I found this blog post interesting in the way that it stated how men’s “supportive comments’ are actually the things that can harm a woman’s self-esteem. I have many guy friends where we can talk openly about our partners or people we are interested in. I have definitely heard the comments of “she has a great this but not that”, “I like a certain body type”, “I only date girls that are brunette”. Just recently, my other lady friends and I try to let them know that while they do notice a “good part” of a woman, that commenting on that can make it seem like the rest of that woman is not sufficient enough.
On the part with men wishing they were objectified, my friends and I have done that recently only in turn to show how hurtful it can be to our guy friends. We obviously were joking by picking and choosing certain things about that that can be objectified on them. We chose to comment on their eye color, height, body type, muscle definition, and facial features. By hearing how these can be scrutinized by women, they started to see what they were doing by saying these “supportive comments” or stating what “type” of woman they like.
I’m not sure how much that conversation stuck with them because I’ve heard them revert back to those types of comments sometimes. But at least my friends and I were able to let them know momentarily the type of effect they have.

The pressure to appear a certain way is very real for women. I think it takes a while to settle into your own body, and recognize you’re beautiful as you are. It’s a lot easier said than done. I used to hate how short I am, and my lack of curves. But most of my friends that I talked to, who I thought had totally perfect bodies, felt they lacked many physical characteristics as well. I saw a cartoon image of two girls, with totally opposite body types, who were each thinking “wow, she looks so good. I wish I had the curves to pull off that dress, or, I wish I was skinny enough to wear that outfit”. I think situations like that happen a lot. Men frequently don’t understand this, because they don’t face the same pressure to look a certain way. I’ve had male friends who I’ve talked about this with, and they just don’t seem to understand what I’m so worried about, because they think I look just fine (which is always reassuring). Without facing the scrutiny that we do, I don’t know that men will ever be able to understand what it’s like.

Body image plays a big role in society standards. Women are expected to have big breasts, large hips, and a large butt. On the other hand, Men are expected to be muscular. Both women and men care about their image, but because of the patriarchal society we live in the main body image that is mostly looked and judged on is the female body. This societal standard has been made very prominent that women watch their weight or have artificial implants to make their boobs or butt look bigger. Being a guy I don’t fully understand all the problems that are faced by women with this body imaging. To me though this sounds like body mirroring (Having a body that looks like the “Perfect female body).

This is really interesting.. You’re right in many ways, the diverse body types in the Hottest Women rankings show that men are into all different sorts of bodies, yet their words can still be harmful. While there is that “diversity” in body type they do all carry similarities in the proportions/lack of lumps.. Also, these women are typically wearing make up and expensive clothing. There is a lot that goes into appeal and we as women try to keep up with that, for many different reasons. So, in trying to achieve the look, even though diverse, we end up spending so much money on clothing and make up. It is exciting to see fuller figured women idolized, yet it is covers like the new Taylor Swift cover on Vogue that concerns me. When I was younger I would look at these covers and wish I had the body types as the headliner. Taylor Swift may be thin by nature but she looks emaciated. It is concerning to me that we idolize lack of nourishing your body. There still are many strides we have to help with womens bodies images, our wallets in attempt to look attractive and stopping the idolization of starvation.

I am honestly not surprised that men react this way towards women’s insecurities.I believe this ties back with our social norms and how our socialization agents influence our ideas.Let’s take the idea of the cult of female virtue,the idea that women are born as caring, vulnerable individuals who belong as homemakers in the family.In response to conforming with this idea, young girls are taught to help other’s and care for them.Unfortunately, this is not the case for how young boys are raised.They’re told to “be a man” and do things themselves without help.It’s almost as if because of this, they are not able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and see where they are coming from.Another reason for why men do not understand such insecurities may tie back to the social learning theory which states that people learn new attitudes and beliefs through social interactions.I think that since women are raised to be more open to sharing feelings, they express them (including insecurities) more while say hanging out with friends.Men however, are taught to keep feelings to themselves so they in return don’t share them while in a group.This leads to not being exposed to different attitudes towards self esteem and therefore, I believe, a reduction in the ability to understand where insecure women are coming from.

In my opinion, we cared for her as a whole person rather than just a sex object. For a woman, her personal charm is not just appear outside. But for now, the measure of society for most women is only cared about their appearance. The incredible thing comes up is that more and more women is affected by “bandwagon effect”, and they pay more attention to their appearance. So for women, their situation is very awkward. They have to follow the trend, at the same time also can’t stand in the dominant position to do what they want to do. I, as a man, I am pay attention of the female thoughts and their ideas, I also very understand the feelings of the women. For example, my girlfriend. She spends much time for dressing up, she really cares about her appearance, and how is other people evaluate to her. So I also very understand the feelings of those stars, they caught more attention and got more comments from the society.

Body Image is a very important subject in todays society when ever us women take a look at T.V shows, movies, look through magazines or even hear music there is always people in todays world trying to make us fit in to a certain category to be seen as a model type as small waist not to tall but not to skinny, flawless face with no scars or acne. That’s how men and people in charge of the beauty industry try to make others look at women. When it comes to guys opinion or comment they can hurt women’s feelings with out knowing it they might want to say something nice intentionally but come out as an insult, for example as what the post says they might say, “You can work out and get that way — or if not, then show off some other part that’s hot”. This say can be intentioned by them as a positive saying like, if you want or feel insecure of yourself you can work out to feel better about yourself but to women it might sound like, “why don’t you just work out because you look fat”. Or “show of some other part” might sound like this to women, “m just interested in this part of your body if you show it its ok I do not care about the rest”. Some things are meant to be good but come out bad and more when guys attention directs to celebrities or women who we are supposed to look like for example like the post also says there are different types of women out in the world including artist and celebrities small breast, long legs, short, tall and the list goes on there beauty in everything I believe it just takes the right person to see it.

I definitely agree with your point that men care less about that body image partly because of what society has done to emphasize beauty among women and less for men. This is partly because beauty generally associated with any woman and even expected by them by society. For men, however, there is is greater emphasis on non-physical aspects such as success. Personally as a guy, I tend to not care too much about my appearance. Sure, when there is a formal party or interview, I take extra time to freshen up. But for most occasions, I do not care too much about my appearance since most of my guys friends do not either.
For women, I imagine that they might have to worry about their appearance almost everywhere. This is because for women, society makes it so that if you are physically good looking, then you will have an easier time getting along with others and getting noticed. I personally think that this tendency of society in judging a woman by her appearance may lead to some overlooking in talent. For example, Susan Boyle was only known to the world for her talents in singing when she was auditioned for American Idol in her late forties. This was mainly because of her appearance was a factor in being constantly overlooked since physical appearance is a commonality for most media performers.

This article was really touching for me. Mainly because I agree on a personal level with all the points made throughout the article. Such as men don’t get the pressure women feel. Recently I’ve battled with strong self esteem issues of my own body whether it was good enough, despite having a very supportive boyfriend. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel great about my own body and looks because he loved them. In society today for women, with beautiful women in Hollywood even being judged, its hard to find our own place comfort within our skin. Women being objectified has made me scared this summer to come out in a swimsuit leading to me to barely eat. It’s not that hate myself, or I don’t like what my boyfriend says, its I’m not comfortable from the objection of women looks.

I would agree that men are very surprised that their partners have serious body image concerns, but maybe when these same men were single and “on the prowl” these body image concerns were indeed being objectified by them. I hear things all the time from men and sometimes women like she’s chubby but cute, or she’s kind of pretty but that body… Things that this are commonly said about race too; she’s cute for a white/black girl, she’s got a butt for an Asian… and these things are harmful to women, but women part take in such also.
I’m trying to consider instances where women say these same types of things about men, but only a few come to mind. I think that looks are less concerning for women in regards to the men they date. The concerns of body image is amongst women themselves and other women, but when women talk about men to date, yeah tall, dark, and handsome is the cliche, but in more seriously conversations it’s about a man who cares, has a solid job, good morals, and will make a good dad. Could one say men are objectified in that way?

In fact I used to comment girls that I met with “her face looks nice” or some similar comments in this article. And I sincerely did not know that it provides so much pressure to girls in theri self-esteem. However, the more girls I have met, the stronger I really that self-confidence can completely change the feeling that they give me. I do want to show some girls my opion that self-confidence does most of the thing when you are communicating with others, but the favourite thing they like to ask is ‘am I look good today?’. I hope there will be more programs that can tell women to raise up their self-confidence rather than teaching them what kind of makeup is the latest and most popular.

The problem with ranking women based on their body types (and looks in general) is that in the end someone is always left out and feeling horrible about themselves.

Take Meghan Trainors song “All about that bass” a song which received overwhelming amounts of attention for celebrating curvy women (and also made snark remarks about “skinny bitches”). While everyone else was singing along, I a quote-on-quote “skinny bitch” was all of a sudden questioning my own image. Was I no longer attractive because I had no ass or boobs? Was my physique now considered ugly?

The answer is NO. The problem with songs and media that promote only one body type is it promotes one standard of beauty.

Enough ranking women as “most beautiful curvy woman 2016” no more “most beautiful petite woman of the year”. We should all just promote all body types and call them all beautiful because they are all beautiful as a rule. We shouldn’t limit women’s beauty to a certain category.

The problem of women objectification had existed in the society for long, especially on media that we see every day, having a huge impact on what and how we think about ourselves. Media, including music videos, advertisements as well as TV shows, is a “great tool” to objectify women and create that narrow social ideals of beauty and perfect body figure. Although the data in the article shows that the society do have an appreciation for a variety of figures: tall, short, thick, slim, this as well as the “supportive” comments that the guys give still emphasize the attractiveness of the women’s body shape and physical appearance. This creates an impression that one of the most important and successful things for girls in life is to be sexually and physically attractive. The media also help convey and generate that narrow social beauty ideals: Once girls or women cannot find themselves conforming to that ideal, many of them are depressed and have low self-esteem. It is also not surprising to see that some female are even pressured to change themselves to fit into the ideal through really extreme ways, which are definitely hurting themselves.

>And they don’t get the pressure that so many women feel.

Are you kidding me?

I think the problem is that the media doesn’t show women of all or most body types. Women say they don’t want to be sex objects and I think it’s because of how women’s bodies are shown in commercials, tv, movies, ads, etc. I think if you saw most varieties of women’s bodies celebrated and sexualized and admired, where not one body type is celebrated more than the other. Then women would not feel bad, because they would see their bodies or body types seen as sexy and arousing and in that sense, I don’t think it would be bad. I think sex object is bad, because it’s usually a slim ideal. Whereas, I think a wide range of ideals seen as sexy and almost equally. That’s the problem, I think the sex object part is a problem for women, because they feel their bodies don’t match up, but women do like to be lusted after and seen as sexy.

So if you had this, you would combine the two, women feeling sexy for their different bodies and getting the high from being lusted for and attracted to.Women don’t get that, because they are too concerned or distracted about not measuring up. You take that pressure off, but still have been fixated on their bodies would be less the problem You said men want to be sex objects but wouldn’t like it. But that’s the thing. I wouldn’t want to feel the pressure of being really toned and fitting that ideal and women dissecting our bodies and seeing only the top %10 bodies sexy. But like I said, I would like the sex object thing if all or varying bodies of men were shown with the really fit toned ones and women lusting and admiring the various bodies of men. So then I wouldn’t be self conscious anymore and it would just be two positives to me anyway. Being lusted for and attracted to by giirls who find your body as sexy as other men’s bodies. That’s the problem with society to me is not sex objectification, but how narrow things are because of that. If it’s broadened, it wouldn’t be near the problem it is.