Growing up I would always see many advertisements about men being strong. I never understood why men had to be strong or show their toughness to people and not be their true selves. Over the years, I have seen how men have hurt themselves either mentally or physical being in these ads that publicize hyper-masculinity to show men who they need to be. With this, men can be cast out for not following some of the stereotypical ideals and it can damage them.
From Megan Vokey et al’s articles, she does a study to explain hyper-masculinity in male advertisements. She has recovered data that show how men are affected by hyper-masculinity and how the advertisement companies capture the audience’s attention to increase HM. Even with Vokey analysis as evidence, the companies should limit the use of hyper-masculinity in their ads. By promoting HM in the ads, it can state the male’s image to an extreme standard. Then men could develop a self-image that they don’t recognize and can harm them.
Hyper-masculinity can make the men insecurities bigger by listening to the different stereotypes of men. These stereotypes give the men an image of being dangerous, tough, and not caring to sex or women. According to Vokey, she states, ‘ During adolescence, boys start to identify more strongly with the masculine stereotype than they did during childhood.
Conformity to societal expectations is promoted during adolescence, in part because sanctions are applied by parents, teachers, peers, and the media to boys who display gender inappropriate behaviour (Hill and Lynch 1983).
As adolescent boys enter young adulthood, they are primed to continue to identify with masculine stereotypes and to perform learned masculine behaviours.’ This means that when boys turn into men, they will follow what they see or what people tell them what is right from wrong.