This is a comment by Keith Kappel on the post “The Biggest Bulges of 2012: Packing a Double Standard“.
Keith Kappel said:
Well, speaking as a guy, and a guy that used to be far from the ideal male body image (some 70 pounds overweight), I can tell you that this sort of thing does NOT impact men the same way it appears to impact women. I think there are a LOT of reasons for this, because yes, I agree, the objectification is the same thing. Men are just conditioned to react to this sort of thing differently.
First, lets take this backwards, to childhood. Whenever you talk about the female body image ideals and societal expectations, eventually Barbie gets brought into the discussion, so lets talk about boys toys, specifically superheroes. Comic books often catch criticism for putting women in revealing costumes with unrealistic proportions, but they do the same thing to the men. Over-muscled and clad in spandex head to toe, just about every image in your average superhero comic or cartoon is an objectified male form. Of course, we don’t call it that, we call it the “male power fantasy”.
We men love the “male power fantasy” so much, the entire action movie genre was created. The 80s were filled with muscle-bound shirtless men in “guy movies”, and you never heard a guy walk out saying the movie made him feel helpless or inferior. If anything, those movies, those images, despite the fact that the majority of men consuming that media could ever achieve a result like that without surgical assistance, come out of that experience fired up.
I don’t think men take it as, oh, women/society likes him because he has great abs/huge muscles/a huge package, I think men see stuff like that and say “Yeah, that guy has X going for him, good for him, he is being the best him that he can be. I want to be the best ME that I can be.
Basically, I think this comes down to self-esteem coping mechanisms, and I think men are just much better internally equipped in that regard, on average. Also, society gives men a LOT of options for attracting a woman. We believe we stand a good chance to attract a mate if we are any of the following: tall, handsome, hung, rich, talented, funny, have great hair, or are intelligent.
For women, the list would seem much shorter. They get told that being beautiful is the ONLY way to attract a man. Much more of their self-worth is tied to their appearance.
If a man KNOWS he is physically unattractive, and many of us DO know it, we will focus our attention on some other quality we possess from the above list. We don’t keep beating our self-esteems against the wall by trying to live up to what society says we should look like. We accept that we don’t, and either do our best to make changes, or accept that we don’t and never will, and focus on one of the other desirable qualities in a man.
I don’t think the solution to this problem is to somehow STOP objectifying women, or even to spend time drawing attention to the fact that doing that is wrong. The solution is to start emphasizing the other things women can bring to the table, and telling women that those things are just as valuable as beauty. The reason decrying objectification hasn’t worked, is because there aren’t any replacements for women’s self-worth.
Until you hear men say “well, I know she’s not all that pretty, but shes so smart/funny/talented that I find her very sexy anyway.”
Photo credit: Flickr / CarbonNYC
While I do agree that men have better coping mechanisms, I also see that men have their own fair share of neuroses and insecurities when it comes to body image. With body role models like the Situation, more men are hitting the gym for purely vain reasons creating a generation of men with body dysmorphia. A lot of men that I have worked with often feel that they are not good enough, not smart enough, not hung enough. All of it can lead to some pretty big feelings of self-hatred. In the last few decades, superheros have gotten more muscly… Read more »
If a man is physically unattricatactive he still has some optiops open. If he has a ‘Large Wallet’ he still acctractive to MANY women’ If he’s ‘Well Hung’ he definitatley got a following.
“There are folks in the world who have real problems.”
Crushing loneliness and the feeling being unwanted are real problems.
Well,men are,I think, infinitely better off, not making the same issue of sexual objectification that women do. Women sexually objectify men in culturally acceptable ways as a matter of course,individually and collectively.Why else do we have the Chippendales-aren’t they horses- and Magic Mike and the Thunder Down Under and top ten sexiest men in the world list? It makes little sense to me that I should develop eating disorders and other extreme selfesteem issues because I don’t look like Brad Pitt.In my view,a person who behaves this way is already ill.Most cultures in human history and every modern culture has… Read more »
Some people with “real problems” put an inordinate focus on their appearance. In fact, an inordinate focus on appearance is their “real problem”. People can’t, in the short term, do much about what they feel. They can choose how they deal with their feelings, and one choice I made is to write about my feelings here. While I believe that your comments are primarily meant to offer an alternative way to view things based on what you believe works for you, I didn’t hear them that way. What I heard was a tired old saw about “dealing with it”, as… Read more »
Basically, I think this comes down to self-esteem coping mechanisms, and I think men are just much better internally equipped in that regard, on average. That is not entirely true. We have a social narrative that men are not supposed to care about those things, yet we also have a host of images suggesting that women prefer chiseled, hairless muscle men over the average-looking guy. Boys and men are not blind, so that kind of imagery will have an effect. It is more likely that boys and men with body image issues learn to keep it to themselves and either… Read more »
I think most would agree that men have selfesteem issues relative to attaining the specific standards of expectation masculinity/attractability. Why isn’t that fact discussed side by side with what women face since they are related issues?Women,under some circumstances welcome and encourage sexual objectification… usually,only when they complete control over the context.I had women wear a short red miniskirt with heels and no stockings to work.She was my boss and she knew my girlfriend?! Some of this false piety is a joke.
You express quite well the way many men avoid, or seemingly avoid the self esteem pit many women fall into. Given that you felt you had other options to maintain your self esteem, it’s healthy of you to look to those qualities as “boosters”, and your advice that we all focus on similar qualities in women along with their looks is excellent. In fact, most women aren’t conventionally beautiful to most men, and vise versa, and so most of us feel an attachment to those other attributes. Men and women do need to talk more and more openly about those… Read more »
Some people would suggest this is why a guy would hone a sense of humor…
If a man KNOWS he is physically unattractive, and many of us DO know it, we will focus our attention on some other quality we possess from the above list. We don’t keep beating our self-esteems against the wall by trying to live up to what society says we should look like. We accept that we don’t, and either do our best to make changes, or accept that we don’t and never will, and focus on one of the other desirable qualities in a man. Sounds like good advice unfortunately I think declarations like this are precisely why men who… Read more »