You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Let's do a little experiment.

I want you to close your eyes and think of the manliest guy you can.

Somebody who exemplifies masculinity.

Take a couple seconds to imagine what he looks like, what he might do for a living, his personality,

and how he carries himself, you know all of the ingredients that make a man.

Who comes to mind?

Whoever he is, it doesn't matter.

It's the idea of him that we're all measuring ourselves against.

I had to like, unpeite like, my wife is not going to leave me if I am not Michael B. Jordan,

mixed with Tana Hasekotes, mixed with, you know mixed with Barack Obama.

Like I have to be the best orator, the best writer, and the best looking in the country

for my wife to just have a baseline of happiness with me.

Yeah, for me it's like, if I'm not Matthew McConaughey, I'm not going to live up to it.

Exactly, and men are dealing with the same thing, but they're not having conversations about it.

That's Fred Joseph, activist and bestselling author of books like The Black Friend,

and more recently, Patriarchy Blues, Reflections on Manhood.

Fred and I both know as well as you do that comparison is the thief of joy.

But as men, we can't help but have this Frankenstein in our heads of who we think we're supposed to be.

Everyone's afraid to actually be themselves, and that's the danger of something like a manbox,

is that no one can actually attain this thing, everyone is striving for it,

and reducing their actual humanity in the process.

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