Superheroes, Super Deceptive

There is this theme of young boys needing to be fed this stereotype of being macho men. It is visible all around our society. According to the article, "Can Superheroes Hurt Boys' Mental Health?", "Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in nonstop violence, he's aggressive, sarcastic, and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood like high-powered guns." While this article does mention that most modern superhero movies do have a couple of scenes which promote doing right by human's standards, the majority of the messages are pointing to the stereotype of macho men. In my opinion, this is harmful to boys because at a young age they have this false idea of what it means to be a man. This heavily influences their perspective on masculinity and it fosters a very poor image of what being a man is about. Instead of promoting men living how they were created to live, there is this bubble of being overly aggressive and being outwardly emotionless that is created.  When it does come time for these boys to become men, they are often caught in the middle of this battle of Hollywood "macho" man masculinity vs the unknown masculinity which promotes expressing his self in a way that is natural and healthy in terms of living from the heart.  Because our society likes to sell the macho man stereotype, there will always be this battle in our lives. In this article, the author found that marketers are providing two images of masculinity to young men: the "player" and the "slacker". These are both poor images to identify with as that is an easy road to living more from the ego than doing one's best and living a more morally sound life.