Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Men and Self-image

I ran across an interesting article on the fatosphere today, from Eat a Cheeseburger. Tiffabee talks about an article that suggests that "men suffer from body image issues after reading magazines just like women do." And not just magazines like Maxim. Women's magazines too. Why?
She reported that the main reason men feel self-conscious after reading a magazine filled with images of sexualized women is that they feel they have to live up to the same level of attractiveness in order to be worthy of the women they see in the magazines.
That makes tons of sense. And this is an excellent example of how misogyny - in this case, that which pigeon-holes women into stereotypical, too-perfect images - hurts everyone. Women's rights are everyone's rights. The feminist movement is a necessary and integral part of the humanist movement. That's why men should be just as interested as women in securing gender equality.

And so I'm also discovering that fat rights are a necessary and integral part of women's rights. Fat women are hounded - more than men - to diet, in order to be accepted by society. If a woman is going to be stuffed into the role of homemaker, mother, or wife, she needs to be thin to do it. The quintessential woman is a thin, beautiful mother that beckons to her husband's every call. And that's just not so.

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