How the Media Distorts Male Self-Perception Essay

How the Media Distorts Male Self-Perception Women are insecure. They constantly diet and scrutinize their bodies. They fall victims to the anorexically thin models appearing in the media. Why do men have it so easy? For years these questions are what women asked themselves. In a world where appearance is everything, women have been the main source of all the hype concerning the image and body. Advertisements have been criticized for years about putting the pressures of the â€Å"perfect† body into the heads of millions of women. Up until a few years ago, it was believed that only women had the eyes of society on them. Now the scales are balancing. More men are beginning to feel pressured, by the same society, to†¦show more content†¦This transformation exhibits how society changed in its perspective on physical appearance. This marked the beginning of men’s desire for what women had been calling the â€Å"perfect† body. Before World War II, money was not lavishly spent on the perfection of the body (Luciano 11). After the return of the soldiers, men had more money as women retained their postwar jobs. With women making substantially larger paychecks, men had the ability to spend more time and money to make themselves look like the models displayed in the media. With the new advertisements by Calvin Klein, such as the Mark Wahlberg, also known as Marky Mark, steamy ads for men’s briefs, the appearance of male bodies has intensified (Luciano 112). More and more men, now with the monetary means of looking good, are trying to achieve perfection with their bodies. They want to have the same bodies as those shown in the advertisements and, at times, will not stop until they have reached that goal (Grogan 95). As exposure to the male body expands, the demand for â€Å"chiseled† bodies greatens. In recent years, the number of memberships and frequency of visits to health clubs has increased (Luciano 3). 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