The film really helped me realize that it is crucial to encourage his ability to work through his feelings, so we encourage him to let it out, rather than hold it in. We never tell him to stop crying or ask him to hold in his emotions. When my son feels sad, we let him know that it is okay to be sad and to let his emotions out and or talk about it.
But, the documentary did put it in the front of our minds again and helped us think about it in a new way. In many ways, we were already doing some of the things on our own, like allowing him to express his emotions and not assigning strict roles related to gender. How did this make you think about your role as a mother of a young boy? I really cannot imagine what that would feel like or how hard that would be to feel as though I have to hold in my emotions all the time. When my significant other and I talked about it afterwards, he said that he also felt sad, but did not express that because he just does not feel like he is allowed to cry, by society’s standards. Even watching the documentary, there were parts that made me tear up.
#THE MASK MOVIE MOVIE#
One part of the movie focused on boys feeling as though they are not allowed to express their emotions. We judge this behavior, but really, we set them up by assigning such strict gender roles.
I think the most interesting part for me was the link between how we treat boys as a society, and how some men turn out. It talked about how most mass shootings are done by males. What really caught my attention were some of the alarming statistics in the film, such as the high suicide rate for boys. Here’s the trailer I first watched that caught my attention. We have a six-year-old son, so a lot of the messaging certainly resonated for us. My significant other and I recently watched “The Mask You Live In.” I learned about it from one of my colleague’s presentations on gender, and I was intrigued. Our office manager, Ashley, recently watched a documentary (available on Netflix) called “The Mask You Live In.” The documentary "follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity."īelow are Ashley's thoughts about how the documentary affected her as a parent to a six-year-old boy.
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