Men's Struggle With Body Image

“Bro’, you need to bulk up. In a fight you’d be snapped like a toothpick.” This saying and many similar ones are said daily throughout the world. To some, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but to the boy with bulimia nervosa, the boy who spends hours every day in the gym, and to the boy who stops eating for wrestling, those words can mean a lot. Today our world is fixated on the perfect woman. Standards are set and if you don’t meet them, you become irrelevant. Now of course it is important to help women today not become obsessed with negative thoughts about their body, but to completely ignore the struggles men face with their body is heartless. All in all, men struggle with body image as well, some do things way worse than most women, but

“Man up!” “Grow a pair!” “Don’t be such a wimp!” are all things said from one man to another man almost always somewhere in the world. These words all give being skinny, being non-muscular, and being non-masculine negative connotations, though in reality, they are all just normal things many men are! Being all of those things have nothing to do with who one is as a man, and other men need to stop connecting the two. Many men resort to unfathomable things because of the way other men treat them and comment on their body. To summarize, pressure from the same gender is prevalent throughout society, and men needs to know that they don't have to look like a model as long as they are

To be blatant, sex is everywhere, which makes sex culture a phenomena. Over time, men, young men in particular, have made sex almost into a competition, instead of an act of love and pleasure for the person one is engaging in activity with. Women today also have sexulized every part of a male's body. Whether it’s a strong jawline, firm abs, or a nice butt, men seem to need to be perfect to please a women, or even another man if that is their preference. This is another example of of unattainable standards set for men and their bodies. Again, to be open, most people enjoy and want sex, obviously including men, but because bodies among both men and women have been sexualized, many men feel like they are not worthy of being “loved” so to speak, creating a harmful thought process for the man. In order to fight back, we must stop the sexualization of the “perfect body” and appreciate all body types in order to stay a healthy community full of body-confident