M’sian Artist, Maha Jeffery Breaks Stereotypes & Toxic Masculinity with MV of Him Crying in A Car

By Ameera Rosli  •  05 Apr 2021 in Features

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There’s nothing more therapeutic than crying in a car with your best friend while eating fried chicken, am I right bros?

When it comes to a break-up, we all deal with it in different ways. Some of us push those emotions to the back of our minds and try to distract ourselves (I’m guilty of this) while others take their time to really digest the situation and expel the sadness through a bucket of tears.

While it’s common to see portrayals of women going through a tough break-up, be it in film or music, it’s not everyday we see men going through the same ordeal. In fact, there’s a common misconception that men don’t feel the pain of a break-up at all.

That’s where local singer Maha Jeffery steps in to bridge the noticeable gap.

Releasing ‘Used To Be’, which is a melancholic track about yearning for lost love, the singer paired the song with a coinciding music video that shows him grappling with the pain alongside his best friend in a parked car.

In the video, he belts out to assumably sendu tunes while chatting animatedly over fried chicken. Simple yet effective in portraying how men deal with complex emotions, the video was meant to dispel toxic masculinity and the idea that men can’t cry.

To top it all off, the video ends with a PSA on mental illness and a hotline for viewers to contact if they feel they need someone to talk to.

Watch the video below:

It’s an archaic way of thinking to assume that men are impenetrable walls devoid of any heavy emotions. This mindset is harmful because it can lead to serious anger issues and emotional stunting as men tend to bottle up their feelings until one day, they explode and hurt other people with the debris of their suppressed anger.

With this music video, Maha breaks that stereotype with the hope that men will feel more comfortable in expressing themselves without the fear of judgment from others.

It’s okay to cry and you shouldn’t feel like you must defend yourself from feeling things because you deem it to be insignificant or “unmanly”.

Like the popular R.E.M song, ‘Everybody Hurts’, nobody is exempt from feeling pain, not even you.

Stream Maha Jeffery on Spotify.