Buffed af

I think what the meme is trying to say is “people in the media portray an unrealistic standard of beauty, it’s not just limited to women”.

It’s not really saying one is worse than the other.

I think what the meme is trying to say is that a superhero with a prehensile, tentacle like penis is setting unrealistic body expectations. Given the tongue in cheek nature of such a claim, and the photo chosen (bottom left of the meme) I'd imagine it's partially a satirical jab at the kinda person intimidated by Chris Pratt's abs (as well as just a self-acknowledged shitpost).

But some of the chat in this thread defintely demonstrates that some folks (mostly m'en I'd presume?) don't seem to understand the vast difference between body image expectations for men and women in contempary culture.

What is a spot bucket?

Your body affects your life in many more ways when you're a woman. My body affects my employment, it affects me whenever I go anywhere in public, it affects my relationships with friends with family and with coworkers. It's open season to make comments about my body, regardless of if I've got a "very good body" or not. Harassment of women is the norm. It's not attached to perceived attractiveness, at least not in that only those deemed very attractive suffer sexual harassment and assault. We all suffer in this, and over a lifetime starting as a literal child it totally dehumanizes you. Being lesser is a woman's place, because all society will ever focus on is our bodies and how they relate to men. We don't even get to be people, just game pieces surrounding men only relevant in whatever use we have to them. Misogyny is a cornerstone of our society itself. It's baked into our politics, our tradition, our history, our legal system, our families, It's everywhere. And thats why comparing the way men and women experience body standards and policing doesn't work. The scale isn't even close to the same, nor is the severity.

This assumes women on average are as interest in "just sex" as men are. I don't care for men thinking my body is just good enough for sex.

I think that might be related to whether someone sees people as good and bad, or as being capable of doing good and bad things.

From how I see it, classifying people as just good and bad is very reductive in that you assume that bad people do bad things with bad intentions and the opposite for good people. That means that if you're certain that you're a good person, you don't need to question your own actions or motives because you can't do bad.

If you however see people as capable of making good or bad actions with good or bad intentions, you should realize that people you see as good can do bad things and vice versa. That means you should always examine your own motivations and your own decisions to make sure you're doing the right things for the right reasons.

I personally believe this is why it is so common among certain activist groups to harbor some absolutely atrocious beliefs that seem contrary to what they're working for.

Man, fuck extinction rebellion and their transphobic religious prosthelytising

Yes, I am aware of transphobia and discrimination against nonbinary people.

Nah, men can and do have problems. This post is an example of a man problem. There are people on this post trying to claim that men and women suffer equally in this regard and arguing with people who are pointing out that this is wrong.

Men suffer from toxic body standards and would greatly benefit from body positivity and better representation in media. But men aren't (as an entire class of people) getting harassed as 10 year olds by 40 year old men making comments about their bodies. Men aren't (as an entire class of people) having relatives make open comments about the size of their secondary sex characteristics and their bodies in general. As a class you don't experience this. Some individuals might, I've rarely met women who did not experience body policing from their earliest memories, ive rarely met women who have never experienced sexual harassment. The statistics are crystal clear in this regard.

Again, body positivity and better representation for diverse body types would be great for men too. No one is saying otherwise. Even that isn't enough for women, because institutional misogyny exists at all levels of society and in nearly all people in society. Even well meaning and otherwise progressive people can and are misogynist. Even your family and friends are. Its impossible to simply change one thing. It requires a society wide change in tolerance for bigotry.

This is not what anybody is saying, except for the meme bit towards women. Did you read the top line on it?

Dear confused men (hashtag: not all men): You have lots of problems. The vast majority are not caused by women. One of your problems is trying to blame us for many of the harmful things you do to yourselves, or that patriarchy/toxic masculinity does to you. Another problem is loathing it when women try to help you by explaining this to you but it isn't what you want to hear bc it isn't stroking your ego (or other bits). So there really isn't much else to be done - your problems are yours to solve, and all we can do is try some damage control for ourselves while you guys bang your heads against the floor.

Sincerely - Feminists, who care about men, but not to the point of our own destruction any longer.

Okay, so firstly I never said that body positivity and diverse representation of body types didn't also need to take into account body image standards for men. I was responding to people in the comments of this post who were essentially saying "body image issues for men" and "body image issues for women" are the same in terms of how they affect men and women respectively. Which isn't true, and we can easily see why when discussing the systemic issue of misogyny and the way women have their bodies policed throughout their entire lives and by their family friends coworkers peers and society at large including all forms of media. Body image issues for women are related to societal misogyny, and affected by continuous sexual harassment and assault starting when we are children. It happens everywhere, including from your own family.

This continues to this day. A couple years ago I volunteered at a youth group, and can confirm with certainty that the next generation of girls and women are suffering exactly the same. Misogyny is pervasive and girls and women are suffering much the same today as they were 50 years ago, there is just a (somewhat) larger push today to do something about it. Unfortunately there is a nearly equally large push to reinforce misogyny as an institution.

How you've been dismissed and told that society "sees you" as a white man is wrong and your experience is unique and should be acknowledged. You maybe have suffered from transphobia, queerphobia, and discrimination and prejudice towards nonbinary people. You should be able to understand the difference in the way discrimination towards men and nonbinary people functions. In that non-binary people come up against constant barriers across all levels of society, that is to say they face systemic institutional discrimination. Much the same, misogyny is not merely one person who hates women. Misogyny is a society that discriminates against women, it is media that perpetuates discrimination against women, it is education and social reinforcement of discrimination against women. Its systemic, its present at all levels and points of society. You have to actively work against it to counteract all the misogynistic propaganda you're fed.

Men deserve body liberation too, I never said otherwise. But people in this comment thread were saying that body image issues with representation in media are the same for men and women. And that simply isn't true.

If you look at it thru the lens of the oppression Olympics, it'll make more sense.

If you are desperate for attention, sympathy works just as well as respect for some of the more pathetic people in our society.

Then again, if you haven't watched the show, you haven't truly lived.

Same technique used by body builders I assume during competition.

How does that work?

My favorite part about all that work is that it's undone literally that same night, when they eat and drink like a normal person.

Trueee 😂

It is. That was the origin on of this meme. It was in TheBoys subreddit specifically as a joke about the prehensile penis.

That's not true at all. I'm a nonbinary femme attracted to nonbinary femmes, and I have a similar sense of beauty to many lesbians, when it comes to pretty women. When I see an image of a woman that's framed to appeal to male sexuality, I feel a sense of revulsion. Sapphic porn is way more respectful, more humanising, and way more hot to myself and lesbians than porn made for straight men.

Women have similar taste in men to gay men, because both are sexually attracted to men. When I say beauty standards for men focus on what men find attractive, I'm talking about the average man. A straight one. Movie stars like The Rock appeal to a straight male power fantasy, rather than to sexual desire. Beauty standards for women are about sex. Beauty standards for men are about power.

Part of that franchise's marketing is that there aren't many movies like it.

Some women might lust over this, but that's not why they are put there. They are the male power fantasy and are added for the benefit of the guys that watch it.

There's a reason most straight women find Loki more attractive than Thor and I've seen guys completely blindsided by that because they see everything through the male gaze.

Sometimes (the freak lobster men like top right aren't what most women are into lol), but Hollywood doesn't give a shit about what women want. This is what men want. It's all power fantasy.

Nah?

Well maybe.

Usually nah.

Unless?

Nah. They gotta have cute puppy dog eyes at some point. Gotta be more than a husk. Or a himbo. Himbos are good too.

What is the point? Of course a good looking man is good looking. Why wouldn't I find his body attractive?

Yeah, sorry

What side jab

The first lines of the meme. Explain to me what else they are supposed to mean?

How many women in movies with regular bodies are shown?

Have you watched anything other than action movies?

Or like

Ever

I guess I don't hang out with myself then

I'm a woman, I have had many girls nights out with sex positive women... And yet no drooling over sexy superheros (or any other dudes)

I haven't had a conversation like that since I was a teenager, many many years ago. (And even then it wasn't hulked out guys we were giggling over, it was Nsync. Fully clothed.)

Tbf you can be ogled and not objectified. The difference is that Thor absolutely is portrayed as a complex character with his own agency, or subjectivity. The whole movie is about him learning to step out of the role of warmonger and into a more mature, nurturing role of a king. That gives him a lot of subjectivity - the opposite of objectivity

Edit: So to clarify, yes Thor is part of a series of unrealistic body standards for men. But he's not objectified

In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire, is a subset of objectification,

Emphasis mine. Where in "Thor" is Thor dehumanized? Do the creators of the movie dehumanize him? No, if anything he exhibits more humanity as the movie goes on. Does Jane Foster dehumanize him? No, she's clearly sexually attracted to him and some scenes do focus on his body, but that's not enough to dehumanize someone. He is not a "mere object of sexual desire" because those scenes exist amid an entire movie that treats Thor with respect as a character, including Jane who gets to know him and love him. The only character who dehumanizes him could be Loki but he's clearly portrayed as being wrong

It does look powerful though. He looks super strong and has an incredibly hot women who is into him, many guys want to live that fantasy.

Do you think Natalie Portman was ogling him because she thought he looked hot and the camera happened to catch her staring or do you think it was written into the script?

I simply don't see women clamoring for men to go to these extremes. I'm not saying doesn't happen, I just don't think it's very often. And it'd be super cool if the men on this thread would take comments from women about our own experiences at face value and not assume we're what? Being coy about what we actually find attractive?

Do you find that the men in romantic movies and chickflicks have body types as unobtainable as the dudes in superhero movies? Like, yes they're fit, but they don't tend to have bulging muscles because women don't tend to be into that.

There's a difference between a movie with attractive people in it, and a movie with someone who had to dedicate themselves to their fitness for months and still had to do things like dehydrate themselves for the day of the shoot to achieve a sculpted look. They're worlds away in terms of effort to achieve the desired effect. And women do not tend to be into the "dehydrate yourself to look more cut" look.

The point isnt that men aren't given unrealistic body goals, they definitely ARE, but the push isn't coming from women, generally.

Brandon Routh is what I imagine as "chick flic" bod. He's in shape but I wouldn't say he's at all "unrealistic" or idealised bodybuilder muscular. Also let's not forget one of the world's most popular chick flicks of all time, The Notebook, had Cage as the lead.

It happens, but it's not pervasive. There's nothing wrong with sexual imagery in a vacuum.

The issue for women is the sheer avalanche of bullshit. Images of half naked women with unrealistic bodies are EVERYWHERE. Billboards, magazine covers, commercials, etc.

Reminds me of the "everyone has sinful urges" anti-gay pastors

"Buff men are built for the male gaze"

My guy, I have some news for you

But why does the meme has to take a jab at the problems women face? It's undebatable that women are faced with unrealistic body standards all the time. And I don't get why the meme has to try and take away from that.

fair point

men are objectified for men (look how strong and handsome he is, don't you want to be like him?)

If you think women aren't enjoying the male eye candy, I have some news for you

This is just blatant sexism.

...no? Have you actually hung out with real people?

Man, you shifted those goalposts fast! You've been doing this a long time, haven't you?

ITT, people who think attractive man = female gaze.

My partner and I tried to come up with an example of a character built for the female gaze. The best we could do was Idris Elba as a Jinn from 3000 Years of Longing.

Edit: I think you all are missing the point.

From Wikipedia

In cinematic representations of women, the male gaze denies the woman's human agency and human identity to transform her from person to object — someone to be considered only for her beauty, physique, and sex appeal, as defined in the male sexual fantasy of narrative cinema.

So while women might like looking at the men in Magic Mike or watching nameless romcoms, the women in the stories have no agency. The men might serve their every need and save them from whatever situation, but the men are still doing all the things, and they follow the men-in-charge storyline.

Exactly. This is pretty much what I wanted to say, but couldn't find the words.