“I can’t be me because everyone teases me, so it’s easier just to be like them.”

He said it without looking up from his phone.

It was the answer to a question his dad had asked him a few days earlier. “Have you ever changed how you acted because of what other guys would think?”

At the time, his son had said nothing. His dad left it there.

The question came from a documentary.

A few days earlier they’d watched Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz together.

It follows Aziz Shavershian from an anonymous Sydney teenager to Zyzz, the bronzed internet figure a lot of young men tried to copy. He died in 2011, aged 22. Much of the film is about how hard he worked on an image that would get him noticed.

As the credits rolled, the dad looked across the couch and noticed how much his son had changed.

Before Year 9 he’d been the kid who picked the brightest shirt in the shop and did all the voices when he told a story. This year it was baggy denim, plain T-shirts and short answers. The dad hadn’t paid it much attention. Teenagers change how they dress.

So when the answer came, his dad told him he could see how hard that was.

He said he’d done the same thing at school, and he still does it as an adult, at work and around other men. He wears golf tops he doesn’t like and keeps quiet about things he cares about.

His son had been working out how to be a man from TikTok and from the boys at school. He’d also been working it out from the man on the other end of the couch, who’d been doing the same thing since he was at school himself.

They made a deal to try to be more themselves, even if it was only at home to start.

Boys are picking up what it means to be a man all day.

Some of it comes from old Zyzz clips on TikTok and the boys in the change rooms. Some of it comes from us, including the bits we’d rather they didn’t copy.

As parents, that’s the part we can change.

This dad couldn’t get Zyzz off TikTok or change what gets said at school. He could tell his son he does it too, and go first at being himself, starting at home.

The film is streaming on Stan and rated MA15+, so watch it with him or see it yourself first. Then read our discussion guide for parents to start the conversation.