Just what the heck is a "manly man"? No, like seriously, what makes me a man besides having a member?

This obsession with The Divine Masculine is personally suffocating. I've felt the brunt of it. And needless to say, it has hurt us all.

Let me narrate an experience.

I've always wanted to apply nail polish since I was a child. Out of mere curiosity in the beginning and eventually out of a feeling of inner liberation, of unfettered freedom. You know what I mean? The feeling of wanting to try out something? Much akin to experimenting to seek your sexuality or discovering your true innate self.

Coming from a society that reeks of hypermasculinity certainly didn't help me. I was scared shitless to mention the idea even in private!

A few months ago, I finally mustered the courage to ask my mom to paint my nails. And GOD WAS IT SATISFYING!!! I FELT SO FREAKING LIBERATED!

Well, in comes my dad, guilt-tripping my mom into forcibly removing the nail polish she had happily applied a few hours ago. And then I'm lectured on SoCiEtY and "why I shouldn't associate with chhakka people (a pejorative for effeminate men/transgender people), that I was becoming like them that I was a shame and what fucking not!

It was unnervingly stifling. I just couldn't take it. Let men wear whatever they fucking want, DUH! Go have the longest sexiest moustache of all time for all I care! Just let me be who I am.

And then this constant belittling of my emotional turmoils. MAN UP, DUDE, MAN UP! STOP CRYING LIKE WOMEN! No, I Will cry. I'll cry ponds. Rivers. Oceans. I'll cry so much that my lachrymal glands will implode.

Screw this. This notion of men as some hyper-aggressive, emotionally insensitive, stoic beings perturbs me. Not that men can't be aggressive and stoic. Or have hair.

But LET MEN BE MEN. I'm not some machine. I'm a normal human being capable of normal human emotions.

And I wanna use nail polish.

And I don't wanna "man up". Emotions ain't reserved for women.