PEEP SHOW STAR Robert Webb is currently out and about promoting his new book How Not To Be A Boy, which examines the masculinity and the “absurd expectations” men are forced to live up to.
The comedian and actor appeared on Channel 4 News last night to explain why he thought societal expectations about not showing emotion were seriously harmful for boys and men.
And then I found that all the stuff about emotional repression, all the stuff about ‘be a man’, ‘man up’, ‘act like a man’, all that stuff about ‘stop crying’… The more I thought about it, the more I realised that that had caused problems in my own later life, because you’re almost training boys to ignore their feelings.
He posited that the only emotion boys and men are often able to express is anger.
“If you keep hearing, ‘Don’t feel these feelings – grief, pain, anxiety,’ it starts to sound uncannily like not don’t express these feelings, but don’t feel these feelings, and it has to come out somewhere,” he explained. “And it often comes out as anger.”
He stated that boys lack the “emotional detective” skills necessary to decipher feelings and blamed the “man up” rhetoric” for the “lack of self-awareness”.
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10155187498886939/
Viewers praised Webb for talking frankly about men’s mental health and starting a much-needed discussion about the importance of not bottling up your feelings.
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Fair play.
