The Sydney Morning Herald ran a fantastic feature article yesterday that confronted the issue of men’s body image issues.
…while healthcare professionals are often trained to detect eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, they admit it can be much harder to tell when a male fitness regime tips over into an obsession.
So while considerable attention is focused on helping women overcome the eating and exercise disorders that often result from such insecurities, scant consideration is being paid to the effects felt by the men currently battling similar issues.”
When the Sydney Morning Herald thought of people confronting the male body image issues, who else would come to mind than our own Editor-in-Chief, Noah Brand, who was bold enough to bare it all in his post, I’m Stark Naked, Deal With It.
The article quotes Noah about the complex process of arriving at self-acceptance:
“Men are conditioned from childhood not to talk about these issues,” he said. “I knew that if we were going to get anyone seriously talking about them somebody would have to do something really confrontational. And I was raised to believe that when you think someone ought to do something your next thought should be, Hey, I’m someone.”
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Noah also explains how most of the feedback on the article was positive, and that many men felt reassured that other men felt as Noah did, and women were glad to learn that men were having this experience.
Way to go, Noah, and cheers to the Sydney Morning Herald for confronting such an important topic!
Read the full Sydney Morning Herald article here, and take their body-image poll!
As a young man, I think male image issues persist we just dont talk about it. Everywhere we turn we are assaulted by images of tall and handsome men with well toned bodies, big biceps and washboard abs. It is this that drives men to become workout and fitness freaks even to the point of taking pills to aid muscle building and remove fat. If we suddenly discover a tablet that instantly gives you a body like the one from the movie 300. I bet it will sell like ice cream in the summer. Personally, I walk around with a… Read more »
It’ll be interesting to see if our (men’s) turn at being vulnerable makes us more hostile to the image-spectacle system that is wreaking similar hell on women’s confidence. Seems less than gallant to complain when it’s being done to us, but defend it, even passively, when it’s done to someone else.
Is it a matter of men “having a turn at being vulnerable” or there finally being coverage of a so called turn we’ve been having for a long time already? Seems less than gallant to complain when it’s being done to us, but defend it, even passively, when it’s done to someone else. If you want to talk about gallantry then bear in mind that a lot of have been complaining about that hell that’s been wreaked on women’s confidence while at the same time having people (sometimes including some of those very same aforementioned women with hell wreaked on… Read more »
Mike, I can’t say I didn’t have a similar thought. I did. I think the more men talk about this issue and look at it in context of themselves first and the way they view their bodies, they will more easily be able to relate to women and how this issue has affected women as well. Which might do a lot in making for better, more understanding and appreciative relationships between men and women in general. Danny, you are absoluetely a man that has given due respect to body images issues women face. I don’t think Mike was trying to… Read more »
I wrote my PhD thesis about eating disorders and focused exclusively on women — because even when men do have eating disorders they haven’t been diagnosed. I think there is a huge silence around what is considered a “female problem,” as Danny mentions — men are conditioned to be “above” such trivialities as body image in our culture and to admit to actually caring how they look is sometimes met with scorn and derision from peers (especially younger guys). I know a lot of men, though, who care very much about how they look and are just as insecure about… Read more »
To answer the question in the title bluntly, yes. I think it shows in the attitude that says men are just now facing body image issues, as if men were fine up until about 5 years ago or something. I’m of the mind that while male body image issues are being discovered now they aren’t just starting now.
But that being said things are getting better.
Hell we might even get to the point where they can be brought up without the usual lead off of “it’s been usually considered a ‘woman’s issue'”.
I have to tell ya, since the age of 40, when I had my first heart attack) and definitely age 41 when I had a quintuple bypass, my body image meant less but the health of my body became my focus. I’d rather live and look like crap then look real good in my coffin.
That being said, good health at times goes hand in hand with looking good.