Picture a standard mannequin you find at every clothes store. Please take a good look. Is that the standard body of the average adult? The irony is that while men have never had as much issue with being confronted with this unrealistic standard in comparison, it’s the unrealistic standard that requires far more effort to achieve.
Confront men with what they could be in comparison to what they are. Shame can be an incentive as much as positive reinforcement. The difference is that men have never taken as much offense in being confronted with ideal bodies.
Men haven’t started body positivity movements to feed their cognitive dissonance, justifying awful diets and lack of exercise. Whether we acknowledge it or not, looks do play a very important role in our lives. It’s more in the case of women, but it has its fair share of consequences on men too.
Primarily, women are judged on their looks and men on their property and money, but it’s not wrong to say looks don’t matter for men. One of the prime and fascinating examples which people use is: Fifty Shades Of Grey.
If Christian Grey wasn’t as handsome or rich as shown in the movie, the movie would have strayed far away from being a commercial success and would have been considered a stalker harassment movie by the majority.
When the man is rich, when the woman is beautiful, we tend to overlook all other vices they might possess. That’s the bitter truth of life. As for why? Probably those unrealistic body standards are not really as imposed on men as unrealistic “value” standards are, how much they earn, what’s the size of the mansion they live in, and so on. But the little that they are, it’s the same reason why unrealistic body standards are imposed upon women.
Human beings are visual creatures, however, men are more than women, so they find them attractive in looks. From research, many women find it “safe” and “relaxing” to have a bodybuilder boyfriend. They think their men would be there to protect them from danger; they feel secure and comfortable in it.
It’s a major reason why women are attracted to muscular men. It’s just human nature to care about looks, and no matter how much they admit it, it will take human civilization a long, long time to get rid of this “looks mean everything” mentality.
In the age of Kardashians, where stupid people get the status of world-famous celebrities for having nothing other than looks. But most guys think – “At my university campus, I see super hot girls and quite a few of them with boyfriends that not only look ugly but also like they don’t even care if they look decent in public. They just look run down and dress like painters, so I have a hard time imagining that they’re even rich”.
You have no idea how ridiculous and out of place, these couples look together. How do these guys even get top-notch girls like that? Out of all the guys, these girls must have to line up for them, what would possibly make them choose a guy like that?”
Look, insecure guy, not looking down on you, but if you just keep dividing the world into beautiful or ugly, your chances to succeed in getting the relationship you crave is minimal. You notice these beautiful girls with ugly guys because it clashes with your worldview. And that view is skewed but ubiquitous.
You can see it in the media. When supermodel Paulina Porizkova got into a relationship with musician Ric Ocasek, the papers termed them Beauty and the Beast, same with Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett.
credit: sanq4
