7 Damaging Lies We Teach Boys About How to Become a Real Man

Many of the conventional lessons we teach our boys about being men are based on traditional wisdom that encourages young men to embrace violent behavior and stifle emotions. Boys that act outside of the masculinity box we've constructed for them — by expressing fear or insecurty, by eating vegan, by drinking juice instead of beer, by pursuing stereotypically "feminine" interests — are told to "be a man." This narrowed range of acceptable actions, behaviors and interests can make our boys more prone to practicing violence against women, to developing unhealthy habits like binge-drinking and to having emotional issues later in life, among other problems.

So why do we perpetuate these myths? Our society's "real men" should be physically and emotionally healthy and allowed to pursue their true interests, even if those interests don't conform to traditional masculine values. 

Here are some of the lies we teach our boys about manning up:

In the movie The World's End, Nick Frost's character resists peer pressure to chug pints of beer, pointing out, "Ordering water in a pub full of rugby lads takes balls." He has a point. For many male adolescents in America, teetotaling or even just drinking in moderation does "take balls" because it counters the tradition that drinking to excess is a right of passage. This is unfortunate, of course, because young men are statistically more likely to binge drink, more likely to commit sexual assault once intoxicated and twice as likely to die from alcohol-related issues as women. Increased health risks and sexual assault? What's not to like.