After School Updates: The Masks We Live In
The Masks We Live In
For many young men, we don’t get to a place where we are truly comfortable with ourselves until maybe our late 20s, or even later. And some of us never ever get to that place! Instead, we wake up every morning and put on a ‘mask’ that helps us navigate the world and helps us control how other people view us. For many of the children and youth I’ve worked with, the feelings behind their masks are fear, sadness, and anger. And when when we are not able to or not allowed to let down our mask, those emotions never get addressed and we get boxed in.
Can this change? We hope so, and we are doing our best to make this happen at Next Gen Men.
After-School Updates
Last week was a very exciting week for our programs at Oak Ridges, Ashton Meadows, and Redstone Public Schools.
We are wrapping up the 10-week program with two groups from Oak Ridges and Ashton Meadows and we always like to plan something special for the boys as a bonding experience (last winter we got hooked up with the VIP fan experience at a Toronto Marlies game and last fall we took the guys to a Toronto Argos game – actually the last game they played at the Skydome… I mean the “Rogers Centre”).
Last week we had two special events: a visit from Omega Access to check out the web series they just launched and a field trip down to Movember Canada’s head office to see a really incredible documentary, The Mask You Live In.
Three Men. Three Videos. Three Stories.
Omega Access, or OA Series is another new Men’s Health project funded by Movember Canada – we actually met Marc and Matthew at a Movember kick-off event back in Toronto, when we both had just found out that we were going to be able to make our ideas into a reality thanks to the support of the first Canadian Men’s Health and Innovation Challenge!
Using their expertise in media and film, OA’s goals are to “inspire a new generation to see masculinity as a spectrum” and “debunk outdated notions of masculinity by celebrating men with healthy lifestyles, alternative identities and productive passion.”
The first web series OA just launched has three different men sharing their stories of what they love and how masculinity affects their lives. You can watch all three of the videos with Antonio, Sheldon, Marczyk on their website now (each one is about 5-minutes long): oaseries.com
For their visit to Oak Ridges, OA brought the three videos to share with the boys, and led a discussion afterwards to find out what they thought about it. It went really well and it was really cool for all of us to see how everyone liked the videos. The boys all identified with different parts of Antonio, Sheldon and Marczyk’s stories.
Our Own Versions of Masculinity
The other big event for our program last week was a trip down to Movember Canada’s head office, for a special screening of the documentary The Mask You Live In with our groups from Oak Ridges and Ashton Meadows, as well as Kids Help Phone, and of course, Movember’s staff.
The Mask You Live In follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity.
Pressured by the media, their peer group, and even the adults in their lives, our protagonists confront messages encouraging them to disconnect from their emotions, devalue authentic friendships, objectify and degrade women, and resolve conflicts through violence. These gender stereotypes interconnect with race, class, and circumstance, creating a maze of identity issues boys and young men must navigate to become “real” men.
The Mask You Live In ultimately illustrates how we, as a society, can raise a healthier generation of boys and young men.
I saw the documentary at the International Conference on Masculinities last year and I am really glad that the boys in our program got the chance to watch it together and take in some of the ideas.
The feedback from the boys was that the documentary was really truthful to how they feel, but they aren’t supposed to admit that they feel this way. With the help of Joe, a counsellor from Kids Help Phone, the boys shared some of their personal stories of fear, anger, and shame (I was really impressed considering the half of their audience were adults they had just met). Some of their experiences related to wanting to be closer with their parents, specifically their fathers, and the sort-of-contradiction in that they are sometimes embarrassed by their parents’ affection, but at the same time they really need to know that their parents care about them and believe in them.
As we come to a close with two of our groups, we’ve seen a lot of amazing growth in each of our Next Gen Men. Although each young man is different in the way they choose to express themselves, I see that they are are all living their own version of healthy masculinity. I hope that they keep living up to the values of NGM, and choose to let down their own masks and help others to do so as well.
Big thank you to all our supporters and collaborators who made it possible for us to share these great experiences with the guys in our program.
Til next time,
— Jermal