Concept of Masculinity and Effects on Body Image

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Interest in body image, its effects on person’s psychology and individual’s position in community, started with Paul Schilder in 1920s. Yet most literature of gender studies is consisted of works about female body image. However, with recent developments over the world, men’s body image has obtained more significance and has drawn more attention from psychologists, sociologists and gender scholars. To analyze this conjuncture and the reasons for it, we may firstly, introduce the concept of body image by defining it. Paul Schilder has defined the body image as “the picture of our own body which we form in our mind, that is to say, the way in which the body appears to ourselves” (as cited in Grogan, 1999, p. 14). In other words, body image is a feeling of a person, about his / her own body. Positive feelings of someone’s own body called body satisfaction, however, the negative feelings of someone’s own body called body dissatisfaction. All of these definitions are used to study gender relations over body images, in this essay.

Masculinity, the concept of manhood, “finds its greatest source and definition in self-determination, autonomy and individualism” (Weber, 2006). Besides, according to Kimmel, masculinity contains the “anxiety, restlessness and loneliness” as by-products of commitment to this concept (as cited in Weber, 2006, p. 290). According to Weber (2006), this conceptualization was first seen with the declaration of independence of United States, as a result of a view that United States wanted to provide all over the world, a stand-alone type of nation, namely, a stand-alone type of American men. Due to some American institutions’ rise across all over the world, American type of masculinity has become a global standard...

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Gil, S. (2007). Body image, well-being and sexual satisfaction: A comparison between

heterosexual and gay men. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 22(2). Retrieved

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Grogan, S. (1999). Body image : Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women and children. London: Routledge. Retrieved April, 8, 2008, from ebrary: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/sabanunivic/Doc?id=5001445

Weber, B.R. (2006). What makes the man? Television makeovers, made-over masculinity, and male body image. International Journal of Men's Health, 5(3). Retrieved April, 8, 2008, from EBSCOhost Research Database.

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