more than a boy

on societal standards and expectations

to everyone that is proud to defy the constraints of societal judgment

he is just a boy.

he’s tall and has somewhat of a deep voice. he has messy hair and hollow eyes. he wears plain tees and athletic shorts almost every day.

he must like sports, watching football with the boys and chugging sodas like they’re beer. he must like video games, staying up till 1 a.m. with his best friend on facetime. he must like hot girls, scrolling through photos on Instagram till his thumb gets sore, watching the cheerleaders till they catch his gaze.

he must be reckless. loud. carefree. a bit stupid, but in a charming way. he must laugh at all the right jokes, push the right people around, take the teasing and dish it back twice as hard. he must learn to fight, or at least pretend he knows how to. he must punch those he loves in the arm and call it affection.

one day, he will become a man. he’ll grow up to be a businessman, lawyer, or banker—something with a suit and a title, something respectable and predictable. he’ll find a wife, a woman beautiful in all the right ways, poised and presentable, who turns heads at corporate parties. maybe they’ll be happy together, maybe they won’t. but it won’t matter. this is the life he’s meant to have.

he’ll have children. a boy first, if he’s lucky, so he can pass down the same lessons his father taught him. be strong. be smart. be something worth talking about. he’ll sign his son up for sports before he can walk. tell him to stop crying before he can even comprehend the concept of shame. teach him how to throw a punch, how to hold back his tears, how to carry the weight of manhood without breaking.

he’ll work long hours. he’ll flirt with the interns but never cross the line, or maybe one day he will. he’ll fire an employee or two without thinking much of it. he’ll sit at the head of a long table in a glass building and feel important, even if he isn’t quite sure why. he’ll come home late to a house too big to feel like a home, to a wife too tired to argue, to kids who have already stopped waiting for him.

because he is just a boy who will just become a man. this is the life laid out for him before he even had a say in it.

but… what if he decides… that he does have a say?

maybe he hates football and has never even touched a gaming controller. maybe he prefers poetry to profit margins and dreams of writing novels rather than making deals. maybe he doesn’t want a wife. perhaps a different kind of companionship, or not one at all.

maybe he doesn’t want to be strong. perhaps he’s tired of being told to toughen up, to hold back his tears, to carry the weight of expectation like an iron chain around his neck.

maybe he wants to dance, to sing, to write; to talk about feelings instead of burying them beneath sarcasm and silence. maybe he doesn’t want to be fearless, to be angry, to be anything but himself.

maybe… he was never just a boy?

never just a legacy, just a role to play, just the sum of his body, his name, his supposed destiny.

is the soul defined by biology? is the heart supposed to beat with the rhythm of expectation? does the mind thrive in the confines of what is acceptable?

what if the world saw him not as who it has destined him to be… but who he truly is? what if masculinity wasn’t a toxic cage but an endless spectrum, fluid and determined by his identity rather than the other way around?

what if the weight he’s been carrying all these years was never his to bear?

he is not just a boy.

he is more than that.

much, much more.

---

---

like the boy in the mirror, this post was just a short rant about something that’s been heavy on my mind lately. oftentimes, i feel myself shoved into this box of masculinity and manhood that i feel like i just don’t completely belong in. and this has got me wondering, why should my biology dictate what i like, how i dress, how i act, how i end up living my life, et cetera et cetera? not to say that i don’t like many of the things about being a “boy” or a “man”; it’s just that sometimes the box of labels and expectations feels a bit too confining. i want to be able to break free and just be jack without having to be someone whose entire identity wraps around gender.

the key takeaway from this post is that society’s stereotypes, expectations, and standards for who you have to be don’t matter. you can be the type of person you want to be; don’t let your gender, your race, or anything hold you back.

i hope you liked this post. i’d love to hear what you think in the comments. as always, thank you for being here and supporting me. i wish you guys a wonderful day and i will see you next week.

^{(p.s. the lowercase epidemic is here… mainly because i turned off grammarly. down with perfectionism!)}