Masculine Stereotypes film "The Mask You Live In" Screened at Club

The National Press Club on March 6 hosted a screening of a documentary exploring the societal effects of masculine stereotypes, and a panel discussion with the film’s director, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. A diverse young crowd filled the Holeman Lounge to take in the “The Mask You Live In,” which tackles the question of what it means to be a boy and then a man in a today’s culture of ubiquitous media. The club’s Young Members Committee sponsored the event.

The film uses a series of vignettes to highlight the complexities and pressures behind the face a young boy projects to the world. Each story is different but fits an eerie pattern often marked by school bullying, absentee fathers and absorption of violent media. In one scene, a high school teacher asks his male students to write the feelings they project while walking to school on the front of a mask, and those they hide on the back. The insecurities inherent in “becoming a man” are made clear.

At the film’s premier at the Sundance Film Festival, Newsom said she saw grown men crying as the film resonated with their upbringings. “That was sort of freeing and liberating [for the men] because then they could say, ‘Hey, well, I’m going to do things slightly differently with my son,’” Newsom said.

In that sense, the film prods viewers to challenge rigid stereotypes of masculinity. A panel of journalists joined Newsom at the dais after the screening to reflect on their notions of masculinity.

Though American culture is still “dominated by stories about men, images of men, the sheer number of representations of men also opens up space for there to be a fair amount of variety,” said Alyssa Rosenberg, a Washington Post columnist.

A reporter also has a responsibility to cultivate diversity in his sources, said Jamelle Bouie, a Slate magazine staff writer. “Have people of authority be women. Have people of authority be people of color,” he said, echoing the advice of a past editor. “Don’t just rely on male sources, because in the aggregate it does kind of create the impression that the only people worth going to for information … are men.”

Isaac Fitzgerald, BuzzFeed’s books editor, was optimistic about what he said was a broadening societal dialogue about masculinity. Fitzgerald recently donned makeup for five days and wrote about how his colleagues and friends reacted to his new look. The feedback that essay received, he said, “was far and away the most positive reaction I’ve ever gotten” from an online work.

The film subtly encourages that freedom of expression. “So many good things could come out of men being whole and not denying the feminine, valuing the feminine,” Newsom said.