Ever since the book got picked up, I've found myself having to explain 'what it's about' to people on a regular basis (and yet I still haven't come up with a good one-liner, and inevitably end up mumbling my way through mentions of weight loss, surgery, and mental health / neuroses). Most women get the point of the book pretty quickly, and often begin telling me their own stories or the stories of people (mostly women) they know who've struggled with weight or body image, but the men often glaze over a bit and kind of nod and smile – if the men in question happen to work in publishing, they might make a comment about marketability, but generally they just nod and let me do the talking. I very rarely get any sort of instant relating of personal stories.
Based on this divide in reactions to my own experience, it would be easy to assume that men don't have body image issues, or at the very least they don't have bad enough issues for it to affect their lives and cause them to feel relieved to learn that they're not alone. Still, we know there are men out there who have low self-esteem linked to the way they look – the media does a perfectly adequate job of covering teenage boys who feel too skinny, or too zitty, or not muscular enough, or too short. But while fat boys/men haven't been hidden from the public sphere, they often take on a more positive persona: funny, sweet, smart, the 'good guy' who eventually gets the girl because he knows how to employ empathy. For a long time, it seemed like women had a monopoly on being fat and therefore miserable and alone.
Things are changing on that front, though. Not only are there some really awesome women coming out of the woodwork and putting themselves in the burning gaze of the public and bravely stating that brains and attitude are more important than looks (and, more importantly, that they look great as they are), but on the other side of the coin, men's insecurities are becoming more visible as well. The BBC even did a show recently called I Hate My Body: Skinny Boys and Muscle Men, which followed four young men whose bodies were a source of embarrassment or physical difficulty in their lives – granted, the show was significantly more focused on changing their bodies than it was on investigating their states of mind (and the authority figures were actually kind of dickish to them, so I hope they weren't too fragile), but it still brought the fact of male insecurity to the fore.
Sure, some people may be derisive about the comparison between what women go through and the usually more minor pressures men face, but the fact remains that men do suffer from body-image issues – feeling bad about our bodies is no longer a cross women can claim to bear alone. I've talked about this briefly on the blog before, and I still feel that fat women do have a harder time of it than fat men, but I also think it's not a competition: acknowledging someone else's struggle doesn't make ours any less valid. In fact, imagine how much more good we could do if we stopped focusing on who has it harder and spent our time and energy on trying to make the world more understanding of everybody.
Okay, okay, I'm going all John Lennon on you, and the truth is I'm far too cynical to believe that will ever happen. The human race is nothing if not competitive over which of us is the most downtrodden. But here's my take on it: when I was in high school, and I saw my first ad that targeted men in their soft achilles heel of insecurity – an ad for Just for Men that said something like "she doesn't need to know you're going grey" or suggested in some other way that women think salt and pepper is unattractive (I think it's super sexy) – I was surprised to find myself reacting with sadness. After years of wishing my thin brother could feel a bit of what I dealt with every day, I suddenly realized that I wanted anything but that; if half the population already feels crap about itself, why should we double that number? If the poison spreads to men (which it seems it already has), then who's healthy enough to fight it properly?
I guess we'll just all have to fight while infected, because this thing is pervasive. Maybe our society should stop focusing so much on the 'obesity epidemic' and start paying attention to the rot that's spreading through our minds, and the way it's affecting those we love (and even those we intensely dislike – nobody is immune, it seems). I'd guess that might even have a knock-on effect where overeating is concerned, but that's just me assuming that giving a crap about people makes them feel better, while makes them less likely to eat their feelings. And that goes for women and men.
Based on this divide in reactions to my own experience, it would be easy to assume that men don't have body image issues, or at the very least they don't have bad enough issues for it to affect their lives and cause them to feel relieved to learn that they're not alone. Still, we know there are men out there who have low self-esteem linked to the way they look – the media does a perfectly adequate job of covering teenage boys who feel too skinny, or too zitty, or not muscular enough, or too short. But while fat boys/men haven't been hidden from the public sphere, they often take on a more positive persona: funny, sweet, smart, the 'good guy' who eventually gets the girl because he knows how to employ empathy. For a long time, it seemed like women had a monopoly on being fat and therefore miserable and alone.
Things are changing on that front, though. Not only are there some really awesome women coming out of the woodwork and putting themselves in the burning gaze of the public and bravely stating that brains and attitude are more important than looks (and, more importantly, that they look great as they are), but on the other side of the coin, men's insecurities are becoming more visible as well. The BBC even did a show recently called I Hate My Body: Skinny Boys and Muscle Men, which followed four young men whose bodies were a source of embarrassment or physical difficulty in their lives – granted, the show was significantly more focused on changing their bodies than it was on investigating their states of mind (and the authority figures were actually kind of dickish to them, so I hope they weren't too fragile), but it still brought the fact of male insecurity to the fore.
Sure, some people may be derisive about the comparison between what women go through and the usually more minor pressures men face, but the fact remains that men do suffer from body-image issues – feeling bad about our bodies is no longer a cross women can claim to bear alone. I've talked about this briefly on the blog before, and I still feel that fat women do have a harder time of it than fat men, but I also think it's not a competition: acknowledging someone else's struggle doesn't make ours any less valid. In fact, imagine how much more good we could do if we stopped focusing on who has it harder and spent our time and energy on trying to make the world more understanding of everybody.
Okay, okay, I'm going all John Lennon on you, and the truth is I'm far too cynical to believe that will ever happen. The human race is nothing if not competitive over which of us is the most downtrodden. But here's my take on it: when I was in high school, and I saw my first ad that targeted men in their soft achilles heel of insecurity – an ad for Just for Men that said something like "she doesn't need to know you're going grey" or suggested in some other way that women think salt and pepper is unattractive (I think it's super sexy) – I was surprised to find myself reacting with sadness. After years of wishing my thin brother could feel a bit of what I dealt with every day, I suddenly realized that I wanted anything but that; if half the population already feels crap about itself, why should we double that number? If the poison spreads to men (which it seems it already has), then who's healthy enough to fight it properly?
I guess we'll just all have to fight while infected, because this thing is pervasive. Maybe our society should stop focusing so much on the 'obesity epidemic' and start paying attention to the rot that's spreading through our minds, and the way it's affecting those we love (and even those we intensely dislike – nobody is immune, it seems). I'd guess that might even have a knock-on effect where overeating is concerned, but that's just me assuming that giving a crap about people makes them feel better, while makes them less likely to eat their feelings. And that goes for women and men.
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