Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity

by Justin Baldoni

“good” is subjective, and we’ve got to stop trying to prove how “good” we are and just be it, live it, revel in it, and celebrate it without putting others down in the process.

Bahá’í Faith

I taught myself to suck it up, play it off, be cool, and effectively hide my emotions and dismiss my feelings in an attempt to fit inside a box that was built long before my friends and I were born. I began putting on the armor that I eventually would forget I had on, armor I would think I needed to function as a man in this world.

For me, fear, inadequacy, and shame are the ultimate challenges; they are invitations to lean in, to get closer, and to practice being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

Language is powerful, and it affects us in ways we don’t realize.

my use of the word “problems” is intentional, because to myself, and to many young boys and even men, feelings of fear, anxiety, and shame are all seen as problems to overcome instead of emotions to feel.

I’m a big fan of Brené Brown, PhD, a research professor and author who explains courage in the most astute and necessary way:

In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics are important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

From calling boys “girls” or “pussies” as an insult, to the wage gap, to rape culture (which many men don’t believe exists) and domestic violence, we live in a culture that not only slights men for being what we have dubbed as feminine but also puts down women, physically and emotionally, in the process.

This is not a liberal or a conservative opinion. This is what is actually happening. The work to undo and repair this damage is monumental.

I believe the world needs men to show up, not in big ways, but in hundreds and thousands of little ways, ways that don’t produce “likes” on Instagram or create social clout but instead create a better, more equitable, more just world.

That work doesn’t begin with an audience; it starts in the mirror, with an audience of one.

Socialization is the idea that we are shaped and molded by the places where we live and grow—schools, workplaces, families, sports teams, etc.

To this day I still feel sad about how the system of false choices makes young people, and in my case, a young man with talent in both sports and on the stage, choose between these two avenues. I often wonder what high school would have been like for me if I didn’t have to choose, if I had theater as a creative outlet then.

how many great athletes have secret dreams of becoming action stars, writing books or poetry, playing the piano, starring in the school musical, or in my case dying (twice) onstage in Romeo and Juliet? And how many physically talented musicians, writers, and performers could have also kicked ass on the soccer or football field? What unwritten rule of masculinity says we can’t do both?

The foundation of every single lesson? Don’t show emotion, and never talk about how you feel, otherwise you’re a girl, or you’re gay, which really means you are disowned from your own gender.

To have the most supreme insult for one gender be the identity of another is harmful and wrong on many levels, and it isn’t a far leap to see why depression and suicide numbers are so elevated for teenagers on all sides of the gender spectrum.

But of all the things I am afraid of, here’s what I know to be true now: I can be afraid and I can be brave at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, as my therapist once told me, I can only be brave if I deal with and confront my fear. If I’m not afraid, there is no such thing as bravery.

But the bravery conflict only arises when I live inside the false choice that I have to be one or the other, when the truth is that I can be both. I can also be afraid and not let that fear be the driving force of my life. I have the ability to put fear in the back seat, turn the music up louder, and enjoy the road without it influencing any or all of my decisions.

What I now believe and live by as it relates to fear is this: be afraid, be fearful, honor those feelings when they come up, but don’t dwell on them or let them consume you. Because it’s one thing to feel fear, and it’s another thing to let...

Outwardly, my friends and I had been living out the lessons we had learned on life’s playground. We had been rejecting what had been deemed feminine and weak. But secretly, knowingly or not, we had each been waiting for permission to express ourselves, to be seen, to be heard; we had been waiting for a safe space to feel our feelings.

It was this realization, this longing for permission, that made me double down on my radical path of self-discovery and growth and begin to take that journey from my head to my heart.

It’s amazing to me now how similar we were in what we didn’t say, what made us feel ashamed, and how that shame, or fear of being shamed, was such an organizing principle of our performance of manhood. Boys grow into men, yes, but in some ways we always feel ourselves to be on that playground, always feel afraid someone is going to call us weak and not man enough. We craft our armor against it like medieval knights, but if you’ve ever tried on one of those chain mail suits of armor, you know that not only are they so heavy and confining you can barely walk, but they also end up cutting us off from the outside world and completely preventing true intimate connection to others.

Before I deep-dive into this chapter I want to be very clear. One of the things I love most in life is health and fitness, yet it’s also one of the areas that has become so confusing for me. I believe deeply that our physical state influences our mental state, and I believe in the incredible power of movement to both reinvigorate and heal.

As much as I believe that my mental health, energy, and confidence are tied to how my body feels and functions versus how it looks, it doesn’t change the fact that men have begun to experience what women have been experiencing for, like, ever.

Today, men are no longer being rewarded for simply having functional bodies, instead, we are being rewarded for having big, muscular, defined, and aesthetically pleasing bodies.

My body has been both a blessing and a curse. If you’re ripped and strong, then chances are other men want to look like you, and many women (and men) may want to be with you.

But that’s not always a good thing because of a little thing called envy. Envy is not to be mixed up with jealousy.

I do believe we sometimes pick on and bully others when we are envious. And what do men do to other men they resent and don’t like? We police them and make them feel terrible about themselves. We bully, talk shit, spread rumors, and manipulate to boost our egos and to bridge the gap.

And all the while, we secretly want that very same quality in the person we are putting down.

I have zero issue with wanting to be a strong man, or even raising a boy to be strong emotionally, as the world is a scary place and being able to withstand the tests and trials, pain and disappointment, that life will throw at each of us is an important survival skill, but not just for young boys—for kids of all genders.

Of course, I want my son to be able to get back up when he falls down, to wipe his tears away after he cries them and keep going. To stand up and defend against injustice when he sees it, and to step in on behalf of someone else who is being bullied or oppressed.

But I would never raise him to kill off his sensitivity or drown out his empathy in the process. ...

Just as I believe women can and in many ways have historically done ...

what’s one of the key benefits that come with being the most badass or powerful member in the group? Sex. According to Devaney, the benefits of being an alpha include first dibs on sex with the females of the group, first dibs on food, and grooming from the other members.

In the article “The Myth of the Alpha Wolf,” Kara Lilly points out that in Mech’s 1970 bestselling book, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, he discusses a biologist from the 1940s who had been studying wolves in captivity and who first used the term “alpha wolf” in reference to the biologist’s “observation that male and female wolves seemed to compete to become dominant within their group.”

The problem that Mech discovered was that wolves behave differently in captivity than they do in the wild, and the “alpha wolf” actually doesn’t exist.

And what are those outside voices saying? They’re telling me that as a Hollywood actor who gets paid to take his shirt off (read: gets paid to stay “in shape”), who can mostly fit into the historically narrow definition that our culture has come up with for physical attractiveness, I have nothing to offer to the conversation on male body image.

And not only that I have nothing to offer but also that I do not have the right to contribute to the conversation because of my privilege.

Dr. Olivardia laid it out simply for me by explaining that appearance is objective, such as brown eyes, six feet tall, and dark brown hair, whereas body image is more about how you feel about your body.

So our body image is completely separate from our appearance and is intricately tied to our perception of our body, our attitude toward our body, and how we think other people see our body. This explains why people who, for whatever reason, society has deemed “beautiful,” “perfect,” “hot,” or “#bodygoals” can still have a very unhealthy body image. How we look and how we feel about how we look are completely separate from each other.

research into male body image—men having a relationship with their body—didn’t really eme...

As a man who definitely thinks about my body outside of its function, who has feelings and a warped perception of it (and who ha...

Dr. Olivardia explained that prior to the shirtless advertising that began in the early ’80s, there was the Marlboro man, who had a definite ruggedness to...

It was this new advertising approach, coupled with the Hollywood stars of the time (Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, etc.) and the accessibility to anabolic steroids that provided a platform for the messages of muscular...

It’s not that men didn’t have bodies, or that men didn’t actually look at their bodies; it’s just that prior to the 1980s, men tended to see their bodies ...

For thousands of years, women have understood the power of the male gaze—the power of men to objectify women, hold them aga...

Naomi Wolf’s 1991 book The Beauty Myth was a colossal bestseller because she talked about how women’s magazines reinforced this idea that women’s bodies were constantly being observed a...

it’s that we men most assuredly do NOT see ourselves as “just about perfect.” Far from it.