Step On Your Sensitive Side

Bottled up emotions only lead to heartache. You don’t have to hide behind a shroud of masculinity to be a man.

- Harsheen K. Arora

Oh, you are crying?

Man up, will you?” And of course you will. Because boys don’t cry, do they?

No sooner have these words been uttered, than they act as a magical reinforcement of your masculinity. You dry your tears, don the mask of emotional unavailability and transform into the guarded, stoic man who knows no better than career, success and power.

Yes? That’s you? Well, that’s 95 per cent of the male population.

In a world — especially #MeToo movement world — where a lot is being talked about what it means to be a woman, we hardly ever discuss the struggles of being a man.

“You are too sensitive for a guy.”

“Now I see who wears the pants in the relationship.”

“Dude, are you still a virgin?”

And the quintessential “Boys will be boys”.

What does that even mean, really?

Boys growing into men are encouraged to be preoccupied only with competition, ambition and success, to the exclusion of all emotional expression.