The same way your jaw might drop when your boyfriend tells you to “act like a lady,” hoping your boyfriend will “act like a man” is just as confining and stigmatizing. But we do it anyway.
We say we want a man with strength and a tough exterior, yet berate him for not having any sympathy or womanly instincts.
We say we want a protector and a savior, then resent him for squashing our independence. We say we want a real man, but that man doesn’t exist.
We need to lose our idealized image of men because ladies, the second you’ve found that idealized image, you already want something else.
