WOMEN AND MEN: THE NEED FOR ROLE REVERSAL

Lately I’ve been thinking about how underneath the thin veneer of the changes in society since I was young, some things really haven’t changed at all. As I look at all the self help magazines and read the articles, the implication often is that there is something wrong with us. Only, that “something” seems to be focused on women. Most women’s magazines live on a formula of articles about how to improve: diet, exercise, please your man, keep your skin from wrinkling, change in some way that a woman may not have thought needed changing. On the other hand, most men’s magazines are focused on how to achieve more, function better, climb the higher mountain, get somewhere sooner, etc. Of course this is only a generalization and often the differences are subtle. Still, they are there. So, years after women and men supposedly achieved parity, the sometimes sneaky underlying message remains-even for fifty and furthermores-that men are OK and only need tools to achieve more and function better, but woman have to fix themselves. (Usually to please a man.) Men need to achieve and women need to be fixed. Because men and boys often don’t have decent role models and because the structure of schools tends to favor girls over boys, males in our society have a different and as important set of problems. But, they aren’t constantly told they need to be fixed. This media message is wrong. There are tons of reasons women live longer than men, and it’s not because they need fixing. Both sexes could benefit from a message role reversal.