How much do men really have to do with female body image issues?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was reading this and it brings female body image into the fold as front and center feminist issue.

Why Millennial Feminists Don’t Like Hillary

Yes fat people are discriminated against in modern society where physical fitness is a desired trait, but that discrimination is against both men and women and perpetrated by both men and women. If we are talking standards of beauty that has changed over time, but heterosexual men, unless they are wealthy or famous, are generally not wildly picky with respect to female physiology and will welcome women with significant levels of heft, but stopping short of chronic obesity. In addition (IMO) adult men in real life are often less picky than women with respect to what constitutes acceptable levels of attractiveness in the opposite sex.

So I’m wondering here to what degree men (specifically) are involved in oppressing or controlling women with respect to body image. Many men do have innate preferences re women but these are all over the map. Women seem to be the main actors in determining what body female image is desirable or fashionable and what is not. I don’t see heterosexual men as the primary players in dictating these standards.

2

Seems to me that the most vocal critics of a woman’s appearance and fatness are…other women. If anything, men are more prone to praise a woman’s appearance while she or other women may consider herself fat or ugly.

3

To me, it is all about chemistry. Fat, thin, doesn’t matter. Chemistry is what calls me.

4

I don’t think this is what the OP is asking about or referring to, though.

5

What percentage of fashion magazine photographers and editors are women?

What percentage of movie producers and directors are women?

What percentage of hiring managers are women? Managers in general, who promote people? Corporate overlords/members of the board?

What percentage of fashion designers are women?

Advertising executives?

The people who chose what the ideal of the female body is, display that ideal in public, and shame us if we don’t have the right one, and reward us if we do have the right one, are overwhelmingly male.

I think what you’re saying is that our sexual partners don’t have the greatest influence on women’s body issues…and I’d agree with that. The rest of the world is far more influential, and damaging.

6

*I would venture to say the import and influence of heterosexual men on what’s “in fashion” for modern women is fairly minor at best. I would also bet the presence of female and gay male fashion editors in fashion mags is much higher than that of heterosexual men. *

*I think this is more a youth and “prettiness” issue for maximum appeal to the widest demographic and it’s not gender specific . Comedies aside most male movie stars are also slender/muscular and fit. *

*I’m not seeing scads of model type women in admin and executive positions. They look like normal (sometimes quite hefty) adult females. There is less tolerance for being out of shape in the upper levels of the executive world these days but that goes for men and women. *

Seriously? After subtracting gay men and female fashion designers from the equation I think the percentage of male, heterosexual fashion designers designing women’s attire and choosing the models for same has got to be in the single digits.

*Mainly male I’m guessing but I’d also guess women and gay men would be influencing or controlling a lot of the casting decisions. *

Per my examples above I really don’t think heterosexual men are holding the smoking gun here.

7

Anecdotally, I know many men consider a skeleton-thin woman to be very unattractive, and yet some women keep dieting to that anorexic extent nonetheless. So I don’t think that is a male-caused issue.

8

It might be helpful to distinguish between these body image problems in general (i.e., the seemingly outsize fixation on the physical attractiveness of women in the culture), and the specific kinds of standards that this fixation manifests as.

The attractiveness fixation in general is almost certainly driven by male fixation – it’s important to men, therefore it’s important to women & institutions, and therefore it’s important to women even without considering men. On the other hand, the fact that this fixation leads to the specific, problematic standards of beauty that we’re familiar with (being model-thin, for instance) is a lot more complicated. I’m no expert in the field, but I’d argue that it’s probably an accident of culture: the way the fashion design industry (making clothes that that are only viable on tall, very thin women) intersects with the media and trickles down into the culture at large … or the way that sociological circumstances subconsciously inform standards of beauty & prestige in the culture, which then “trickles up” into the mass media.

The latter problem, the specific one, we can probably do something about with intentional action (raising awareness, influencing a small numbers of deciders & taste-makers, letting those changes work themselves into the media feedback loop, etc.).

I’m not sure what the hell can be done about the fact that men place huge importance on women’s looks*. I guess we can talk about it, try to get men into the habit of noticing other things about women as well. Beyond that? I don’t know, I’m not that confident in our ability to address the issue.

  • = Just as I’m not sure if anything can be done about the fact that a man who’s a professional failure is likely to think of himself as a failure in life, due in no small part to the relative importance placed on that by women/potential romantic partners.
9

Men in general are very vocal about women’s appearance, even apart from weight. When I worked in a place full of bros, every five minutes I had to listen to “man, did you see that girl who just came in here?! She was a MONSTER, bro!” To this day, I still don’t know if that was an insult or a compliment. (I know the answer may seem like it should be obvious, but believe me, it wasn’t). Regardless of what they meant, there’s no doubt they were commenting on how she looked.

Additionally, it doesn’t matter that men don’t have very indiscriminating tastes when it comes down to actually partnering with someone. This doesn’t stop them from quite vocally idealizing certain images. My father is an obese man who has been married to an obese women for almost all their adult lives. And yet if I were to gain just a few pounds, you better believe I’d hear about it from him first. Because he is fixated on everyone’s weight, but especially women’s. He once told me that every time he sees a fat black woman, he thinks of Aunt Jemima. (“I can’t help it!” he exclaimed.) He doesn’t think his wife is Aunt Jemima. But if she were someone else’s wife, apparently that’s how he would see her. Doesn’t seem to matter to him that he outweighs her by at least one hundred pounds.

Do I think men are the sole practitioners of female lookism? Of course not. Some of the most fat-hating people I know are women. But I do think men, whether they indeed to or not, tend to propel it more and defend it more. They say things like “I can’t help it!” when called on their superficiality. In my experience, a woman is more likely to own up to her pettiness and not try to excuse it with an appeal to nature.

10

I think lots of men are jerks about it (like the ones in monstro’s example), but it’s a larger problem then just jerks, IMO – it’s culture and society that makes it okay, for a lot of people at least, to judge women by their attractiveness and weight, publicly. And it goes both ways – many men think catcalling is a compliment for women they find attractive.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but a big part of it, in my mind, is American media – when I watch British TV shows (mysteries and cop dramas on PBS, for the most part), I see a much wider variety of women in terms of conventional (e.g. “Hollywood”) attractiveness than in US TV shows.

This ties into the dreaded privilege as well – many/most men have the privilege of not being catcalled and approached in public by leering men, of not having comments made by strangers about their weight, of not having their value judged as much based on appearance (though appearance seems to be always judged to some degree), etc.

11

17%. The answer is 17%. Markets in Fashion: A phenomenological approach - Patrik Aspers - Google Books You would need a staggering proportion of gay men to have greater representation.

23% and 7%, respectively. Research – Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film (And men have body image issues as well, influenced by media representation, so I don’t understand your point about male movie stars.)

[QUOTE=https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/report/2014/03/07/85457/fact-sheet-the-womens-leadership-gap/]
They are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
They hold just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
In the financial services industry, they make up 54.2 percent of the labor force, but are only 12.4 percent of executive officers, and 18.3 percent of board directors. None are CEOs.
They account for 78.4 percent of the labor force in health care and social assistance but only 14.6 percent of executive officers and 12.4 percent of board directors. None, again, are CEOs.
In the legal field, they are 45.4 percent of associates—but only 25 percent of nonequity partners and 15 percent of equity partners.
In medicine, they comprise 34.3 percent of all physicians and surgeons but only 15.9 percent of medical school deans.
In information technology, they hold only 9 percent of management positions and account for only 14 percent of senior management positions at Silicon Valley startups.

[/QUOTE]

Attractive people get hired faster, promoted faster and make more money. Attractive People Are More Successful - Business Insider

Ah, I didn’t realize we were excluding gay men. You’re right, fashion design is overrepresented by gay men in the upper levels of management. In the upper stratosphere of designers, however are the straight men: Tommy Hilfiger, Oscar de la Renta, Roberto Cavalli, Ralph Lauren, Christian Lacroix…

3% (citation already given). Homosexuality doesn’t occur often enough in humans to realistically assume that most of the other 97% of people are gay.

Per your assumptions, no. Per reality, yes.

12

To add to WhyNot’s stats: Gay men are not known for their acceptance of the ‘natural’ female form. They’re excruciatingly critical of women’s bodies, generally speaking.

13

Men and women work to together to create unrealistic expectations about every aspect of life for both men and women. Then instead of addressing that as a problem directly they start blaming each other for causing the problem. So get over it, stop acting like puppets.

14

For what it’s worth, I haven’t noticed much of this sort of thing in my own experience. Given what anecdotal evidence is worth, I suspect my, your, and many other people’s perspective on how big a problem this is is skewed one way or the other by the particular people we hang around with.

I sincerely wonder how much of the problem is body image and how much of it is the general human tendency to worry about whether we’re good enough. If I could wave a magic wand and change culture and society so that it’s not considered okay to judge women by their attractiveness and weight, how many of the women who are currently insecure about such things would become confident and self-assured, and how many of them would find something else to be insecure about?

15

^^^ This.

Well said.

It may be true that individual male behavior is not the primary place that women experience social pressure about their apprearance, but that’s not at all the same as saying men don’t have much to do with the phenomenon. If men did not exist, it’s unlikely that women would continue to pressure each other to be thin and fix themselves up and so on.

16

I have a hard time seeing men, in general, as responsible for body image issues of women. It seems to me that it’s not men, per se, but society as a whole that has put an increased pressure of physical appearance. Further, while women do have it worse than men, body image is also becoming a major issue for a lot of men too, and it’s not getting anywhere near as much attention that body image issues for women are.

Fat people, in general, are discriminated against, not just fat women. Look at various male pop stars, actors, athletes; their bodies are held to high standards as well. People often criticize Hollywood or comicbooks for over-sexualizing women, but at the same time we laud someone like Chris Pratt for losing 60 lbs to play Star Lord, and suddenly he goes from that goofy guy on Parks and Rec to an A-lister in a year, in large part thanks to him getting cut up. And, as a gym rat myself, I’ve met plenty of men who do ridiculous diet and work out regimens to try to get cut up, and they don’t hide the fact that they believe they need to do that to meet women.

I recall a recent thread about VPL, I think it even had a poll attached to it. I hadn’t even heard about that except here on the Dope. IIRC, apparently a lot of women go to great lengths to avoid it, and most men either don’t notice, don’t care, or even find it attractive. I’ve similar seen many comments about how women dress a certain way, do their makeup/hair, whatever for other women, a lot of guys won’t even really notice. In fact, there was another recent thread about women commenting how how they seemed to get hit on more when they weren’t made up than when they were.

And at the same time, again as a gym rat, I meet plenty of men commenting on various shortcomings in their physiques that most women just plain won’t notice. I can notice these “flaws” because I know a decent amount about bodybuilding and, as a guy, am obviously quite familiar with the male physique. I’ll get a lot of comments or questions about various muscles or exercises or whatever.

And I’m not saying this to turn this into a men vs. women thing, but rather I think we’re doing a disservice by misidentifying the issue as a gendered body-image issue. Our society flatly says, if you’re fat, you’re unattractive and undesirable, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. If you’re not doing the right grooming or wearing the right clothes or accessories, you’re unattractive and undesirable. Certainly, men have a lot to do with these decisions, but I think that has less to do with them having penises and want to see how women, and more to do with the fact that men are more likely than women to be in positions of power to set social trends. And, by that same token, in recent years they’ve come to realize that there’d been a largely untapped market of men who can also be convinced that they’re fat and ugly and unattractive unless they buy whatever product they’re selling. And, frankly, I think that if women were in those positions of power, trying to sell more beauty products or clothes or magazines of scantily clad, airbrushed to perfection, beautiful people, they’d probably be selling similar bullshit too.

So, no, I don’t blame men for women’s body issue problems, I blame social pressure from generated by these various media playing on our innate desire to belong for our collective body image issues, women and men.

17

It’s like when men complain women are catty. Well, you never gave us an opportunity for another outlet. Rolling in the dirt fighting is considered “unladylike”. For centuries men have relegated us to be worth nothing more than our looks. Culture to culture, man to man. What’s the first thing out of most men’s mouths? “Is she hot”?

Women comment on other women’s looks, certainly. And we can be mean about it. But when I look about everywhere and see men in charge of everything, don’t tell me that somehow we are the ones causing all of the problems and the strife.

Whynot’s statistics reveal a huge gap in between what men think and what actually is. Fact is, you guys run the fashion industry, just like you run everything else. You guys run the entire world and then you turn around and try to lay the blame on women for something that is quite clearly a societal problem. And maybe all of the fat chicks around is a good sign - we just don’t give a shit anymore.

18

Then why are the runway models and women in fashion ads so skinny and un-attractive?

If I find that I run the fashion industry, by golly there is going to be a strongly-worded memo going out requiring those anorectic clothes-horses to gain twenty pounds before the next shoot, or they can go peddle their portfolios at the Clinic for Eating Disorders!

Now get off my lawn.

Regards,
Shodan

19

I don’t need magazines to tell me that Megan Fox is way hotter than Melissa McCarthy. My dick tells me that. Of course, if I want to see a woman do something other than just stand there and look hot, I’m going to look to someone other than Ms Fox.

I don’t think you can blame men or women with people having “body image issues”. It’s collectively the fault of the advertising and various media industries. Look, they’ve pretty much got showing people what they want to see down to a science. And people are attracted to what they are attracted to. So the inevitable result of this is that magazines, shows, film and every other form of media will constantly show attractive people in perfect clothes with perfect hair under perfect lighting. Usually in perfectly scripted situations that resolve themselves perfectly.

Reality isn’t like that. So the more time you spend watching vacuous tv programming, reading style magazines and otherwise try to conform your actual life to the lifestyle portrayed by a team of marketers using focus groups, professional models, and the latest technology, the more unhappy you will make yourself.

Yes, their biggest critique is that there isn’t a penis growing out of them.

20

Because the men who are in charge in the fashion industry think that looks hot, and they tell everyone else that this is the new hotness. And we’re running into the “not all men” problem again. Men always come out of the woodwork online shouting, “But *I *don’t like women like that! Not ME! It’s NOT ME!”

If you actually were the majority or the people who set the trends, the world would be different. But it’s not. So you and your beliefs are not the majority and you are not the person who sets the trends.

Every day I can go somewhere online and find threads filled with men judging women. Women will do it too. But don’t act like even here at the SMDB we don’t create threads rating “celebrity hotness” or yet another thread derailed into “sure, you can choose not to shave, but that’s not hot”. It’s not just constrained to those ugly people out there in the wild internet. We do it right here. And every little piece does it. Sure, it’s a societal problem as a whole with many factors impacting each other. But when it comes down to it, how many threads here discussing “hotness” are really started by women? It’s a subtle problem. Naturally, someone will come out of the woodwork and exclaim, “What, am I never allowed to have opinions again now?!” No, it’s called thinking about what you do and why you do it.