did in terms of living up to the standards of being man.