While researching the subject, I came across a video by actor and director Justin Baldoni, who in a Ted Talk entitled “Why I’m done trying to be man enough” explains how masculinity has become a cage for the very men who “created” it, and the frustration that a man feels in front of a community,  hers, which has not been educated to accept weakness, fear and insecurities and, consequently, to talk about them openly.

“It’s exhausting trying to be enough of a man for everybody, all the time,” says the actor – a straight, fatherly, athletic and pleasant-looking man – “I’ve pretended to be a man I’m not all my life, I’ve pretended to be strong when I felt weak and to be confident when I wasn’t.”  Therefore, it is not only the less involved parts of the community who suffer, but also those who can be considered a proud representative. 

But why is being a man so exhausting? Why does the male gender still force itself to live in this trench “sentimentality”, which makes it a prisoner and a jailer at the same time? One of the most fitting prodromes comes to me from high school memories, during a lesson in Greek literature: in the eighth book of Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses, a shrewd and morally as well as physically solid hero, on hearing the aedo song about his deeds, weeps, and in doing so covers his face with a cloak, because “he was ashamed, in front of the Phaeacians, to shed tears under his eyelashes“. 

The verses of the Homeric songs are full of weeping heroes: Achilles, Priam, Hector and Agamemnon, all shed tears and for the most disparate reasons, and no one was ever ashamed to cry and show it openly. But Ulysses on this occasion is different, hearing about his actions and misfortunes creates in him a momentary loss of control of reason and corporeality, and, since this is not the way of behaving of a man, he is ashamed of it.