In this episode of In The Blood, AC and Jason explore how society places different expectations on women and men—pressuring women to be visually perfect, and men to be mentally unshakable. They discuss how these standards show up in everyday life, where they come from, and the emotional toll they take.

The conversation includes a challenging question: is the stigma around men’s emotional struggles even more difficult to address than the pressure women face to look a certain way? With honesty and nuance, AC and Jason unpack the cost of perfection, the gendered assumptions we rarely question, and how we might begin letting go of expectations that were never fair to begin with.