Fashion week is fast approaching and we’ve barely recovered from last year. Who can forget the designers, the celebrities, and those Astroturf lawns from Vena Cava! Perhaps the most memorable of all runway moments, though, was in Paris when Jean Paul Gaultier debuted his voluptuous Velvet d’Amour, a 5-foot-8 model weighing 290 pounds. This of course stemmed from the controversy of overly skinny models and their affect on female body image, which brings up the interesting question, why wasn’t there a plumper male model making his way down the catwalk or perhaps one that was gangly and pale? Isn’t male body image just as serious a problem?
As women stand in front of the mirror scrutinizing every inch of their bodies for not being smaller, men stand in front of the mirror berating themselves for not being larger. This obsession to be more muscular is just as severe as the desire to be thinner. Its severest form is called muscle dysmorphia, a syndrome that usually occurs with athletes. Men who suffer from it can be as large as 250 pounds and still feel that they’re not big enough. Looking in the mirror, these men can only see a weaker, thinner self instead of their actual body type, causing them to feel a need to exercise an excessive amount.
Where did this obsession to be more muscular come from? A lot of people would point to the media as the source for problems with self-image. Rippling abs and bulging biceps grace covers of men’s magazines, celebrity tabloids feature articles like, “Who has the better beach body,” and professional athletes are constantly cited for using steroids. Men are continually faced with a stronger body image as the ideal. However, other people feel that the issue is more psychological than social and that men want to be more muscular to exude more confidence and power. With women taking on a more aggressive role in universities and the workplace, researchers, point to the possibility that men are just searching for ways to assert their manliness.
On the other side of the scale, there are also a lot of men following women’s habits in starving and over exercising themselves to be more slender. Looking at rail thin male models who grace advertisements and catwalks, a lot of men desire to have this more sculpted, feminine look. According to T. Donald Branum, a Massachusetts psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders, men make up about 10 percent of anorexics and about 20 percent of bulimics. While Branum doesn’t blame the media for this increase in body self-consciousness, he does agree that certain skinny male images could contribute to the standards of physical goals they try to attain.
The pressure to have the “perfect” figure, whatever that may be, is something that undoubtedly burdens women and men. Body image related disorders kill its victims every year and leave others lonely and depressed. Instead of wondering where to place the blame, perhaps we should examine the overall issue of why people feel so conscious about their physical appearance in general. Who is setting these nearly unattainable standards? Has our society lost the true meaning of self-worth? Have we completely forgotten the importance of who we are on the inside? Maybe if we figure that out, we can correct these distorted views. We can help people see themselves for who they really are and not just these strangers in the mirror.
