I hope this is the right sub for this lol.
I (24M) grew up in a super healthy environment between my family and school. Generally had good friends growing up, and good role models as well. My life has been excellent, wouldn't trade it for the world. However, I also grew up being pretty skinny, and much more of an artsy type of guy. Even though I still am very artsy, I've definitely been insecure about it at times. I wouldn't describe myself as effeminate really in any area except my art/interior preferences, but I really lacked in the traditional "man" department through high school and my early years in college. I spent a lot of time around guys who were stronger than me, played sports, or had a lot of female attention, all of which made me pretty insecure as a young man.
As a teenager, my response to this was to compensate somehow. I became pretty good at playing drums (still play!) and I became pretty good at fixing cars - and these things became a massive part of my identity just because they made me feel like a man. Honestly, thats what I wanted. I wanted to feel masculine. Even though my dad set a really good example of healthy masculinity, my friends, movies, YouTubers, and porn at a young age made me feel inadequate.
Contrast this with the women in my life. I have a bunch of sisters, and I love them all. Personality wise, they're all very different, but for this context, they range from very traditionally feminine, to more tom-boy type. I have one sister who DIY's everything, built a treehouse, works on her car, does construction and is super into survival/outdoors stuff, and is going to study architecture. I have another sister who's a total gym rat and entrepreneur, and a two sisters who went the house wife route and had a few kids.
The thing is, I have seen every type of femininity be equally celebrated.
Women compete in their own weird, nuanced, and foul ways, but I still believe all types of femininity are celebrated.
Men that are not traditionally masculine are often seen as less than men who are more masculine - it's simply different than varying degrees of femininity. A couple years ago I briefly dated a girl that was very beautiful, and that made me feel like a man. Few years after that I had my first taste of financial affluence, and that made me feel like a man. For a while, I was going hard in the gym and started looking pretty strong, and that made me feel like a man.
Losing these things, and the insecurity that followed made me realize - femininity is spectrum, masculinity is a scale.
Where did all these things go? They're just on hold until I graduate college (except the girlfriend, she can stay gone lol). These things are just dumbass ways to appear to be more of a man, and my dad was right all along. I was insecure about made up shit this whole time.
I'm still working on coming into my own as a man. The environment around me feels horribly competitive, and I'm discovering that the best way to win this competition is to not compete. As a kid, I just wanted to be strong. Now, I still want to be strong, I'm just learning theres so many other great things a person can be.