The rise of the adonis complex response by Melissa Monsalve

For the most part, most people would not expect men to feel pressured by society anywhere near as much as women are. However, as this article shows, all things considered, men are just as pressured to look a certain way just as much as women are. The difference is that on top of the pressure, men are also told to keep their emotions that may show weakness bottled up. This has caused the general public to remain out of the loop with the self-esteem/self-imaging issues affects boys and men of any age. It really should come as no surprise that men are also pressured. Images of these huge, bulky muscled men that look as if that had been created by CGI or the marketing of male action figures who's proportions in real life would be impossible to achieve created an illusion of an "ideal" male body image. When a skinny, lanky guy or a short, chubby guy has grown up accepting these images as the ideal, how could they not feel insecure about themselves? Although I won't lie that I was surprised at the rate at which men are receiving plastic surgery or have eating disorders, it would only make sense. Men are not "allowed" to express their insecurities, so they take more silent routes to achieve their goal: surgery or eating disorders. Because men are not expected to go to such lengths to achieve such a goal, they can probably play it of somehow without being questioned or doubted as much as a woman would be. Another pressure comes from gender supriority. Being the dominate gender is both a blessing and a curse for men. In some aspects they may receive more privileges than women, but they are also subject to a great amount of ridiculous because they are seen as the better gender. This probably explains why in the article it states that men feel more pressured to look good for the opposite sex. They may feel that women as the subservient gender can ridicule and judge their bodies. This pressure is also do to the fact that men find some sort of worth in how attractive they are seen by the opposite sex because that then gains validation as a man from his male friends, which is a topic we explored in class earlier in the semester. The reality of the situation with men an their body images has been distorted, making it seem like its only women who worry about their looks. So what do we to help these boys and men? It's difficult to say. Because men are even under more pressure than women are to express their sexuality (because being anything but a heterosexual man is seen as wrong by most of society) men can't express their insecurities or come out and say that they have an eating disorder or that they have received plastic surgery, thus making it difficult to change this tide of negative male body image. This article just goes to show that men are in just as much of a pickle as women are in terms of pressures for an "ideal" body image.