The Quest for the Perfect Body

When you look out on to the landscape what do you spot? Ads as far as the eye can see depicting attractive people. The message is clear. Look like this if you want to matter or buy this product to look attractive. It’s often cited that women put themselves through hell to conform to the ridiculous standards of beauty expected of them. But what about males?

For every ad featuring a model skinny as a stick you have one depicting guys as muscle bound sex machines. Moreover from the time males are older enough to comprehend it they are told to toughen up and walk it off if they get hurt.

And when it comes to sex thanks to porn males think if they don’t measure up they’re not a real man. Especially if they happen to gay or bisexual. The concept of masculinity in western society, and America in particularly, is rooted in the number of females a male has slept with. The higher the number the more status he has among his peer group.

However when a male expresses a interest in his peers beyond friendship he is often ostracized for not being a “real man,” because only women should want to sleep with men.

Spurned the gay/bi male turns the LGBTQ community where he hopes to find inclusion. Instead what he finds is a fragmented network of groups that exclude people on such arbitrary criteria as being too hairy, dark, feminine, or not buff enough.

Every aspect of him becomes another box to be ticked off to see if he’s worthy enough to join the group. Seeking refuge from this mean girl mentality he turns to porn. Here too he is made to feel inferior for not having gargantuan genitalia or being the right color.

Distraught he begins dieting and exercising to conform to the body fascism placed on him by the wider community. At first it becomes about losing those extra pounds, which morphs into fitting into those skinny jeans.

Pretty soon he is spending most of his time at the gym and engaging in unhealthy eating patterns such skipping meals or having a severely reduce caloric diet. He has entered the world of male eating disorders.

Not unlike females who suffer the same disorders, his quest to obtain the perfect body has left him with a warped view of his body. However unlike most females, his preferred method of purging that slice of cheese cake is extreme exercise. If left unchecked he could suffer sudden cardiac arrest due to malnutrition.

So what is the solution to this problem? Remind him he is in good shape and should only exercise to stay in shape, not to conform to someone else’s idea of beauty and masculinity. Only by absolving him of this need to please others will he find happiness within himself and go on to form healthy relations with others.