On behalf of boy moms everywhere, please for the love of God…stop.
Your bad behavior, tantrums, greed for money and fame, arrogance, and explicit and implicit disrespect for women is making our jobs as moms harder.
We recognize you may have had negative role models of your own. Perhaps you were damaged by trauma. Or you truly believe there’s no other way to succeed.
Maybe your parents didn’t spend enough time with you or treated you badly. Maybe they never showed you the value of honesty, integrity, and empathy as true strength. Whatever it is. That’s heartbreaking…AND that’s not the road we want our boys to walk down.
When you spew hate for clicks, or cash. Or…laughs and high fives? You teach our boys a way of being that doesn’t work for them or their mental health. Or their ability to create fully-formed healthy human relationships.
We want to raise boys who become strong adult men, who love honestly, feel deeply, advocate equitably and have the emotional capacity to work their ish out in healthy ways, not through drugs, greed, abuse of power, misogyny, or an obsession with building phallic rocket ships to space.
Strength is not the same as force. Or oppression. Or lack of compassion. Or cutting yourself off from your human feelings.
True strength is being brave enough to know who you are, stand up for what’s right, bring people along, hold both compassion and ambition in balance, and take responsibility for your impact on others.
No one is denying you did something to get to where you are. Some of you built amazing businesses. And exceeded your metrics. And perhaps even made yourselves and others a lot of money. But at what cost to your soul?
Look, you do you. But the problem is you’ve built a platform and cultural presence that influences our boys in negative ways. Cut that ish out.
All we ask is that you consider either changing your ways or stepping out of the limelight. If you want to make an intentional decision to be better human beings and role models, there are plenty of resources we can point you to.
So the next time you get arrested for embezzlement, get caught in a sex scandal, make a shock jock laugh by denigrating women, or start a toddler war in social media, can you please take it inside and not influence our young boys who have the chance to grow into healthier adult men than you?
You had your chance. Give them theirs.
Please and thank you.
Signed,
Moms of the world
PS: This letter also applies to anyone who is not as famous but who idolize these guys. Who name drop to show your degrees of separation from them. You have a sphere of influence in your own lives, too, and more importantly, on a real, daily basis, so please be better.
