Just a thought about expectations

shit-zen-giggles · 2022-04-23T06:13:50+00:00

I am a health psychologist, professor and body image scientist. And yet, when I recently tried to engage my son in a conversation about body image, he was reluctant to talk. It was actually more than that — it was as though he didn’t have the words to talk about his body. Across 25 years of conducting research on body image, I’ve found that my personal experience is reflected by many.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/ve-studied-body-image-25-130004908.html?guccounter=1

this is an intro to the book "Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys" this woman has written.

Might be interesting.

TextDependent6779 · 2022-04-23T02:33:37+00:00

men:

fat shaming men is normalised
clothing for men, i believe they're expected to dress smarter to casual events, or that's been my experience
androgenic apolecia is literally just male pattern baldness. bald jokes against men are normalised
short hair only, men with long hair does not appear to be socially acceptable
act more mature, be more responsible, be protective

both:

both genders are, rightfully, held to hygiene standards. cleaning teeth, regular showering, e.t.c
i think both are held to some level of grooming
both are expected to smell good, cologne/afteshave, and perfume for women
general skincare, no one likes dry, cracked skin

women:

women have to put on makeup
women have to do their hair
wear nice jewellery? (arguably)

those are the things that come to my mind, in terms of societal expectations. be interesting to see if this differs by country or if anyone thinks of anything else.

and a personal, vaguely related, note on a different kind of expectation:

my ex put all the expectation on me to do the heavy lifting of a relationship, looking after the other, supportive no matter what, playing guessing games if she is upset, e.t.c. my ex was from asia, and she told me that seems like the culture through her home country, and other parts of asia.

my point being: some women seem to have developed a culture of putting unfair expectations on men in relationships.

UnconventionalXY · 2022-04-23T04:31:04+00:00

I think the fitness craze is just another fad and ignores the fundamentals of biology.

In times long past, being fat was considered a blessing because it meant you had enough resources to last through the lean times. I think this was why we had the Reubens period in art with voluptuous women as they were seen to have adequate bodily resources to survive child rearing.

Modern civilisation is very stressful, creating a similar situation to hard times: it's not surprising that the human body automatically tries to store resources to deal with it, even though it is unproductive because its not resources that are in short supply. The solution is not to exercise more to compensate but to reduce the stressors so that the body can balance itself, otherwise we get the situation of fighting against the body's natural modus operandi.

Also, fit for what? Running a marathon? That's a choice, not a life requirement.

How do we know what's healthy? Eggs were supposed to be a heart unhealthy food and now it seems we can't get enough of them. Science hasn't been able to define "healthy" because it doesn't know what constitutes that condition. Is having a rippling 6 pack healthy when you have to do something unusual to maintain it? It's all a guess.

As much as we might admire Henry Cavill in Man of Steel, that body development requires major effort to maintain. Is that healthy? Do we know the long term effects of pushing a body that hard, or the long term effects of substantial exercise on the joints of the elderly? Yet Henry Cavill represents an ideal men secretly aspire to and I should imagine many women fantasize over having to themselves, which itself drives mate selection and thus reinforcing what men should become if they want female attention.

Is it healthy to stress the body so that it stockpiles resources and then force depletion of those resources to be lean, when it doesn't have to be that way?

I disagree with the men on this subreddit suggesting other men work on themselves and become successful simply to become what women want in order to get laid? That's simply appeasing the puppet master: when will pinnochio pull his own strings in the direction he wants to go, where his happiness and fulfillment is not completely under the control and whim of another person?

Title	Just a thought about expectations
Author	aceofharts1948482
Upvotes	5
Comments	6
Date	April 22, 2022 11:26 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/u9cdxu/just_a_thought_about_expectations/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/just-a-thought-about-expectations.1111634 https://theredarchive.com/post/1111634

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