Alexa Campagna's Response to "Tough Guise"

We are presented with images promoting hyper masculinity on a consistent basis; whether it is through media images of abnormally chiseled action figures with unnaturally large biceps or through movies in which the protagonist is a gun-donning, revenge-seeking male. The messages do not need to be blatant for boys/men to learn that if they are not “tough enough,” they are “pussies” and if they are not “dominant enough,” they are threatening the notion of male supremacy. It is ironic; however, that this aggressive, macho exterior is just a façade that conceals males’ deeply rooted insecurities, anxieties, and fears. These anxieties stem from the interminable pressure for individual males to conform to rigid gender norms of masculinity within their social groups and the pressure for males, collectively, to maintain traditional, patriarchal values that have been tarnished ever since the Civil Rights Movement provided women and homosexuals with more freedoms and power.

Maintaining an illusion of toughness, like any performance, requires the actor to behave how others expect them to behave in public, while behaving in a less-contrived, more natural manner when s/he is “behind the curtain,” shielded from the judgments and expectations of the audience. The “tough guise,” without a certain level of dramaturgy, would be completely transparent and would be met with little success by exposing the inner insecurities of men. When my brother would spend leisure time with his male friends, they would either be wrestling, creating an unimaginable mess of food and drink that they expected my mom to clean up, and they would spend hours playing video games, like “Resident Evil” or “Tomb Rader,” that involved a firearm and quick and gory homicides. When his friends would leave, it was as if a completely different, sensitive, calm, and dependent being would emerge: his backstage self. The pressure to maintain this “tough guise” would subside once his friends left and he would spend the rest of the night having intimate discussions with my mother about school or watching a stereotypically feminine show on Nickelodeon with me. He no longer had to put up this false front of masculinity.