"The Masculine Mystique"

This piece, is sort of an interview with Stallone about his new decision to become a different type of man. He's known to most from his boxing movies. He's a very masculine man. Is that possible? In today's society have have a certain set of perceived guidelines for how a male vs a female should look and behave. For men, i think it's probably a worse thing then for women nowadays. Men should be tall and strong. They should be unemotional and able to cope with whatever life throws at them. However, for women, we are not expected to be taller or stronger than men... actually we should be the opposite. Society says that we should be the more docile of the two sexes and that we should be more concerned with how we look and what people think of us. However it's much more exceptable for us to be emotional and vulnerable, whereas this is not ok for men. Stallone was the stereotypical strong, masculine figure... and this is also who he played in his movies. The very muscular, deep voice, ready-to-fight type person. The interview is about how he decided to change this. He wanted to be in a movie about a nobody type person, and had to put on a lot of weight (aka stay out of the gym and eat a completely opposite diet) in order to do it. What he realized, and says in the interview is that by being heavier, society doesn't treat him the same anymore. We have such a standard for how these people should look that we take a once respected actor and just because he has gained weight (even though its just for a movie) he has lost respect and standing with his fans. They don't want to come see him in his movies because he doesn't represent that strong masculine character that we all want to watch. I just think it's interesting to hear his point of view on this being someone who actually made the transition and has literally been on both sides of the fence. I guess our society wants what it wants.