Guys/men: Does the double standard that exists in body image bother you?

[heyoheyoheyo]

I'm a girl, and I know that I personally sometimes feel inadequate when I see pictures on Facebook or twitter of these women with perfect butts and boobs and legs, since I'm just an average girl. Luckily, I feel that society in general supports women's body image confidence much more than it has in previous years, and I see much more encouragement that all sizes are beautiful than I see images that hurt my confidence.
But the other day I noticed that a lot of pictures of shirtless men float around the internet, maybe almost as much as pictures of girls in bikinis, and I'm wondering if it hurts guys' feelings to see that. It seems like there is a lot less acceptance of wimpy, scrawny short guys than there is for big, curvy, chubby girls.

For example, if a guy tweets about how he wants a skinny girl, everyone will think he's a jerk. But if a girl says that she wants a tall guy, it's normal.

I don't know if it's because guys don't care as much about their looks, or just that society's attitude hasn't caught up yet? What are your thoughts men? Is it an unfair double standard or does it not bother you?

[Hugh J]

Whenever I hear people use double standards or exhibit otherwise hypocritical behavior, I just call them out on it. I'm independent and beyond others' judgment, so their opinions (including society's) have literally no effect on me. I just want to preserve the emotional well-being of those who may not be as independent and whom may be the target of such double-standards. This especially includes the height thing. When I hear a girl say something ridiculous like, "I don't want a guy under 6'2"," I explain to her that she's basically treating her body and personality as some kind of self-objectified amusement park ride with a height requirement. It usually results in her trying to apologize and defend herself as "not shallow." I enjoy making wrongly judgmental people feel stupid and insecure with their ridiculously pedantic "standards."

[Josh]

No, I don't feel inadequate at all...in fact, seeing a guy with a great body just makes me want to aspire to that physique. Sure, some people say it's shallow, but you get an amazing amount of satisfaction by working at something. I mean, it doesn't even that that much effort either...I've got no gym equipment (my parents would say "why the **** do you want that?&quot, but I just do 50 sit-ups in then morning, 50 in the evening and then 100 bicep curls on each arms throughout the day. Doing all this exercise may seem like a lot, but it only takes 10 minutes a day and since doing this, I feel a LOT better with my self...as I said, it's the self-satisfaction. Although I try not to look down on people, I feel proud when I see others less in shape than me as it make me feel like I've achieved something. Sure, that may sound like I'm a jerk, but I can't help how I feel. One thing that does annoy me though is when you hear these girls demanding 'their guy' has to be in shape, yet the girl...

[georgetslc]

Let's start w/ your headline question, that you really only explain at the end of your comments.

It's true that a guy being explicit about his physical criteria for being attracted to a girl is considered to be un-PC these days, while the reverse, not so much. This is not because it makes sense. It's simply Politically Correctness inverting several millennia of patriarchy, and (as so often) going too far.

And no, that doesn't bother me much. Partly because I'm gay, so I can be shallow about what I like in a partner w/o incurring PC wrath, but mostly because I think we guys can stand a certain amount of scale rebalancing w/o collapsing.

Besides, for guys in general visual impact is more tightly hardwired to sexuality, while for females it's emotion. Gay or str8, guys typically watch porn and ogle strippers, while women read romance novels, watch rom-com movies, etc.

For your other question: Yes, all the pix of perfect people do impact guys, too. You could do a Net search on "bigorexia" for one manifestation. You could notice all the questions on Yahoo answers from guys who want to look like some ideal of a celebrity body they've downloaded. And so on.

Nevertheless, I suspect not as much, because the culture hasn't supported it by officially endorsing the attitude that guys have to look great for their future mates, the way that it long has for girls. But it's still there, doing harm.

And while it might be nice to have love-yourself campaigns aimed at the less attractive guys as well as girls, I'm not sure how effective they'd be. Because guys typically don't analyze their feelings, don't discuss their feelings, and in extreme cases don't even admit they HAVE feelings.

Incidentally, I doubt the greater "acceptance" of big, curvy, chubby girls than of wimpy, scrawny short guys has much to do w/ sexual attractiveness. The fat girl can be expected to age into the valued Earth Mother archetype fairly quickly and easily, but the wimp has a lot farther to go--and needs more qualifications--before he becomes the Wise Sage.

Besides, reportedly a lot of str8 dudes dig fat chicks, even if they don't admit it to their friends.