This was a very intriguing article that had many surprising
facts. The article talks about how
research shows that men care more and more about their body image and
appearance. The article also
gives many alarming and interesting statistics and facts about men and their
relationship with gyms and products.
To be honest, I never would have imagined that men came close to “caring
as much” as women did about their own appearance. All that aside, I was most surprised
to see that boys as young as 5 and 6 are now taking an interest in the ideal
size that they want to achieve. I
am confident in saying that the general perception in our society today is that
it is the female who ‘needs’ to care more about her looks. However after reading this, that seems
not to be true. The article
pointed out that men were more dissatisfied with their chest then women
are. At the beginning of the
article, the author drew comparisons to the 1950’s and 1960’s when men didn’t
care at all about their muscularity, and there was no such thing as a “personal
trainer.” Things have changed.
The infatuation with muscle tone for men wasn’t the portion
of the article that stood out to me the most. The fact that men spend thousands of dollars on cosmetic
procedures each year came out of nowhere! It also turns out that recent
advertising for cosmetic surgery is being targeted towards the male gender. Again, this is something that I never
would have thought of or imagined.
The fact that steroid use grew largely in the 1980’s as they emerged in
Hollywood wasn’t so much of a surprise to me. I have heard of kids through my later years in high school
and into college that have used steroids as a way to bulk up their bodies. Of the very few cases that I have heard
of, one was for better performance in football, the others were just for
general increase in size. I think
the reason why we have seen this increase in care of muscle size over the past
50 years comes in large part to how the media and figures such as G.I. Joe and
Star Wars have emerged and grown.
I have been playing sports and been around athletes my whole
life. That being said I have been
exposed to all different body types, and with the competitive nature of sport
it is almost impossible to say that I haven’t cared about my size. Being on the lacrosse team here at
Conn, we have standards in the weight room that must be met, forcing you to
take up weight lifting essentially as a hobby. I wasn’t a weight lifter in high school and never was that muscular
of a kid. However during my
post-graduate year of high school, which was geared around 3 sports, and my
freshman year at Conn, I was forced into getting into the gym and keeping up
with my workouts. I felt the need to go to GNC and buy “supplements”
and protein powders to help me bulk up.
My mother hated that aspect. The pressure was definitely there. I saw other kids with different body
types doing their own thing in order to achieve their personal success. In my case, I was always trying to gain
weight, as I never felt like I could, no matter how hard I would try. After reading this article and thinking
about my peers, and myself I realized it isn’t far fetched and this is definitely
a cause for concern going forward.
John I really liked your post and I am glad that you brought in your personal experience and how you felt you had to gain weight and lift for sports. I have a little brother who is a senior in high school and is a very good baseball player. He is tall and skinny and ever since he was a freshman his coaches have been obsessed with him bulking up. Even going as far as not to put him in to pitch because he was “too small” even though he pitches faster than any other kid on the team. The pressure from his coaches and the effect it has on my brother is distressing to my mom, just as it seems it was for yours. She tries to combat the pressure by taking my brother to nutritionists and making sure he has private training and coaching outside of his teams, my mom is very concerned with making sure the people who help my brother outside of his baseball teams are all very positive and give him realistic feedback. But that does not change the demands of his coaches and since they are the ones making the roster decisions, my brother has no choice, as it seems you had no choice, but to spend all his free time lifting and consuming protein.
ReplyDeleteIn my education class, we have been discussing conflict resolution. We have been taught that there are many different styles of how to handle situations. Many of them depend on gender. We've learned that guys handle their problems much more physically and competitively than females. But, in my opinion, this need to be aggressive is greatly constructed by society. Men are portrayed as more aggressive and dominant and strive to establish their dominance by violence and competitive sports. I completely agree that there is a unfair pressure on guys to have muscular and "bulked up" bodies. Just as women starve themselves and go on crash diets, men also go to unhealthy lengths to achieve the "perfect" body such as taking steroids. Both genders suffer greatly in trying to achieve a certain, unrealistic appearance or body.
ReplyDeleteLike John, I was also taken aback by the revelation that men frequently receive cosmetic surgery for aesthetic purposes. Since I am a woman, I generally focus on public images of women and not of men and am guilty of assuming that men do not feel as much pressure to maintain an unattainable physical appearance, glorified by society. What I found very ironic about the fact that men must take steroids, get pedicures or endure surgical procedures to manufacture an unnatural, yet prized, level of masculinity and beauty is that these procedures are stereotypically "feminine." In most cases, when a man crosses into "feminine" territory, he is ridiculed or made to seem like an outcast. When a man, however, partakes in something that would generally be considered as outside of the realm of masculinity, like having surgically enhanced procedures or feeling insecure about his unmasculine physical appearance and engaging in body work to correct these physical "imperfections," no one questions him because he is doing all of this with the ultimate goal of increasing his level of masculinity. My dad, for example, would be laughed at or would cause confusion in my family if he spent any amount of time in the kitchen, yet he gets a manicure on a weekly basis and no one finds his engagement in this "feminine" activity odd or out of the ordinary. This is further proof that men and women engage in similar amounts of time ruminating about their physical "flaws" and attempting to fix them.
ReplyDeleteLike many other people, I was surprised to read about how much men care about their appearance. Because women are the ones who are told that they should wear make-up, do their hair just right, and buy expensive designer clothes, I always felt that women cared so much more than men about their appearance. I remember freaking out in high school if I didn't have time to put on make-up before class, but my brother could just roll out of bed, do nothing to his appearance, and nobody would know the difference. However, as my brother has gotten older, he's begun to lift weights and like John talked about, he also takes a lot of supplements, like whey protein. He doesn't do it because he's part of a sports team, but because he was tired of being described as "scrawny." Thus, even thought he cares about his appearance in a different way than I do, he definitely still cares and works on his appearance because he doesn't want to be perceived as weak or un-athletic.
ReplyDeleteSports is very socialized. There is a certain way you have to look, certain attention that you have to attract, and of course there is a great amount of skill needed. I feel like in sports you have to muscular in order to play the sport. In any sport there is running or something that involves high activity. There are kids that are told to bulk up or that are bulked up just in order to play sports. Today we see that young kids feel the need to have muscles which is not surprising because there are a lot superheros that have muscles, that are completely ripped. However we know that there is only a certain amount of muscle that a kid can gain in his youth however in adulthood you have men training non stop for a ripped body.
ReplyDeleteJae