Mexican Masculinity

The video we watched on masculinity in class made me think about how ideas of  masculinity may differ within cultures and how they are reinforced. I was raised in a traditional Mexican home. Of course things have changed now but i feel that the gender differentiations that i learned as a child have at some level an effect on how i think now even in a modern society. One of the primary places where masculinity and maleness is defined is in male archetypes in cinema. As a child my dad loved watching classic Mexican films from Mexico's Golden Cinema Age. I remember watching a particular film over and over. It was called "Alla en el Rancho Grande". This film created the archetype of what is know as El Charro. El Charro can be compared to a cowboy. El Charro is a character that embodies all Mexican ideologies about masculinity or what it meant to me a man. Charro's were skilled horsemen, they were strong and tough and they never did a woman's work. They were quite the womanizers and never put down a fight if they were challenged. For Mexican men these films translated what their roles as men were. I remember as a child at parties the men in my family would gather in a separate area than the women. My mom my sisters and i would usually be in the kitchen cooking the meals. Another part of earlier Mexican Culture that shaped gender roles and  gender expectations was Luchadores, Mexican wrestlers.When i was a child Luchadores were very popular, all my boy cousins would wrestle each other pretending to be a Luchador. Even though we were children we were aware of our roles. When i tried to play Luchadores my boy cousins wouldn't let me because i was a girl. And so watching these types of media construct and reinforce our roles and capabilities. Because i was a girl my capabilities couldn't include being tough or strong enough to play wrestling. For me watching these types of media as a child made me aware of what my place was within my Mexican Culture. I feel that things have changed a for my family's younger generations because of the assimilation of Mexican families to American culture. However, even so kids are still getting these roles through American Culture through examples like those we saw in class.

better, faster, stronger

Seven months after his knee surgery, Terrell Owens is back as a free-agent and looking to stir things up once again. In an interview with NFL.com, he talked about his public workout, some former teammates, and the success of rookie quarterbacks Cam Newton and Tim Tebow.

"Cam Newton is amazing. He's getting praised, but I guarantee you if Tebow was doing what Cam was doing, he'd be all over billboards. He'd be on every commercial. He'd be all over the place."

T.O. is infamous for saying and doing some arrogant things on and off the football field so I don't usually like listening to him, but here I think he's pointing to an important aspect of athletics that sometimes goes unnoticed. Especially in professional sports, there's this illusion of colorblindness. Analysts claim to objectively critique the decision-making and athleticism that goes into every play, but they do it in such a way that glorifies black athletes. They fuel this prevailing opinion that blacks are stronger, faster, and bigger than everyone else, which unconsciously gives people permission to downgrade their achievements. People call black athletes "naturally gifted," implying that it's somehow easier for them to excel physically, rather than calling attention to the intense training and hard work that every talented professional athlete has to endure. So they will evaluate Newton's performance against a backdrop of expectation and see Tebow as overcoming some disadvantage. Maybe T.O. is right in saying that the hype would be bigger if Tebow were in Newton's shoes.. I don't know. But I do think that this presumption of black athleticism kind of sounds like a substitution for racism.

Katz and the Current Problem of Violence

    While watching the video in class I was fascinated by the level to which "macho" images and the aspect of masculinity is pushed in media and present day culture. As a young woman, I already know and acknowledge the ridiculous standards of beauty that females are supposed to "achieve". These images of perfection and extreme portrayals of frail thin women as the standard of beauty do anything but promote healthy body images. While watching the Katz documentary he explained it is these very pressures that also affect the male mentality. From the age of birth boys are pushed to suppress their emotions, which as Katz expressed, causes severe emotional damage and an inability to feel manly and also express emotions and feelings. This then reverts back to an excessive level of violence, which was statistically shown time and time again within the documentary. 

The images of the toys showing the growth of arm width was especially troubling. The reoccuring    want to be seen as a tough individual is seen within the male mentality from pubescent years to maturity. Katz addressed this in part due to the current ability for women and men to pursue the same jobs and opportunities, which causes men to feel threatened by the female representation in all realms of life. I found this also alarming, since I see signs of male chauvinism every day. This then ties to the female body losing the strength of it’s “curves” seen in te image of beauty in the past, to the wispy fragile status quo of models today. 

This division between the escapism of reality through influencing the mental reinforced images of accepted behaviors and normalities in the media is what truly troubles me in modern society, and I was very happy that Katz and Hooks addressed these images with the same level of critical importance. 

Brick Wall

I liked the videos that we watched in class. It reminded me of the things that I learned in Grammar school from my friends. How to be a man. How to act like I don’t care about things or people. So much of what was said in Katz video was true and hit home. I grew up watching wrestling with my dad and little brothers. I remember wanted to get jacked like the wrestlers on TV and doing pushups whenever it came on. If you look at me now you can see how far that got me… nowhere. But just the influence that these people on TV had on me was huge. I never thought about it until I saw Katz’s video.

Rambo. I love Rambo! I watched all the Rambo movies, even the one that came out like 4 or 5 years ago where he is old as hell! Up till around 7^th grade I wanted to look like him and be big and tough like him. I always hoped puberty would help get me there. It failed me; I grew like two inches and got skinnier. Far from the physic of Rambo I stopped hoping. One thing toward his defense though, because the few things that were said about him were true but they left out an important fact. At the end of the first Rambo movie, First Blood, the last 10 minutes or so are filled with intense gun fire and explosions and all that good stuff. But it is also when Rambo breaks down and cries. He doesn’t just cry, this guy cries like no man on TV has cried before. He is balling so hard crunched up in a corner just weeping and everything. That was an awesome moment; one of my favorite scenes. It showed me that even if you have this tough guy front, this brick wall that nothing can go through, you are still human. You can still show those emotions and not be any less of a man.

Community Gender Roles

I watched this prior weeks episode of Community and I noticed a lot of the Tough Guise that Jackson was talking about. One of the main characters Jeff really embodies that front that men put up to be accepted and viewed in a certain way. Jeff for those who don’t know is the “cool” dude who loves all thing that have to do with women, scotch and looking like he doesn’t care. Now in this episode, the group of Community, go to a house warming party for Troy and Abed. During which we see a lot of the qualities that Jeff attributes to masculinity. He teases Troy about is to scale model of the Indiana Jones rolling boulder scene and comments about his virginity. This indicates that by being a virgin and creating the model that he is less of a man. Troy acts as the foil to Jeff by being a lot more childish and fun but still trying to be that manly figure. He even tries to show his manhood by saying that he “knows what cigarettes are” as he takes out a case and then puts one his mouth and chews on it…it was a candy that only appeared to be a cigarette. It is interesting to see the contrast of these two as they show what they define as masculine. Troy does the not so accepted masculine thing but still puts up a front. While Jeff’s personality is his guise, worrying about the safety of his women friends and feels he needs to guard his actual personality to appear manly.

Enough

The film Tough Guise really brought a lot of important facts to my attention. It is so sad that men seem to think being manly or being a man consists or fighting, hurting others including women, and using violence such as murder to make a point. After reflecting on the video it made me think of the movie Enough with Jennifer Lopez. In the film Tough Guise, it brought up the statistics of women who are abused by men. In the movie Enough, the plot of the story is about a woman, Jennifer Lopez, who is physically abused by her husband. The couple has a child and even the child is subjected to seeing this physical abuse. In the end of the movie she decides to take action and get back at him. I remember him making a comment like, you think your stronger than me? I'm a man you can't beat me. Physical abuse is never ok, but the fact that a man seems to think it is even when there is a child involved really upsets me. He makes her feel like she is nothing, he belittles her any time he can, and he uses the fact that he is physically stronger against her. This issue really makes me mad. Men should never abuse women, and women should never abuse men, but how often do you hear more stories of women being abused than men? What does it mean to be a man? Apparently it means the same to more men then others.

The Media Monster

Social media influences the way men and women interact with one another. Whether it be in a negative or positive way, the amount of influence that social media has on society today is nerve-wracking. While watching the two videos in class about the idea of men over-powering women, I was hoping they would include some type of research about teenage domestic violence. I believe that more domesetic violence occurs between teenagers because of the "social media" world we live in today. Textual harassment and electronic bullying are just a small glimpse at the issues teens have to confront in the age of social media, dating and relationship building.

            The fact that teens can have constant communication with each other because of the internet and cellphones can be a negative and positive.While technology has helped teenagers  stay in touch with their family and friends, it has also presented a obstacle to service providers who work with teens experiencing dating violence. Because it is so easy to contact someone through these devices, the abuser is able to use these tools against their victim.  While teens experience the same types of abuse as adults, the methods on how they abuse their victims is different.  The controlling behavior, or "monitoring", that abusers use against their partners checking their cellphones, stalking Facebook or making their partner check in with them.  Between texting and constant phone calls, the abuser can have total control over their victim through the day and night.

         One recent story that was in the news was about a ex-boyfriend, Nathaniel Fujita, that murdered his then girlfriend, Lauren Astley. The two high school graduates were dating for three years before Lauren Astley  broke off the relationship - which triggered the attack by Fujita. Fujita had been constantly harrassing Astley through phone calls, texts and Facebook messaging until she finally decided to meet up with him.  Because Fujita swarmed her with massive message, Astley believed that by meeting up with him, the harassment would stop - and it...with her life. Today, I personally believe that social media makes it easier for teenagers to have easy access to domestic violence.