06/04/2026
Puberty Wordle! It’s been a minute but here you go. Translation: Boys and men experience the same, full range of emotions that girls and women do. Unfortunately, they’re not given the permission and practice to express them by culture that labels them as “soft”, “girly”, and “gay” if they do.
The message boys and men are sent? That they only have two settings: fine or angry.
The data tell a completely different story. Boys feel the full, beautiful spectrum of human emotion. They feel grief. They feel fear. They feel deep empathy, sadness, and vulnerability.
But our culture gives them a very small box to store it in and express it.
According to recent research:
The hidden pressure: Nearly half of all adolescent boys feel they must actively hide fear or sadness to avoid teasing.
The unwritten rule: They absorb the message that “real men” don’t cry or show weakness before they even reach high school.
The algorithmic push: Social media feeds constantly reward them for looking tough, unbothered, and hyper-independent
When we tell our boy to “man up,” we aren’t making him strong. We are asking him to mute his humanity. True resilience isn’t the absence of emotion—it’s having the courage and the safe space to name it, process it, and move through it.
Challenge and change the culture and the narrative for the boys in our lives. They deserve permission to feel it all.
