Hugo Schwyzer

This post first appeared in September 2004. I know I’ve been doing a lot of reprints lately, but gosh almighty, I’ve been busy. And relatively few of my current readers will have read this one.

REPRINT: I want to follow up a bit on my post below that touched on issues of male body insecurity.

First off, let me say that I am always wary of what I’ve heard called the “suffering Olympics”: the competition among groups to prove that they are somehow more oppressed, more mistreated, more misunderstood than anyone else. Whether it’s Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Turks, Cal fans and Cub fans, men and women, I’m not interested in the tiresome squabbling to prove whose pain is greater. I’m especially displeased by men’s rights organizations that focus on the myriad ways in which they imagine that men are victimized in contemporary culture! (Trish blogs a lot about these fellows, invariably accurately). I’ve never had much time for the men’s rights movement as a whole. I’ve met a lot of these guys, and I’ve never encountered so many so determined to hold on to their own self-righteous anger. I struggle a lot with self-righteousness — but I’ve got the good sense to see it as a character flaw rather than something to be celebrated.

That said, I do think we are blind to the pain and anguish that a growing number of men in our society are experiencing around issues related to body image. The stories are everywhere; this article from last week’s Telegraph indicates it is not an exclusively American phenomenon. (You may have to register to get it). Sample:

For years, women have complained that the beautiful, thin models used in advertisements leave them feeling overweight and inadequate. Now research has shown that men suffer exactly the same feelings of inferiority when they see adverts featuring attractive, muscular males.

Images of “bare-chested beefcakes” or toned athletes promoting aftershave, sunglasses and clothes leave ordinary men increasingly unhappy with their bodies, fuelling eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, excessive exercising and encouraging the use of “quick-fix” drugs such as steroids.

Anyone who is even a casual observer of American film can see the transformation in the ideal male body over the past forty years. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable had bodies that were firm but hardly “ripped”; by comparison, 40 year-old Brad Pitt and 40-something Tom Cruise today flaunt bodies that put almost every guy half their age to shame. Interestingly, as gender roles become increasingly blurred in our society, popular culture starts to do two similar but very different things. We idealize smooth, almost feminine “metro-sexual” boy-men (Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, David Beckham) who have clearly adopted a traditionally female self-regard; at the same time, we idealize caricatures of traditional masculinity (the Rock, Vin Diesel, and yes, in some ways, Governor Schwarzenegger). Neither extreme is helpful to young men struggling with self-image issues. Brad Pitt’s beauty is as elusive as the Rock’s biceps.

A number of recent books have explored this transformation and the rise of male anxiety; I recommend two in particular:

The Male Body, Susan Bordo
The Adonis Complex, Harrison Pope et al

There are many others — I haven’t been able to keep up with them all!

At times, some folks come dangerously close to blaming women (shocker, that) for the rise in male body-related anxiety. For example, the Telegraph writes:

…there is growing pressure on men to look good, as women take on more “male” roles.

“It used to be that women were much more focused on men providing financial security - looks and body shape were secondary to them having a nice personality. But now it looks like women may be wanting the whole package. Even if they don’t, that’s what males perceive.

In other words, as women gain economic and political power, they move from being “objects” to “subjects”; they become consumers who are able to exercise choices. According to this line of reasoning, as women become more autonomous, men become more decorative! Women’s progress is thus the root cause of male insecurity.

As you might guess, I don’t buy that line for one second. It’s an example of a classic kind of male myth-making that says that women’s advancement will always come at men’s expense. It seems to see self-esteem and wholeness as a zero-sum game, in which more for one sex means less for the other. It’s not very subtle, it’s decidedly anti-feminist, and more to the point, wildly inaccurate.

There are many different causes of this rise in male insecurity. (Some point to the mainstreaming of gay male sensibilities into the marketplace as a factor, for example). But my old Marxist training (once it’s in you, it’s always part of you) suggests that capitalism is the primary culprit. A culture in which only women are expected to have beautiful bodies is a culture that doesn’t maximize its profit potential. If only women wear make-up, buy designer jeans and diet pills, and have plastic surgery, then advertisers and other purveyors of these “necessities” are missing out on a mammoth, untapped market. In recent years, female body image disorders have become so widespread that it is difficult to imagine that the problem could get worse. Put another way, it is becoming difficult to imagine that women could spend more on their appearance than they already do; an exclusively female consuming public cannot thus guarantee continued bottom-line growth for the cosmetic, fashion, and diet industries. Enlisting men in this relentless and ultimately hopeless pursuit of perfection promises years and years of ever-growing profits.

Hmmm. Did I just lose all of my conservative readership? (All three of you?) Okay, sorry. You can take the boy out of Berkeley, but you can’t take Berkeley (and Marx) out of the boy. Still, I think there’s a valid point in the paragraph above.

But at some point, it becomes fruitless to talk about causes. It’s a fascinating and worthy historical exercise, but knowing why you feel a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to stop feeling that way!

My own credibility is tested here. I have struggled with body image issues for twenty years, ever since I was a soft, unathletic, almost chubby high school kid. I remember going to the beach one year in high school, and being teased because the shape of my torso made it appear that I had breasts. “Hugo’s got boobs!” is a cry that can make me wince after more than two decades. I’ve struggled with an eating disorder. (I weighed a soft 195 in high school; I’m a firmer 185 today; my best running weight was 165, my “low” during a period of intense dieting in 1992 was an emaciated 142. There was a widespread rumor in grad school that year that I was dying of AIDS.) I took up running to soothe my own anxieties about my body. It was only later that I discovered that (mirabile dictu) I actually loved to run. What began as a way of trying to conform to an impossible standard instead became a hobby that I treasure and adore in its own right. I was very lucky in that respect.

Time, therapy, and finding a sport I love have all helped to ease my own self-obsession. It has not vanished completely. Most of the men with whom I socialize are also runners and endurance enthusiasts, and most have confessed the same sort of personal history that I have shared. Even now, it’s sometimes difficult to separate what we do for love of the sport and what we do to fight to keep trim, athletic bodies. Even among my closest friends, there is often still some reluctance to admit the persistence of these anxieties — a reluctance that I don’t find shared by the women with whom we run, all of whom are much more vocal about their own struggles with body image.

When it comes to young men, we cannot confuse their silence with a sense of well-being. Getting young men to open up about issues of body image is difficult — but I’ve been part of many a youth group where it’s been done, and done well. The relief that young men (and not so young ones) experience is immense when they realize that they aren’t the only ones plagued with these doubts and insecurities. In a future post, I’ll try and write more about how I’ve experienced productive work with young men on this very difficult and painful subject.

But I’ve written enough for now. Got a test to write.