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Former football player and current YouTube star Devale Ellis got candid about his emotions as a “man” and slammed a piece of gender stereotypes.
On April 5, Ellis went to his verified Instagram account to say that there should be a place for men to express their weakness. The media personality, who is garnering attention with funny videos he recorded with his family members, revealed through this post that the responsibilities of fathers & husbands lead them not to express their feelings at all. He wrote:
“It seems as if no words of affirmation, or positive reinforcement no matter how often or consistent resonate as much as a father’s disappointment or a husband’s judgment. Trying to discern whether honesty and grace are mutually exclusive… Or if they can exist collectively without damaging the integrity of my word and my feelings.”
Stating that “a good man will always give grace,” the former football player added that even the best man needs time to manage his own emotions. According to Ellis, the community they live in does not let them be “human.” He continued:
“We as men for the most part are not equipped to handle our own emotions because it has always been considered less than manly to ever address them. So we often suppress and digress until those emotions manifest themselves in the form of a vice— a vice that very clearly is more destructive, but we’ll accept it because vices are perceived as manly.”
The former Detroit Lions player then stated that we need to normalize men “being able to express that we don’t have everything under control.” Ellis concluded his words as follows:
“I’m man enough to admit it. (…) You deserve to know that it’s not always that way, but I choose to wake up every morning and fight like hell to make it that way for my family and you can to…”
Ellis’ post received more than 50K likes in a quite short time.
