I spent this past Christmas at my cousin’s house, with her 1 year old son, husband and 4 month old daughter. On the second or third night we were there, her son had a micro fit and cried, like toddlers have been known to do. And his father was there to help him work through that. He said a few things to get him to calm down. Everything was cool but the one sentence that stood out was “Big boys don’t cry.” Ummm… That’s not my child so I didn’t say anything. But it did immediately rub me the wrong way. And thankfully, my cousin said, “Don’t tell him that boys don’t cry.” And her husband countered, “I said, big boys don’t cry. Big boys don’t cry.”

Sigh.

One, not only is that not true. Baby boys, big boys and men do cry. And secondly, it is healthy and cathartic for boys and men to cry. It’s a shame that the expression of emotion, of being human, has been stigmatized as being weak or feminine–which sadly, people still largely interpret as weak.

This is just one of the more recent examples of how I’ve seen the many detrimental ways in which boys have been trained and reared to repress their emotions and express their masculinity. So, I’m happy to see that the folks at the Representation Project, the same people who brought us the MissRepresentation documentary, are producing another documentary exploring the ways in which the socialization of boys not only negatively affects boys and men but how it impacts all of us.

Take a look at the clip from the upcoming 2014 documentary in the video below.