It’s Time to End Toxic Masculinity

On November 26, 2020, gospel singer Smokie Norful posted a picture on Instagram of his 16-year-old son. This wasn’t a picture of his son just posing with a smile, instead, it was a picture of his 16-year-old son sleeping in his arms. The picture caused quite a reaction from the social media world. Most of the comments were from people that directly follow Smokie Norful on his Instagram. These comments were extremely positive and encouraging, they just saw a son laying in his father’s arms. But somehow the picture was circulated on other social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which caused a negative reaction to the picture on those platforms.

Many people saw this as an issue because his son is 16 years old and Smoky Norful is a grown man, holding his almost grown son like a baby. There were comments such as “this is what is wrong with men today”, “this is the problem”, or “this is terrible”. Many of those whom I follow on social media would go on to repost the picture with the caption “thoughts?”, which insinuated that there would surely be a negative reaction to the harmless display of emotion in the picture.

Truthfully, what Smokie Norful and his son shared was something that so many males including myself wished that they could have experienced growing up. The freedom of letting your guard down without feeling as if you are less than what a male is supposed to be. Instead, most of us display a tough exterior and never really show emotions or express our feelings because society will label us as “soft”. This is…