I was watching this video last night, and I realized that men probably can’t relate to it. The programming that begins from day one (baby girls are “pretty,” baby boys are strong), the incessant indoctrination (“50 Sexy Ways to Wear Your Hair!”) and expectations — sure, men are programmed about different things, but body image isn’t typically one of them — not to the extent women deal with it. There just isn’t the commercial apparatus devoted to making men feel bad about the way they look.
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It’s a matter of taste. Where does taste originate? Are fat, bald men or geeks high on the list of eligible single men for women? Aren’t the undesirable aware of that fact? In the end don’t we all suffer and live in our own self-constructed hell? Or heaven.
Besides the fact that the standards of beauty for females are set by females at least, if not more, by other females, as by males, I want to ask: Do girls and women actually achieve more social acceptance by trying to make themselves look prettier? Or is that just an illusion they follow out of fear or desperation? So many whine that they are held to these dumb standards, but straight guys are not really that picky about what they will poke (neither are most gay guys, just check out the sleaze fest of fat bald, old guys at any “bear” or leather bar). I’ve known plain girls who did not wear make up who were constantly getting hit on by guys (more than their fair share of hot guys – I was envious, but basically all sorts of guys).
It seems like these complainers mostly want the standards dropped, but they want to be conformists about it and have everyone drop them at once instead of just doing it on their own.
I don’t think men ever get to have anything like the social fitting-in-ness of women (however illusory) by conforming to the norms of appearance and behavior. In our competitive society boys/men are good at sports or being rich or whatever it takes to be alphas very early on. You find out where your rank on the social pecking order very early and it is very hard to move up (enforced also by females to a significant extent). I guess some guys might go out and get penis enlargement, or hair plugs to escape the shame. And muscle guys (steroids) all seem to have daddy issues (abandonment and or abuse). But for the most part, I don’t think it is not normal or common for a guy to imagine that the right make up or conditiioner or clothes will make much difference in how they are perceived (or whatever the male equivalent of make up would be, but there really isn’t an equivalent because not enough men will ever adopt something like that to the almost universal extent that women conform to their social standards of appearance. Unless “try not to seem gay” is the male equivalent of make up)