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By Sophie Isbister, Life & Style Editor

irector and filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom sees a “boy crisis”

happening, and as the mother to a young boy, it concerns her.
She is the director of the acclaimed documentary Miss Representation
(2011), which shed light on the harmful ways in which the media
portrays—or erases—women and their experiences. Her next project
is a Kickstarter-funded documentary called The Mask You Live In, the
trailer for which has garnered immense Internet buzz and sparked a
continent-wide discussion on the toxic effects of the gender binary on
young men.

She introduces the five-minute trailer by saying she is
“increasingly sensitive to the extremes of masculinity that will be
imposed on [her] own son.” She asks: “Who will he become as an
adult man? A sensitive, caring, and compassionate human being? Or a
depressed, lonely, and disconnected portrayal of masculinity, limited
by cultural stereotypes?”

What words do you associate with masculinity? Tough, strong,
stoic, a leader who never cries and “mans up.” “Be cool, and be
kind of a dick.” Men and boys who “don’t see the point” of these
stereotypes are mocked and ridiculed: they are called by feminine
terms, like pussy. The binary of male/female, and the idea that men
are tough and women are weak, are harmful to everyone: to boys and
girl, and to men and women.

To gather information for her documentary, Siebel Newsom
reached out to sociologists and psychologists, as well as boys and
youth in American schools, which is where the name of her project
comes from. Youth worker Ashanti Branch says in the trailer, “Our
kids get up every morning; they have to prepare their mask for how
they’re going to walk to get to school. Hopefully they can take the

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mask off so they can focus on learning. A lot of our students don’t
know how to take it off. The mask sticks with them all the time.”

Reaching out to people in your community is an important first
step to starting the discussion; a discussion I believe that college-
aged people should be having. College is a time in your life when
you are learning about yourself and the way you plan to present
yourself to the world. The Other Press spoke with a few members of
the community about the ideas
expressed in Siebel Newsom’s
film clip, to find out of those
ideas ring true, if they are
useful, and if they go far
enough.

Husain Vahanvaty, a
Douglas College student
finishing a diploma in
concurrent disorders and
seeking a degree in social
work, currently works with at-
risk youth. He says that in his
experience with youth, he has
noticed the effects of masculinity. “You can’t really be sad about your
situation, you can’t be upset that you’re given a shitty lot in life. You
have to be angry about it, you have to hustle, you have to deal drugs,
you have to go get into fights, [and] you have to do a lot of drinking,”
Vahanvaty says.

But Vahanvaty says that the documentary trailer fails to point
out class intersectionality, which is a criticism shared by Vancouver
resident and activist David Miller. Miller states, “A key point in the
film is the experience of urban African-American youth who are asked

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more palatable to a wide audience.

Vahanvaty mentions the patria
challenges of the quest set out in th