REDEFINING MASCULINITY FOR A NEW GENERATION OF BOYS by mychildmagazine.com.au
When I wrote Love Your Body, I let myself imagine a world where every girl learned to love her body. When I wrote Be Your Own Man, I dared to dream of a world where every boy was free from the pressure of being a ‘real man’.
As a part of my research for Be Your Own Man, I visited a school to ask a group of 40 children aged 10-12 what they thought about gender. I read them Love Your Body, and then we did an exercise where the children drew a man on a blank piece of paper and a woman on the other side. I then asked them to write words around their drawings that they associated with men and with women. Some children were confused by the exercise, and much to my delight told me that men and women could do and wear whatever they wanted and that they thought it was a trick (it kind of was). However, the vast majority drew heavily on gender stereotypes. The most concerning was the boys who had written ‘pushes down feelings’ next to their drawings of men. After they had completed the activity we all sat on the floor and I told the children to close their eyes.