Buffed af
Buffed af
Unfortunately, due to the toxic discussions that have taken place on this post I've decided to lock the comments. Sorry
These kind representations do cause body image problems in men. Some more conscious toy manufacturers did redesign their action figures to look more like actual body builders, even if that is still not how soldiers and other combatants look like in real life (for the most part at least). Some actors dehydrate themselves for shirtless scenes.
They take steroids before filming these movies. It is no secret. You can't achieve that in a few months, that's 100% steroids backed by a team of experts who are giving them the best products in the exact doses they need.
But do you think this is less realistic than how women are depicted in movies? Because that is what the meme seemingly is trying to say.
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.
And it absolutely slays me when they refer to Chris Pratt as having a "dad bod" lol
They have to be referring to "Parks and Rec" Chris Pratt, right? Cuz he definitely used to have a dad bod, but he does not anymore.
I have been told I have a dad bod and it does not look like Starlord. It does look like Andy Dwyer at his fattest, lol
Yikes the anti-feminist takes in this thread lol
Men do not experience body policing in even remotely similar ways to women. If that fact offends you you probably don't actually understand how misogyny functions.
The standard of “very good body” is higher for women, sure, but the standard of “good enough body” for women is much, much lower than the one for men.
The first one is useful if you want to be an actor or model, the second if you want to find a partner for life. Guess which of the two is more relevant for the average person.
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.
Unfortunately there are too many "open-minded" and "open-minded"-adjacent people who have huge blindspots to their own hypocrisy and philosophical paradoxes. I've met so many IRL and net-folk who are lefty "activists" who are huge fucking racists and douchebag misogynists. Extinction Rebellion for example is full of them. I get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I remember certain interactions with them.
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.
And both cis men and cis women don't experience body policing in even remotely similar ways to nonbinary people. Most women don't need a letter from a psychiatrist costing thousands of dollars to get permission to have a body they can enjoy.
Dear men: stfu, you are not allowed to have any problems. Get back to your stoicism.
Sincerely, Feminists who claim to care about men.
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.
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.
Objectively false
I love the goal post shift!
Feminism: "We need to promote body positivity"
Society promotes body positivity towards women.
Men: "What about us?"
Feminism: "Men don't experience body policing like women do!"
But.. what about body positivity..
This is the shit that confused me about people pushing vaccinations. It's all "body rights body rights body rights" until someone gets recognition you don't like.
"Oh but traditionally women have been.. etc"
Oh so now we care about traditions? Now suddenly we're pushing social norms? Now conveniently personal rights, and freedoms don't matter?
Do you know why feminists suck? It's because they aren't actually egalitarian. And worse, they are blinded by their own friggen biases.
I've watched feminists chop a fucking guy down, and gaslight him that "it sounds like he hates women" for talking about not getting emotional support in relationships. Dude then got muted. Women calling men trash though? "Ohhh you should know they're not talking about you. A good man wouldn't take offense to this".
Fuck, I'm nonbinary, I date a lot of other nonbinaries. I've literally got in arguments with nonbinary feminists sitting there telling me "You have to understand society sees you as a white man".
Shit is fucked. Just completely fucked.
I am fucking happy to see men getting recognition instead of seeing everything blamed on toxic masculinity.
/rant
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.
this comment section reads like a twitter exchange and it's fucking mind numbing
I guess the masses are indeed immigrating from Reddit.
The internet is a battleground of ideas.
Well it is in the shitpost fed
Prehensile penis is the unachievable body standard for the dense folk out there
Well it’s not clearly a penis and OP’s link is dead so I think it’s pretty easy to miss if you haven’t watched the show.
Then again, if you haven't watched the show, you haven't truly lived.
points at science project that works out 20 hours a day while taking a cocktail of steroids and hormones from a panel of doctors
This is what a normal man should look like.
Wonder what steroids they're using
The good ones, under doctor supervision. If youre someone who doesnt think they're on gear you're a sweet summer child of the most innocence.
Mostly testosterone for building the muscle base probably, then potentially something like anavar (oral oxandrolone) for a few weeks before filming the shirtless scenes, as orals make you temporarily blow up with water and glycogen. Could be some use of diuretics before filming, too - they definitely use water manipulation/restriction to get that ultra-lean look on the day. I've only included drugs you could feasibly get from the doctor, rather than anything too exotic. I do, however, guarantee they all used a significant amount of steroids in addition to the extremely strict diet and training they are very keen to talk about.
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.
The first of the second row, Viagra
Trueee 😂
When asked what character i wanted to be, i have always said tentacle monster. The tentacle monster gets all the hot chics.
I thought it was the prehensile penis from The Boys.
And there's a sentence I never expected to write out.
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 a regular, gym going tentacle - it had to take steroids to reach that level of physique. Totally unrealistic expectations for us noodles here.
Ugly people don't sell. I'm shit outta luck
Can I get a non amp link or can you make your post a bit more specific so I don't have to visit some adhole?
The link would be to The Sun anyway, so amp or not, you'd be better off without it tbh..
OP, the link in your post is dead, I think a lot more people are going to miss it lol
Did anyone ever do a Love sausage cosplay? Would be sick
Beauty standards for women focus on what men find attractive. Beauty standards for men also focus on what men find attractive.
As far as I know there’s not much difference in beauty canons between women and gay men or men and lesbians. So it’s not really saying much.
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.
They don't put men like this in movies for women.
Oh yeah, remember that box office failure that no one talked about? Magic Mike? I hope Channing Tatum's ego has recovered.
Part of that franchise's marketing is that there aren't many movies like it.
How do you know that? What makes you say that? Does it even matter why they're put into movies?
As far as I understand it the image posted does not claim that these bodies are put into movies for women. Personally I would argue that unrealistic bodies are put there for both genders, but perhaps more so for the opposite sex. However, looking at the posted image neutrally and without reading anything into it that's not there, to the main idea behind the image is to point out the fact that not not only women but also men are depicted unrealistically more often than not. Or at the very least statistically above average.
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.
Ok, so I'm confused about what's being implied here. Is it that media makers don't care about making things sexually appealing to straight women? If there's profit in it, why wouldn't they?
Seems to me that women in general tend to base less of their attraction on visual or physical cues than men do. But what I don't understand is why there's an air of moral superiority around the ways that women judge attractiveness and a condemnation of the way that men judge attractiveness. Non-physical traits might be a better basis for a relationship, but we're not talking about a relationship. We're talking about fictional media.
If women responded to sex appeal in the same way that men do, I see no reason why media makers wouldn't include it. In fact, I would argue in media targeted primarily at women, they do tend to portray men with both physical and non-physical traits that appeal to women. But the fact that superhero physiques might be included mainly to appeal to men in no way counters the argument that it can lead to body-image issues.
Yet they all still drool over them 🤔
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.
Guys guys guys c/lemmyshitpost c/lemmyshitpost
Is nobody going to comment on the bottom right left picture 😂
You mean the bottom left one right?
Yeah, sorry
So stupid
All of these are in superhero movies, not exactly a representative sample of male movie bods.
I don't care either way lol
It's almost like humans in general prefer looking at people who appear healthy and conventionally attractive.
The fact that so many people have let themselves become fat and slovenly, doesn't really impact our evolutionary desire to mate with healthy specimens... And being fit generally demostrates reproductive readiness.
These bodies are exemplary of course,but looking closer to that compared to the fupas and gunts waddling around bitching and moaning isn't that difficult. Put the fork down and take a walk.
The difference is that those men are not objectified. Yes, those bodies are unrealistic indeed, but those beefcake guys are not presented as sex objects who have no other purpose in this world than to please women.
I get the feeling that you never hang out with a group of gals on a night out
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.)
Oh yes, Thor is oiled up and shirtless while Natalie Portman ogles him for the entire first movie because... It looks powerful? It represents his stoicism? Definitely not a sexual objectification thing, oh no sir
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?
You've never watched a romatic movie or chickflick have you?
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.
Even guys are objectified if they are pretty enough. Many women do that with movie stars.
Oh my friend, they very much are objectified. Have you never hung around straight women or gay men? Those men are slabs of meat and that's it.
I think you have a point except for the fact that the meme is about unrealistic body standards, not objectification. So it's kinda like bringing up pancakes in a conversation about waffles
I really feel like this misses the point. And it sells both men and women short.
The most cruel part of depictions like this isn't simply that the opposite sex is or isn't drooling over them. It's that they are presented as ideal and desirable physiques.
This impacts how people feel like they should aspire to look. And that impacts how they feel about their own bodies.
It is so reductive to focus just on whether these bodies are objectified by the opposite sex. It's the internal struggle people are faced with that is the real issue.
I'll take "someone that hasn't hang out with women for 300" Alex
That's not just a hot take, that's straight up nuclear.
The thing is on both sides it's for the male gaze. Women are are objectified for men (look how sexy she is, don't you want this?), and men are objectified for men (look how strong and handsome he is, don't you want to be like him?)
...no? Have you actually hung out with real people?
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.