checkout line ponderings

[anotheranon]

Due to uncertainty about the dinner menu this week, I've spent more time than usual in the grocery check out line. I'm starting to notice repeating themes in the articles in gossip/celebrity/women's magazines that always sit there. It's so regular it's astounding - I don't even have to pick them up, because it's all right there on the cover:

1) Sadistic gourmet/"housekeeping" type magazines that feature articles about "5 easy desserts your family will LOVE!" listed right next to "lose the last 5 pounds" or similar. So.... the reader of the magazine is supposed to make the 5 desserts for someone else (boyfriend/husband? Kids?) but not eat them herself because of the aforementioned 5 lbs/flabby thighs/whatever. WTF?

2) Sex tips about "how to drive him WILD in bed!!" What about how he can drive you wild in bed? Or how you can drive yourself wild in bed?

3) Articles in magazines fretting about how one celebrity or another has lost too much weight, or alternately, gained too much weight - often right next to each other in the stands. While I guess it's reassuring that they're featuring something other than models who look picture perfect all the time, it's starting to look a bit like a freak show :P

3a) Tangential to 3: Not quite sure why the obsession with celebrity goings and doings beyond the fact that lots of them are pretty and have live lives the likes of which most of us mere mortals will never see. It's not as if any of them do much beyond being aesthetically pleasing and entertaining (and when they do, charity work and the like isn't glamorous, and is hardly going to be on the cover). It's much more interesting to wonder why some people get so fascinated by lives of the rich and famous - I'm reminded of a former co worker who went off on a tangent about how terrible Prince Charles was to Diana and I was surprised at the level of her outrage about people she didn't even know....

I found a link some time ago from someone who's evidently put a lot more thought into this than I have and found patterns of her/his own - I guess I'm not the only one who thinks these things.

Comments

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

Those messages have been around for at least 50 years that I'm personally aware of, from the time of Charles Atlas and Steve Reeves. Perhaps they haven't been so common in mainstream media for all that time but they've certainly been present in media aimed at men and boys, and that's more than enough exposure to do terrible damage.

As far as what might have changed recently, the trend I can see (over the past 30 years) has to do with the widespread use of steroids. A normal man could get a lot closer to a Steve Reeves physique than he ever could to an Arnold physique. And Arnold, even in his heyday, looks scrawny next to modern bodybuilders.

I hear a lot of talk about how unrealistic expectations damage women, and rightfully so. I hear very little about how unrealistic expectations damage men.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I hear a lot of talk about how unrealistic expectations damage women, and rightfully so. I hear very little about how unrealistic expectations damage men.

Possibly because until fairly recently, you only saw those unrealistic standards in specific media geared towards men's health or similar. I maintain that it's only been the past 10-15 years that have seen buff guys move into the mainstream (fashion leading the way - after generations of slim women, they gave us the Calvin Klein underwear ads in Times Square).

I agree that bodybuilders look downright freakish - I have trouble imagining why any man would want to look like an inflatable pincushion, but then, those images aren't aimed at me, so it's easy for me to say.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> Possibly because until fairly recently, you only saw those unrealistic
> standards in specific media geared towards men's health or similar.

Those images have been in mainstream Hollywood action/adventure movies since at least the early 70s. They were probably around before then, but I'm not a fan of old movies.

> I maintain that it's only been the past 10-15 years that have seen buff
> guys move into the mainstream
>
> I agree that bodybuilders look downright freakish - I have trouble
> imagining why any man would want to look like an inflatable pincushion,

Perhaps this is part of our disagreement. A frequent topic of ridicule on some forums I read is the difference between what women think makes a man buff and what men think makes a man buff. It's really quite a gap. The recently-appeared ads you're thinking of do not feature men that most other men consider buff, or men that they feel insecure over. Those ads are barely, if at all, a part of the damaging imagery I'm talking about. Just as many men have been so programmed by media that they don't even recognize what's unrealistic for most women to achieve, many women don't even recognize what images are damaging to men.