The toughness doctrine

growing away from being one of the boys

For the first 18 years of my life, I was one of the boys. Tough as nails. In ‘98, I was born into the world at the same time as six boys who would be my best friends for a long time. We were raised on Academy Drive nestled in the quaintness of Ohio’s Midwestern suburbia, not quite cookie cutter but not quite custom either. Two Ryans, two Joshs, a Justin, a Tommy, and me. Every day after school I waited for the knock, knock, knock on the front door that welcomed me into the roughhousery of elementary school boys - capture the flag, tackle football, Call of Duty in spider-infested, unfinished basements, and the occasional pillow talk about girls and cooties. 

I wasn’t a girl, at least not to them. 

I was too cool to be a girl. Girls were the antithesis of toughness, playing with dolls and practicing gymnastics on the monkey bars and playing Ring Around the Rosie. But me - I was tough. I threw a football in a tighter spiral than half the boys at recess, had scraped knees, and made crude jokes. 

At first, we were friends out of proximity. As we aged, they became much more than that. They became the brothers I never had. But there was an invisible force behind our closeness that kept me sewing the threads of our friendship tighter instead of sewing friendship bracelets with girls my age. That undercurrent was a belief I absorbed at a young age: the world we live in is a man’s world. I was raised in a house, raised by previous generations, raised by politics and war and language and culture that valued masculine characteristics and tendencies as though they were the ultimate precursor to social and monetary wealth. If I was going to be successful in a man’s world, I had to not only surround myself with men but think and act like them too. My neighbors were not only my best friends, but my credibility and the testament to my worth in this world. 

It took me years to realize that the words, “be a man”, weren’t about being a man at all. What they meant was code for “toughen up.” And beyond that, it was simply about not being weak. 

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Directly or indirectly, through observation or reprimanding, toughness is perhaps one of the first lessons we are taught as children. Conceived from goodwill and born into distortion, the words “toughen up” become the response to all emotion on the windward side of the mountain. 

Buck up. Show some backbone. Have thick skin. 

But I don’t think that tough even means tough anymore. The word has morphed into this catch-all definition of unrelenting resiliency that disregards the need for harmony among the mind, body, and spirit. Tough means being tough for tough’s sake. Tough means choosing to endure hell in the face of abundance. Tough means choosing the chest-thumping grandiosity of a gorilla instead of the gentle kindness of a rabbit. What a funny thing it is to position taller and more intimidating to the outside world against the fears that only live within. 

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The word tough took a stronghold on my identity and the world reinforced my impenetrable demeanor by rewarding it. It brought me attention and praise watering my I’m-tougher-than-you superiority complex. But it wasn’t genuine toughness, it was performative toughness. Toughness as a deception. 

I mastered performative toughness allowing the outside of my body to appease the audience while the hollow amphitheater of my insides remained empty. 

There were years when my hunger for toughness turned into a fight against my own biology. I fought femaleness tooth and nail. To my demise, I grew faster than the other girls in my grade. My growing breasts were the first signs of both inevitable growth and decline, into womanhood and into weakness - at least my image of weakness at the time. With shame, I suffocated them to my chest with two sports bras two sizes too small. I knew what tough looked like, and it wasn’t the sparkly pink training bra my mom bought me. 

The parts of me that didn't meet my standard of external toughness were locked away. Far far away. I displaced my emotionality with passivity, slammed the shutters of my soul shut, and filled the fine lines within me with concrete. After I locked away my emotionality and sensitivity from the world, I was long convinced I would never find the keys. My toughness encouraged me that it knew better than the wiseness of my body. I thought I was mastering deception - deception of myself and the men I was trying to prove my worth to - training my body to stifle emotion by packing it into storage boxes in the basement of my heart. In place of deception, I only learned how to not trust myself. 

Those years are blurry like a washed-out watercolor.

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Toughness is a tool, not a crutch. Toughness is something to lean into when the world demands it of me, instead of limping through life without it. This reliance lends itself to a survivalist mindset that deprived me of so much - a sense of worth detached from bravado, a nervous system that rests, a soul that experiences serenity. 

The single dimensionality of the word tough now sits heavy on my chest. We use the same word that we use to describe leather and iron and nails to describe people. But if there is anything that leather and iron can teach us it’s that an identity shaped by toughness is void of flexibility and permeability vital to absorb the richness of existence. 

I don’t care to be tough anymore. At least not performatively. I am much softer now. I feel everything, sometimes too much. I allow myself to experience sadness and anger. I tell people when they hurt my feelings instead of handling mistreatment like medicine. I don’t worry about being perceived as soft, at least I am feeling again. Sometimes I get scared because my identity that was rooted in toughness feels universes away. The toughness doctrine I was force-fed for most of my life has led me to believe that the only state of being left in the absence of toughness is weakness. In most cases now, I find that ‘weakness’ is a piss poor duality for ‘toughness’. In the absence of toughness is not imminently weakness, though sometimes even weakness fulfills a need. What an incredible thing it is to be weak when we can be among the strength of others.

I was tough, and I hated it. 

Maybe everyone is tough, and everyone hates it. 

Or maybe I’m just projecting.

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Thank you so much for reading this week. I have gone through quite the identity crisis this year realizing that the toughness I long identified with is no longer a part of me. Writing this piece felt like final closure.

Hugs to

Siesta in the Storm

for editing and inspiring the conversation that led me to put pen to paper and to

Tommy Dixon

for helping me to reshape and restructure this essay entirely. I am grateful to you both.

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Last week I published a piece called, Are you there God? and this week,

Steven Foster

published a piece in response to it. It is moving, heartfelt, and a testament to the meaning and friendship that Steven brings to my life. You can read his piece here: When Haley Meets Heaven.