Sure, it’s a “societal” problem. Absolutely. And men are overwhelmingly setting the societal standards, and holding both men and women to them. It’s not an oppression contest.
I have seen no indication that the majority of men find excessive thinness attractive.
But I doubt that the purpose of the kind of exaggerated emaciation seen in fashion is there because it attracts men. It is there because it makes women feel insecure. If you can make someone feel insecure, they are that much more likely to buy a product that they believe will address the insecurity - the clothes that will make them look skinny, or the women’s magazine with the magic diet secret that will allow them to lose twenty pounds by Thanksgiving, or whatever they are selling.
If you want to blame that on heterosexual men, I am sure most sales executives are heterosexual men. But they are not doing because they are heterosexual - they want to make money and get attention.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s not really the issue, not to mention how one defines “excessive.” Large/fat people, especially large/fat women, get the raw end of the deal in many ways and have for a long time. As mentioned above, it’s not a matter of individual criteria for a mate as of society’s general standards.
So what? The motive doesn’t matter, the fact that it’s being done is the problem.
Fashion is about status competition. The way fashion works is that buying expensive clothes and accessories signals to everyone around you that you have lots of money to spend and lots of time to devote to shopping. This signals high status.
We live in a society where it is very easy to get fat and takes lots of time, and money to stay thin. Thus being thin is high status. When being fat was hard and most people were living hand to mouth being Rubenesque was high status.
Status competition is present in every society on earth and has been forever. No one is to blame for it, it is just part of human nature.
If fat and beauty shaming disappeared tomorrow women would find something else to hate themselves for.
I think women have psychological issues stemming from the fact that as soon as they develop even a little bit physically every dude is leering at them wherever they go, 24/7. There’s never a break.
Society is full of unrealistically proportioned male ideals. Most guys don’t watch the latest action movie starring hunks of beefcake and declare they have to go the gym. Maybe if women were as judgmental as men this would change, but even then I’m not sure. It seems like most slovenly guys have the mentality of the stereotypical big black woman: I’m big and beautiful, take it or leave it. Then again, about the only things most guys really seem to worry about is going bald, having a small penis, or being short. Things that are actually important to women.
When men sit around and criticize a woman’s appearance it doesn’t tend to be too nuanced. Hambeast. Butterface. No T&A. Too skinny. That sorta thing. Women find all sorts of weird things to analyze. I once heard a group of women endlessly criticizing another gal’s neck. Neck? Must’ve really hated her to reach that much. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guy comment on a woman’s neck. Probably because you can’t screw a neck, absent a tracheotomy.
Fact is, the women in *Maxim *are just as unrealistic as the ones in Vogue, just in different directions. Women don’t have 19-inch waists in real life, but they also don’t have 23-inch waists with D-cups.
+1
IANA psychologist or sociologist or whatever, but I think women have psychological issues stemming from the fact that they are basically evolved to jockey for status by attracting a man. In contrast, men evolved to secure status through using their superior size and strength to smash their opponent’s head in with a rock. I don’t think that’s changed just because we evolved language and iPhones nad whatnot.
Why, for example, do successful women lament the fact that they can’t find a man who is at least as successful as they are? A succesful man, OTHO, tends not to care about marrying an attractive secretary or waitress.
What issues do women get? I assume a 14 year old being leered at by men older than her dad is going to have some mental effects, but what ends up happening?
Not sure if you were sarcastic about baldness or penis size, but women actually do care about height, being tall is one of the major things women look for in a man.
Men just want a woman to be fertile. Other than bros or fat fascists men are pretty tolerant of female diversity. It is women who are fighting to win the attention of the top 10% of men who tear other women down for dumb stuff that men don’t care about (like necks).
Well, here are a few anecdotes from my life for illustration:
When I entered puberty suddenly all the boys in school stopped looking me in the eye. They didn’t just look at my boobs, they would STARE, long and fixedly. It was boys that I knew as well as guys I didn’t know. For the ones that I already knew it was as if I’d transformed into another creature. For me, this resulted in two decades of refusing to wear any kind of shirt with text or graphics on the front because I didn’t want to give men any more reason to look at my chest. (I’m only a B/C cup, too, nothing outrageous.) As the boys matured, that drooling-dog behavior gradually went away. But it was extremely disturbing, at a time in my life when I was vulnerable, uncomfortable with my changing body, and with awkward social skills.
A little later, in high school, for a while I was receiving bizarre unwanted attention from boys on the bus (primarily) and between classes. I’d walk to the bus, near a group of boys I didn’t know, and they’d suddenly start snickering and doing stage whispers of things like “she wants you!”. Over a week or so I figured out they were talking about me, but I had no idea why. They made a big deal about it but never approached me directly, just always these audible snicker-fests with lewd comments. It wasn’t until I accidentally caught my reflection in a window that I realized that the un-padded bra I was wearing allowed my semi-hard nipples to show. Ever since then, I wear padded bras. I don’t need or want to look bigger, I just need something to hide those nipples that are nearly always out there whether I’m cold or aroused or completely asleep.
If you want to read some tragedy, I recommend a book called “Bodies and Souls: The Century Project” by Frank Cordelle. It’s a collection of nude photos and essays of women of all ages, from babies to 90+ years old. I recommend it not really for the photos but more for the essays, written by the ladies themselves. The whole project is about the self-image of women and how they feel about their bodies. When I read it I noticed a disturbing trend: pre-pubescent girls are comfortable with their bodies, teenage and twenty-somethings think they’re ugly and have too many stories of abuse and exploitation that caused them to hate their bodies, and then after middle-age to elderly the women again become comfortable with their bodies!
This has happened to a lot of us guys:
The e-mail exchange went OK, the first face-to-face at Starbucks was great, and now it’s the day of the first real date. I’m at my place getting ready: basic guy stuff shit/shower/shave. Lucky, simple us. Then the phone rings and she’s giving me an obvious bullshit story about how her ex backed out of visitation day and she has to cancel and take care of the kids, because she’s emptied her closet onto the bed looking for something decent to wear and feels ugly and too stressed out to date.
So we guys have to be nice and pretend like we believe them, and eat rejection yet once again. And this is all our fault? Because if they’d shown up in sweats, just shit/shower/shave too, I guarantee you the vast majority of us wouldn’t turn on our heels.
Ah…wat?.. I can’t even follow any of this… 
I think to some degree with men, there’s a sort of 2-axis chart for women, with beauty on one axis and sexiness on the other axis. Women don’t quite get this- in many men’s view, a woman can be beautiful and not at all sexy, and also sexy, without being beautiful. Women don’t often aim for sexy, because they perceive it to be whorish, or slutty or something along those lines, so they fixate on the beauty axis, and that’s what feeds a lot of body issues.
I mean, someone like say… Brooke Shields wasn’t at all sexy until very recently, but has always been extraordinarily beautiful. Similarly, Nicki Minaj isn’t particularly beautiful (weird looking, IMO) but she has sexy in spades.
So where a woman could maximize her sexiness if she’s not beautiful, few do because of the social baggage that comes with it.
I don’t know if women were always like this or if social media and Internet dating turned them into a bunch of validation seeking flakes who are always thinking the bbd is just around the corner. But yeah, it sucks. Even when the first date goes well many times they flake at the latest minutes on follow ups.
Sure, if you’re dating someone from Accenture or Mckinsey. I mean every woman loves to hear that they fall into a guy’s “magic quadrant” of attractiveness.
I’ll go with “Not that much.” Yes, society sets the ideal, but your body issues are your body issues. If society said that morbidly obese was so hot, skinny-shaming would be a thing, and people would get all worked up about how they’re not fat enough. You get body issues based on how important hitting the ideal is to you. It’s the same for both sexes.
Actually, I was wrong. Men will make fun of a woman’s neck if they perceive it to be masculine, e.g. Ann Coulter.
They care about all three.
True or not, evo-psych discussions only end in tears.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term, “Best of Breed”. 
I meant that a lot of women fixate on a single axis and their perceived shortcomings there, when in fact, there’s at least one more axis to worry about (probably even a third) when it comes to how they’re perceived by men.
Sorry for the mathematical metaphor, but it was the best way I could describe what I’m getting at.
Tears of victory