Edward English, executive assistant, grew up in northwest Arkansas and later went to school at the University of Oklahoma where he studied English literature and nonprofit studies. He stayed on to get a master’s in composition and rhetoric while teaching first-year writing courses. After his graduate work, he spent two years as an instructor at Universidad Del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia.
He enjoys lying in hammocks, fishing, slacklining, and painting, listens to a lot of post-rock and Indie folk music, and is a huge film nerd who particularly enjoys the movies of Terrence Malick, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Darren Aronofsky, and Richard Linklater.
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A Frat Guy Reflects on the Greek System’s White Privilege Problem
(Everett Collection / Shutterstock)
White privilege manifests at college fraternities
'The Mask You Live In': A Blessed Mess
From impossible standards of beauty generated by the fashion and make-up industry to the disproportionate number of women who are elected to political office, women and girls in America face a variety of obstacles in their journey of empowerment. But what also warrants attention are some of the less noticeable consequences when gender norms are so narrowly defined across the board. For instance, if we characterize women as submissive, emotional, or alluring beings, then what does it mean to be a man? And how might damaging myths and stereotypes about masculinity produce its own host of social ills?
These questions remain central to The Representation Project’s latest documentary The Mask You Live In, a film that ambitiously seeks to re-evaluate how masculinity is defined and expressed in America. According to director Jennifer Siebel Newsom, when mainstream culture views masculinity as a rejection of everything feminine, traits like kindness, healthy emotions, and constructive resolution of conflict become undervalued if not wholly disregarded for most men. Instead, the prevailing norms that young boys receive from their homes—as well as in movies, sports, and video games—push them to equate masculinity with domination, violence, stoicism, financial success, or sexual conquest.