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COOL POSE
Society places many pressures on boys to act tough, follow a strict code of masculinity and hide their emotions at all costs. This makes it difficult for adults to notice when boys are actually fairing poorly at school, when their friendships are not working out, and when they are feeling depressed or even suicidal.
Many boys are taught to repress their yearnings for love and connection and instead, build an invisible, impenetrable wall of toughness, a ‘cool pose’. Hidden by an emotional mask of masculine bravado or invulnerability, this leaves them isolated, forcing them to experience a gamut of lonely painful problems ranging from academic failure and drug abuse, to struggles with friends, clinical depression, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and even suicide and murder. The same kind of shame that silences girls from expressing their voices as adolescents takes a toll on boys as well, sometimes at a much earlier age.
The above is an
excerpt from Listening to Boys’ Voices: A Research Project of Dr.
William Pollack, Harvard Medical School-McLean Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts