By Mike O’Brien
Identity politics is TwitterÔÇÖs favourite toy. ItÔÇÖs an attempt to understand social issues through the lens of demographic groups and their place in the power hierarchy. It has its uses. The Black Lives Matter movement frames the issue of police brutality as a racial conflict between black and white people in America: a reasonable and factual inference. But where male body positivity is concerned, identity politics contaminates the discussion. It evaluates men by the power their group wields institutionally, and uses this disparity to trivialize their issues as individuals. It is disturbing that, even in my left-wing libertarian quadrant, which claims to thirst for social equality, menÔÇÖs issues must now be defended with an asterisk.
Discourse surrounding beauty standards is almost exclusively limited to women. Of course, the issues women face concerning beauty standards are pervasive and hegemonic. Fat women are typecast to comic relief roles in movies. Female models are starved and airbrushed to produce spotless skin and warped waists. For decades, our aggressively hypersexual pop culture, from scantily clad singers to Bond girls, has objectified an illusory woman that seldom deviates from an airtight formula of femininity tropes. Misogyny plays a massive role; it is, after all, a manÔÇÖs world that architected these social phenomena. But there is a consequence to leaning too far into this argument. When identity politics, in its obsession with hierarchy, renders body positivity solely as an oppressive conflict between men and women, it arrives at deeply unempathetic and unrealistic conclusions. HereÔÇÖs one: ÔÇÿMen do not have to care about their size or healthÔÇÖ, writes Irmgard Tischner in Fat Lives: A Feminist Psychological Exploration. ÔÇÿThey have women to care about those things for themÔÇÖ.
Thinkers like Tischner are dangerous. ItÔÇÖs not because she is a radical, and itÔÇÖs not because her book challenges the double standards of the male gaze. ItÔÇÖs because her obsession with men as an institutionally unoppressed group has robbed her of empathy for men as sensitive human beings with insecurities. Remarks like the quotes above do not lead to a constructive dialogue. However legitimate the womenÔÇÖs issues informing her viewpoint may be, comments like ÔÇÿmen do not have to care about their size or healthÔÇÖ are not only ridiculous, they are hostile. Progress and tribalism are mortal opponents. By antagonizing a group and dismissing their insecurities and experiences, you will not win hearts and minds. Instead, you push them into the tendrils of conservatism. Dismissively tribal comments like TischnerÔÇÖs are appallingly common in left-wing circles, and so long as they reign unchallenged, the men facing the issues she denies will find and form communities of their own. It is this very repulsion that, in part, pushes otherwise salvageable men into degenerate, radicalising subcultures like the incel movement.
I know this because growing up as a boy and as a man was not the laissez-faire paradise Tischner puts in my mouth. I was the shortest kid in my class with an eating disorder. I was underweight until the age of 21, and even now I walk a thin line. From my earliest memories to my early twenties, boys, girls, men and women alike made hysterical note of how short and scrawny I was. I encountered this at school, in my first year of university, and even in the workplace. These comments, many of which were made publicly, I was expected to laugh off as light-hearted banter. Almost every aspect of a manÔÇÖs appearance is open season for mockery in day-to-day life, and that was certainly the case for me. In my teenage years, I was deeply ashamed to see my reflection, to see my ribs bursting from my skin. Women on Tinder wrote ÔÇÿno boys under 6ftÔÇÖ in their bio like itÔÇÖs a criminal record. As a man, you are simply expected to take it on the chin, to embrace your dissection as a freakshow. When I did not, I was accused of being ÔÇÿunable to take a jokeÔÇÖ. Underpinning these seemingly harmless jokes is a timeless rule of comedy. Every good joke communicates a truth, and jokes like these have just one: you are not what a man looks like.
Never mind the nightmare that is the sexual awakening of any boy with access to the internet. I grew up in a time before kids had smartphones, and even then, most of us discovered porn of one kind or another by the age of twelve. And so begins the inexorable crisis of phallic identity. The greasy hog days of Ron Jeremy are over. Nowadays, plenty of mainstream pornstars are packing ballistic missiles and abs you can grate cheese on, lifting women with one hand, and pounding for the duration of Hamlet. There is this workaround argument in identity politics that, somehow, because these deranged depictions of sex facilitate the ÔÇÿmale power fantasyÔÇÖ, they merely satisfy the male gaze with no secondary effects. I dare these same theorists to enter my mortified twelve-year-old mind, watching Mandingo cervically obliterate a questionably dressed nurse with a penile warhead, and turning back in horror to my prepubescence. For those whose only sexual guidance is porn, the standards of size and performance inevitably inspire self-consciousness and a fear of intimacy in many young men. In my teenage years, I recall foolishly declining advances because of it.
The culture around male sexuality is intrinsically pressurizing. Men and women gossip about size, stamina, and technique. Teenage boys in PE changing rooms are goaded into admitting and lying about their penis size. Jokes about premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and ÔÇÿbig dick energyÔÇÖ perpetuate well into adulthood. The enormity of shame and performance anxiety that millions of men experience is undeniable, and anyone who has heard women gossip about partners will know these things matter.
The cold truth is, beauty standards exist for both sexes, and so long as men are human, these standards will curse them with insecurity. In fact, they do so by design. Consumerism thrives on loathing. Advertisements win your money by planting flaws and exploiting them. Consider male pattern baldness, a perfectly natural process. Countless ads see men catastrophizing clumps of disembodied hair in the shower like a cancer diagnosis. If only there were a cream to revitalise desirable thickness on that pitiful scalp! Though there are no health implications whatsoever, the NHS recognises hair loss as a health condition, and the BBC reports on why there is no ÔÇÿcureÔÇÖ for the process. Receding hairlines, which are as organic as body parts can be, are openly the subject of insults and jokes. So are men who wear toupees. It is distasteful of Tischner to argue that ÔÇÿmen do not have to care about their size or healthÔÇÖ when natural dimensions of their appearance are regarded as conditions to be cured.
Mental disorders concerning appearance, like body dysmorphia, also concern men. From the day of birth, Action Man, Duke Nukem, wrestlers, and action heroes convey the belief that a physically pleasing body is a muscular one. Where do men looking to gain the same results go? To muscle-building gurus on YouTube and Instagram. HereÔÇÖs the catch: 99% these bodies are beyond physical possibility for an average man on an average budget. Professional trainers, personal chefs, industrially recognised coaches, anabolic steroids, and even spare time are just a handful of the factors comprising these Olympic illusions. Indeed, not only do men suffer from anorexia, like I did, but megarexia, a muscle dysmorphia problem. They approach the gym with a meritocratic ÔÇÿno pain, no gainÔÇÖ mentality, but many never satisfy their expectations.
So, whilst we wait for the discourse to catch up, what can men do to achieve a more body-positive outlook? The same as women: dispel the illusions and discover yourself. So many of our woes come from comparisons we draw to fiction. Be the man you can be, not the man you ÔÇÿshouldÔÇÖ be. Banish the word ÔÇÿshouldÔÇÖ from your vocabulary, even, because it is useless. Even if by some miracle you become this illusory man, and draw a woman to your attention, it will be for nought, because sheÔÇÖs enamoured with a spectre of insecurity. You want someone who loves you at your most comfortable. Buy that nerdy shirt you like. Get that statement haircut. Go to the gym, not for sex appeal, but because itÔÇÖs good for you. Build yourself around what you like and what you are. Deny it to no one. People admire authenticity, not malleable sycophants. As for sex, nobody cares. Ask what your partner likes and do it. Try new things together. Relax. She chose you, not Mandingo.
If youÔÇÖre reading this and thinking ÔÇÿboo hoo, wonÔÇÖt someone think of the poor men?ÔÇÖ, you have lost touch with humanity. Suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 50. It is not a coincidence, and it is not purely because men need to be more emotionally vulnerable. Suicide is the ultimate act of anomie, the irrevocable collapse of oneÔÇÖs belief in the world, in the future, and in themselves. The torment required to destroy your strongest instinct, to live, is a multivariate issue of which culture is one. No oneÔÇÖs suffering, irrespective of sex or gender, deserves to be trivialized in the name of politics. The man on the train tracks is probably not your prisonÔÇÖs architect. Self-loathing does not discriminate. Neither should you.
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