“Hey! why are you crying like a girl”, “Boys don’t cry”, “How can you be afraid? Boys should be brave”, “You read books? What kind of a girly hobby is this?”. I am very sure you all must have heard things like these many times, and we still listen it everyday. These are such stereotypes which the society has made for men, and the men have to act accordingly. But do we even realise how a simple sentence can affect them in many ways. In this article we’ll be talking about these stereotypes and how adversely they affect them. The whole concept about typecasting boys starts from childhood only where we tends to buy cars and adventure toys for the boys and sweet and simple toys like barbie dolls for girls. Again I am not saying that playing with a barbie is a weird thing or something but I think it would be better if we let them decide instead about there toy preferences. Whenever a boy cries due to some reason, everyone is like “Hey! you are not a girl, stop crying”, but the question is why can’t boys cry? Boys are considered to be mentally and physically strong and are expected to bear their pain, agony, anger or sadness without showing their emotions. But it is very important to let them show their emotions, to let them feel their emotions, which will make them even more stronger. Another common stereotype which we have seen is generalization of colours by gender. Have you ever noticed that all the essentials and clothes of boys are mostly of blue colour while Pink is used for girls. So, what made us so sure that blue is boys’ favorite colour and pink is loved by girls only? Try to understand the seriousness of this concept that it has even affected the colour choice.

Because of these stereotypes, we, the society have made men emotionless, unexpressive and rigid. People must not see a boy as an emotionless human but as a human who feel emotions, who expresses emotions and who convey these emotions. Adults should try to be role models for this. even though this is a stereotype, a father should perhaps not only play soccer with his boy, but read a book too.

“And to all the boys who are reading this, it’s okay to cry, it’s okay if you feel pain, it’s okay if your favorite colour is not blue and it’s okay if you don’t like soccer but hiding your emotions and suffering in pain is definitely not okay.”