Now, I am just starting to get to the point where I believe the statement "I am who I am.".
My head just about explodes trying to find a balance between what women want to see, what constitutes fitness, and how much and why I actually care. It's tough to observe my own standards when they never stay the same, and when they're manipulated by forces I don't always comprehend. .
So what's going on? Why do I spend so much time in the mirror, flexing and twisting and prodding and scrutinizing every part of my body that I deem less-than perfect? Why can a Polo Sport ad inspire me to denounce all fat and commit every waking moment to some sort of muscle-building or cardiovascular activity? Why, after my girlfriend tells and shows me in 50 different ways that she considers my physical presence a religious experience, do I ask her if she's attracted to me? My sense self-esteem too often depends on how I see my body, and my body image is increasingly affected (infected?) by a continuous, arbitrary onslaught of images and messages that dictate the rights and wrongs of physical appearance. And I'm not the only guy going through it. I've got buddies who are manly men-who would punch me for saying what I did about Brad Pitt-but who get real touchy about how they look like in a pair of jeans. .
Just the existence of magazines like FLEX and Men's Fitness proves that men provide a viable market for folks looking to make money by exploiting crazy ideas of perfection. I used to wonder why every woman in Glamour and Shape is impossibly gorgeous and half-dressed-I couldn't figure out why women wanted to look at sexy pictures of other women. Then I realized something: they don't want to see those models, they want to be them. Somebody way smarter than me figured that out a long time ago and started making serious cash selling women images and ideas that breed dissatisfaction and self-doubt. .
Men are also consumers, and we're just as receptive to the suggestive sell.