As a child of the 80s, I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons like Masters of the Universe, with characters defined by their image as by their names, such as “He-Man” and “She-Ra”.
I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very good, and basically an advertisement for Mattel toys, but there were awesome swords, magic, spaceships and the villain was always bested. Also, I was 12 so it ticked all my boxes.
He-Man was effortlessly perfect – blond, bronzed and impossibly muscular. Additionally, he was immortal and wise (although I had to look that up, as it wasn’t something I remember from the show). He was one of many archetypal characters and concepts of masculinity I was presented with.
The Gender Equity Coalition recently ran the Respect Bendigo Forum on gender equity and being a part of that made me reflect on the images that can define “masculinity”, particularly for young men.
I know, as a young man, I felt the unrest of not fitting that masculine stereotype of physical strength and stature. I was short, scrawny, pale, freckly and academic but I wanted to be brave and liked and maybe a little bit heroic. I wanted to fit in.
He-Man was not academic. Who needs to hit the books when you’re super strong, a powerful prince and everyone adores you? Sure, the show was fun to watch, but it also promoted something impossible or unreasonable.
Our boys and young men are now potentially exposed to an endless stream of even more dangerous images and expectations. Social media presents strength, power and wealth as inherently masculine and connects these with an entitlement to treat women as being less.
In this context, being a man means being powerful and being a powerful man means no woman is going to tell you what to do. Worse still, if you aren’t strong or powerful, well you can still treat women with disrespect. That’s not power, that’s abuse.
We do our sons a disservice by not addressing this. We need to let them know that strength or power can be wonderfully positive, and achieved in so many ways, but they don’t exclude being compassionate, inclusive and respecting women as equals.
Not He-Man, but human.
Sometimes it seems impossible to overcome the stereotypes, but having sons of my own showed me the positive effect of having a conversation with a loving male who really cares for them. When they were teenagers and exploring these stereotypes, I’d been lucky to be a part of many sessions like the Respect Bendigo Forum and was informed enough to help them detangle the awesome bits of being a man without any need to exclude all the wonderful elements of being a human and humane.
I’m so grateful for that learning, mostly from amazing women who work in this equity space. We need more men to be there as well, helping our young men through this maze, allowing them to be great humans.