Supplemental Post #5 - Joyce Chun

I know our classmate already wrote about this, but I wanted to write about it again because of the relevance it has with our screening from last week. Justin Baldoni is coming to USC tomorrow to speak about why he's done trying to be "man enough" and this made me think about how I still catch myself saying "man up" to friends when I need them to be braver or take a risk. I realized how incorrect this commonly used term is to tell someone to "man up". I read an interview Justin Baldoni did and one line that caught my eye was, "I would watch Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and think, 'That's what a man was supposed to look like, and feel really far away from that. I didn't start building muscle until I was 17, and where I grew up, muscles meant something.'" Last week's Terminator 2 displays Arnold Schwarzenegger to be this invincible, strong robot that protects no matter what comes at him. This is exactly what Justin Baldoni was talking about when remembering looking up to Arnold Schwarzenegger to be his "idol" as a man. As a child, he looked up to these actors because they were the "perfect man" striving to be like them. I know it's gotten much better today compared to before, however, it's still so easy to do the same and not realize how incorrect it is to limit the definition of masculinity to be someone that's muscular, strong, and brave. Like Justin Baldoni says, "Maybe it makes me more of a man to stand up and say, 'I don't know the answer.'" This is also relevant to women as well, as talked about before, how the definition of being "feminine" is limited to liking pink, not playing sports, doing 'girly' things. These are all, once again, good reminders to stop being so restricting and be more mindful of what each term implies.