Body Image Breaks Through Gender Lines--the cost of the beauty industry on our boys

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 There is a little game I've always enjoyed playing with my girls called, "Find the 10." I like to play this game with them when we are in public places requiring various stages of undress...places like Water World and Six Flags, Long Beach and rodeo carnivals. You know, places where massive amounts of young women are in sub-massive amounts of clothing.


The goal is to find the young lady who could walk right off the barefoot-burning concrete, sand, or sawdust and onto the glossy front cover of Cosmo, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Self, Madmoiselle, Marie Claire, or one of the other dozens magazines that bombard us from the grocery check-out line, every month, with another gorgeous body. I’m not unreasonable. There’s an allowance for makeup and hair styling that simply can't be maintained at a water park, a certain give-and-take for acne, or crooked teeth—subtle imperfections that can be covered-up or hidden. What we're after here, I explain, is the thin, well-toned natural beauty with proportional breasts and thighs, a slender waist, no paunch, no muffin-tops, and a dainty derrière—no cellulite.


I know you know where I’m going with this. The point, and you already know it, is there are no 10’s. There is sometimes a smattering of 7’s and 8’s, maybe, maybe, on a real good day a 9 comes along. But I’ve never been let down, not once. At the end of the day, when it’s all been said and done, there are no real 10’s.


I have spent years telling my daughters that the girls they see on the magazine covers are there for a reason. And that reason is that they are the ABnormal, not the norm. They need to understand the truth about classic beauty and its portrayal: The truth is, nobody wants to see somebody normal on the front of a magazine (or a Greek statue or a Reuban painting for that matter.) People see normal every day. The public wants something remarkable, show-stopping if they are going to pay money for it and give it a certain amount of worship or respect.


To ask magazine producers and advertisers to put average girls, the ones with poochy bellies and jiggly thighs, cottage cheese on their butts, and too-big or too-small bustlines, noses and lips, in their photo shoots is like asking car magazines to run pictures of faded Hondas and four-door Chryslers that you see every day on your commute to work. It’s like asking outdoor magazines to eliminate photos of breath-taking mountain peaks and dramatic sunsets over glacier floats and replace them with shots of average hills and run-of-the-mill twighlights.


So if we understand that these human bodies are no different from car bodies, then WHY are young women STILL BELIEVING that they should look like these women? After all this time, aren’t they smart enough to know, or haven’t they had a mother smart enough to tell them that those women are abnormal for a reason? Haven’t they had anybody tell them, “You won’t, can’t and shouldn’t look like that.”


But the truth is, you can tell them and tell them, but they won’t believe. Ask me, I teach high school.


But lately, and here’s the worse part, I’ve seen something even more disturbing. We’ve overlooked the cost of the beauty industry on the American boy. As our girls have been bombarded with these images, so have our boys, and they’ve been paying close attention. Ask a typical high-school boy what is beautiful, and he will spit back the name of whoever is the most recent magazine cover or movie show-stopper. For example, which boy in America didn’t receive the message, the minute Transformers was released, that “hot girls” look and act like Megan Fox, leaning over an engine with her breasts blossoming from a tank top and her backside blooming from beneath her mini skirt or shorts. I mean, wasn’t she abnormally “hot” enough then? But show high schoolers a picture of Megan Fox after plastic surgery and the girls will grimace. The boys, however, say, “she’s hotter.” Look at a photo of Heidi Montag before plastic surgery, and she will garner envy from almost every girl as one of the few, abnormally rare, Barbie-perfect girls. Show her after plastic surgery and girls understand—she’s as miserable about her looks as they are. Show the boys and they say, “better.”

For years boys have been told what is beautiful and how to obtain it, and nobody has bothered to tell them differently. I’m pretty sure we’re due for a “turn around is fair game” scenario for American male teens, but I’m not sure it’s fair at all. To me, it’s comparable to the sexual revolution in the 1970’s that gave women permission to break the double standards held by men for centuries regarding casual sex. Now women can sleep around as much as they want…and skyrocketing Chlamydia infections, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and cervical cancer are just one of the rewards. (Don’t get me started with the question of why is it that men can “carry” but women are the dadgum walking Petri dishes for sexually transmitted diseases??—that’s obviously another blog.)


Anyway, back to the boys………here’s the deal. Try being one.

I mean it. Back in my day the “bods” to emulate were Bo and Luke Duke, and I don’t remember ever drooling over their abs. Daisy got plenty of exposure, but try as I may, while on the opposite channel Jacqueline Smith climbed up the boat ladder as we looked down, I don’t ever remember seeing the Duke boys with their shirts off. Unbuttoned, yeah. Off, no. The older guys adopted a sort of Burt Reynolds look, but even so, he was a husky guy…no denying it.

Kurt Russel never stripped off his shirt that I remember in “The Professor that Wore Tennis Shoes” and even John Travolta, a bit later, was hot with his leather jacket or skin-tight Wranglers ON, not off. I mean, weren’t we girls titillated when Tom Cruise slid out in his boxers and a white oxford shirt? Where was the competition? Any boy could do it. Even though we girls were blowing out and feathering away our hair, and crash dieting, and repeating “we must, we must, we must increase our bust,” trying to look like Cheryl Ladd or Heather Locklear, guys back then could just get away with either: a) a great smile or b) great hair. If you had both…………oh baby, you were an ultimate fox.

Those days are gone. Try competing with Taylor Lautner. Even Taylor Lautner couldn’t compete with Taylor Lautner. Cute wouldn’t do it………….it had to be “ripped.” Have you seen these Holywood Hunks lately? They could out bench-press Bo and Luke any day. Starsky and Hutch look like a couple of dweebs beside Channing Tatum and Josh Duhamel. Not only can Zach Efron dance, he can shoot hoops, and sport a six-pack. When even Orlando, who got his biggest break playing an elf, has a bod-to-go, what is a 15-year-old boy to do? When Isaiah Mustafa pops up on the TV nowadays, the message is you have to do it all—Old Spice Style—and have the body to match.


And girls aren’t helping. Just as for decades men have held women to the impossible ideals enforced by Hollywood and the media, now girls are expecting the same from their men. I was appalled when my 13-year-old daughter and friend were disappointed when they saw one of the cute high school athletes this summer at the pool and giggled because he didn’t have a six-pack.


How fair is that? Studies are beginning to show that self-image issues are one of the leading concerns for young males now-a-days. We girls, who thought that boys never worried about their weight, are now teasing them when they don’t have pecs that look like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s. For boys it’s not just about staying fit, they have to “bulk up” to measure up. And no matter how often they hit the weight room, they need to be told that they will probably never cut it. It’s going to take anabolic steroids to really get the job done. Not many 17-year-olds have the luxury of a personal trainer and a $4 million contract that makes their job “getting ripped.”

Old guys aren’t helping either. I spent all last night watching George Clooney do pull-ups and push-ups just to prove what………….that he could? I liked him better with a striped prison outfit on. How long are Denzel Washington and Matthew McConaughey going to keep it up? I’m tired of looking at old men’s butts in the movies and giant boys with their pants pulled down past their tenderloins on the walls of Abercrombie and Hollister. (I was just informed that those are called “sex lines” by my 17-year-old daughter. What is a mother to do?)


I guess we finally figured if women could be held to impossible standards of nakedness, then so could men. I wish we as females had enough sympathy to feel sorry for these next generations of males that will grow up with impossible standards, low self-esteems, eating disorders, as well as the baldness, cancer and rage addiction that come with steroid use.


Just as women seem to be coming into a more enlightened age of Dove Young Women’s project, shows like Mad Men that celebrate female curves, studies that help us understand that a runway model from 1972 would have to lose over 12 pounds to make it in the industry today, we are seeing the see-saw tip the other direction. Sure there are girls who will still seek to reach an impossible standard of thinness and plumped parts, but we’ve made a lot of headway. But I’m afraid that we’ll finally, just maybe get used to liking ourselves and gloat while the other side of the table says, “Just a salad, please—I’m on a diet.”


I’m afraid that a generation from now, my daughters will be at the waterparks and beaches with their sons having to tell them, “Here’s a game I like to play. My mom taught it to me. It’s called Find a 10.” And their sons will groan, like my daughters do now.


Or maybe, just maybe, we could just finally learn to love each other just the way we are and quit trying to be something that Hollywood has always been good at—fiction.

Sent to you from someone who loves you--send it on!

Image by Shoes on Wires via Flickr