Our bodies, our selves · Real Men Real Style Community

Our bodies, our selves

It seems a given, these days, that we are unhappy with our bodies. Marketing people depend on it to sell us stuff, it seems. In recent days I have been sent, on social media: weight loss ideas and medications; hair loss treatments; exercise plans for mobility, weight loss and muscle gain; stomach-shaping underwear; posterior-enhancing underwear; teeth-whitening medications – and more. The advertising generally has a negative slant, at least at the beginning, with some AI-created guy being pitied for being overweight/bald/not muscular enough etc and then, miraculously, transforming AND BECOMING HAPPIER through using the product being sold. (Some of it shows that the algorithms are rubbish; I am 6 ft 3 and yet keep being sent advertisements for shoe lifts to make me 3 inches taller!)

This marketing is hoping to tap into men’s insecurities about their bodies, insecurities fed, in part, by that marketing. Other sources of insecurity include: our upbringing, with parents, possibly, being critical of us as we grow; fellow schoolkids, seeking a way to make themselves better by mocking others; our workmates and colleagues, some of whom may feel that they give themselves a competitive advantage over us by mocking our physical selves; our partners; our children … and, now, of course, people use social media to bully and lecture other people. We are bombarded constantly by criticism. Even really conventionally attractive people can get stick for being ‘too good looking’, a relation being drawn between being good looking and being vain and/or unintelligent, to ‘keep them in their place’.

Opposed to this we have the ‘body positivity’ movement, which celebrates the diversity of human forms, but receives criticism for not encouraging, say, overweight people to lose weight for their health.

I’d like to know what other people feel about this. And about the use of medical interventions to make people ‘look better’ (from facials to liposuction to leg-extending operations). And about the psychology behind this issue.

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Our bodies, our selves