Hyper-masculinity: How The Media Perpetuates Unattainable Standards

It’s no mystery that today’s youth have more media surrounding them than ever before. We’ve all seen the beer commercials that show off a woman’s body and the ads that show super buff men, but what message is being sent out to the general public or more importantly our youth?

Media representation can be helpful in showcasing and normalizing behaviors, but normalizing behaviors is where representation can get tricky especially when showing behavior that could be problematic. Bruce Tefft, author of An Analyses of Hyper-Masculinity in Magazine Advertisements, says “Advertisements depicting men as tough and violent (particularly towards women) is disturbing because gender portrayals in advertisements images do more than sell products.”. These advertisements also depict hyper-masculinity and perpetuate stereotypes along with showcasing behavioral norms for each gender. This is harmful because hyper-masculinity is an extreme form of the masculine gender ideology and it embodies characteristics and actions like violence, toughness, and negative attitudes towards women and sex. These advertisements are also used as “a tool for maintaining the current social order,” says Tefft. But in addition this mentality is also used to sell products to a target audience, and to propel the idea of conforming to society.

Hyper-masculinity, though is more than just some extreme ideal, plus there are several very dangerous attitudes associated with hyper-masculinity when it is performed. Insensitive attitudes towards sex is one danger that could lead to sex acts becoming more aggressive and a depersonalized act in general. Violence and toughness can be exhibited which relay that verbal and or physical aggression is an acceptable expression over other along with the belief that anger is the only legitimate emotion males can show, eluding to any other expression of emotion as feminine or as a weakness.

So what happens when boys cannot attain this standard? Well they may “experience shame and self contempt when they fail to attain the masculine ideas of courage and stoicism,” says Tefft. And since conformity in social situations is prevalent in adolescence; adolescence and young adulthood is the time that this shame will be experienced. Often there is a pushback from peers when one decides not to conform to these standards. The pushback may come in different forms included being excluded from social situations, bullying, or labeled with a term that is associated as being inferior. Many times these terms are “Fag, or Sissy.”. This can translate into school environments and exemplifies what C.J. Pascoe calles the “fag discourse.” The fag discourse is essentially when a group of students, normally boys, throw the term fag around in a setting when one person has done something to go against the norm or is showing behavior that is stereotypically more feminine. It is a label that doesn’t really have much to do with sexuality, and this label is passed onto the next person just as quick as it was cast onto the last. Boys from a young age are being taught that they have to uphold this behavior in order to be seen as “a real man.”

However, when talking about the influences of hypermasculinity, gender is not the only identity that is affected. Sexuality is another identity that hypermasculinity can obstruct, especially when showcasing differences between members of the same identity. For example gay men, as portrayed in media are normally really feminine or super masculine. The hypermasculine gay man, provided a way for people to distance the gay male identity from femininity. While this representation opened up new possibilities of what gay people could look like, these representations often left out conversations of sex, showing the intensity of gay sex phobia and homophobia in Hollywood. This lack of representation can also incite shame in a person when one cannot find examples of identities that they may identify with. But this also sheds light on hypermasculinity, as the male needs to dominate idea, is still showcased when gay sex is only portrayed as “acts of rape.”

So through these many depictions of different characters we are seeing generalizations of gender and the standards that being set are based of off these notions of what gender should look like. Thomas Newark states “generalizations about gender, because of their scope, are full of holes. Obviously, not every child fits them, and most likely no one child fits them all the time. Generalizations about gender at best can only describe tendencies and patterns.” And if this is the case, then our media representation is sending the wrong message and showcasing impossible standards, that we can’t expect individuals to meet. One cannot be this ideal person without hiding or changing apart of themself, and that is harmful to not only the mind of someone, but can also have detrimental effects on one’s self esteem.

The culture that we are creating with the several different forms of media have a direct effect on children and how they then grow and see themselves. We can already see the direct relationship when we look at pictures on instagram or some other social media network that show boys in this state of super fit, surrounded by girls and with almost a blank expression on their faces. But we can also see the harm when boys partake in activities that the media has shown as normal. I myself did not really understand how much this affected children until I took my brother to see the movie Love, Simon. Love, Simon a movie about a boy’s experiences of coming out made my brother cry. When I asked him why, he looked at me and said that he needed new friends. He said that he needed friends that try to understand him and who will support him because sometimes he just can’t be the person his friends wanted him to be. He was so caught up in having to act tough that he forgot his friends were also supposed to be his support system.

So with all the dangers that come with the ideology of hypermasculinity, you would think we would push back against this type of representation and stand up for the kids who find these stereotypes unattainable. But maybe we don’t take this step because we know at the end of the day this mentality is supposed to help sell products, it’s not meant to define social norms right?

Picture from lebook.com

All information from

Thomas Newark - “Misreading Masculinity”

Peter Lehman - “Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture.”

Rudy Dunlap - “They were not drag queens, they were playboy models and

bodybuilders: media, masculinities, and gay sexual identity.”

Bruce Tefft - “An Analysis of Hyper-Masculinity in Magazine

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C.J. Pascoe - “Dude You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.”