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Essay / The meaning of being a man in today's culture
“He wears a mask and his face widens to fit it.” This means that men have a default stereotype and are expected to live up to those expectations. Men feel like they're not real men, don't feel enough, or feel weak. Stereotypes create a false image of someone or something. The danger of a single story makes people victims of someone else's opinion, just like what happened to Adichie. “The consequence of a single story is that it robs people of their dignity. It makes it difficult to recognize our equal humanity and emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” Adichie was the victim of just one story, she is from Nigeria and moved to the US, her roommate assumed she couldn't use a stove or speak English because that's what she saw in the media. Her roommate understood that Africa was all poverty and hungry people waiting for someone to save them. There is one story everywhere and this also happens with masculinity, there is one story about being a man. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In today's culture, being a man can be difficult, because a "real man" is expected to be tough and successful "The first lie every boy learns is that we associate masculinity with athleticism, size, strength, or certain kinds of skills.” Being a man in today's culture with the fitness industry, big men playing sports, all of these things make some men not feel like real men. Personally, I joined the gym because of these stereotypes that I was like 230 pounds and I told myself that's not what a man was supposed to look like because I saw all these fit men at television or football players, basically athletic men. . Adichie, in her speech, states that “it is impossible to talk about a unique story without talking about power.” A man is associated with success “The year I turned 26, running my own brokerage firm, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three million less per week. He's the stereotype of a real man, who is successful and tough and puts everyone after him. “What does a man do, Walter? A man provides, he simply endures, and he does it because he is a man no matter what.” We can see stereotypes everywhere, as we can appreciate in this quote. The media are the main disseminators of stereotypes because they only show bad situations. “The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are false but that they are incomplete, they make one story become the only one.” As this quote from Adichie says, stereotypes are incomplete, they only tell part of the story and that's where it all goes wrong. With masculinity, a man is supposed to be tough and try to deal with everything on his own because a man doesn't need help, especially when it comes to how he feels. “I keep my feelings to myself because somewhere I learned that this is what it means to be a male.” I feel connected to this quote and I think many other men feel connected to it because this is what we learn. For example, if a boy cries, he is "gay", but if a girl cries, she is simply expressing her emotions. For a man to look weak or think he is weak. can be really bad, a man must be the alpha male..