The Beefcaking of America

Everyone knows women who have body image issues. The secret: men have them too.

By Jill Neimark, published on November 01, 1994 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

The pressure on males to measure up to such iconic images has never been adequately examined by anthropologists or by social psychologists. Why? Ironically, says Gilmore, because "men don't talk about it. It would seem narcissistic, and that would seem feminine. It's an old male code--never complain." Yet studies have long shown that the height of males is linked to the attractiveness of their female partners, that handsome men are more successful than short or plain men, and that taller men earn more than short men.

Even more important, this male silence has helped drive the sexes apart. "If we could talk about it openly," comments Gilmore, "we could mutually experience the agony of the visual tyranny in our culture. Both men and women experience it in different ways. My own interviews with men between the ages of 30 and 50 have revealed deep-seated concerns about appearance, many in terms that rival the feminine 'beauty trap.' Men's passionate worries struck me as no less poignant than those expressed by women. The male body, like the female's, has become a punishing crucible painfully subjected to the tyranny of a cultural ideal."

That ideal has helped shape our political history. For seven straight decades America elected the taller of two presidential candidates. Richard Nixon was the one to finally break the pattern. When Carter and Ford debated, according to Ralph Keyes, "Carter's camp was jittery at the thought of their candidate standing right next to the 6'1" President." They asked that both debates be seated but were refused. Finally, they settled for lecterns placed far apart and, in payment for that concession, changed the background to camouflage Ford's encroaching baldness.

What can we learn from the new emphasis on male body image? Similar cycles of obsession among men have characteristically occurred at times when male social roles were ill defined. The dandies and aesthetes of the late 19th century, who whittled away the hours on their lace cuffs and silk vests, had no other function in society.

Contemporary men are experiencing an upheaval in their social role. It is unclear just what it means to be male anymore. The physical limits of the body provide a tangible arena of control and purpose. And so the ideal male body has become more rigidly masculine than ever.

At the same time, our willingness to gaze almost brazenly at male flesh, to pursue it as an object of pleasure, is a stark sign that men are joining the ranks of women. They are being looked at. That is inevitable in a culture where a staggering amount of visual information shapes our very existence--from cinema to advertising to television, from children dying in war zones to world leaders showing up on "Larry King Live," to Madonna kissing the crack in a man's buttocks in her book Sex. This is truly a culture where a picture is worth a thousand words. Men are no longer exempt.

COSMETIC SURGERY

There seems to have been an explosion in cosmetic surgery of late. In 1992, over 350,000 Americans went under the knife--and 13 percent were men. Though there is still a stigma about plastic surgery for men, that is changing, according to Manhattan plastic surgeon Joseph Pober, M.D. "About 20-25 percent of my practice is men, and contrary to the myth, most of the men are heterosexual.

"These men tend to be basically successful and secure, and they usually look good already. They tend to worry most about being disproportionate--not whether they are fat or thin, but whether their calves and waistlines and chests are proportional."

Respondents' feelings about cosmetic surgery were surprising. Though both men and women were more accepting of cosmetic surgery for women, men were overwhelmingly more accepting of surgery for both sexes. Among women, those who approved of cosmetic surgery for women or for men tended to be older and to rate themselves as more attractive. In addition, they tended to be more pro feminist.

People who approved of one procedure tended to approve of them all, and those who approved them for women were very likely to approve them for men. Among men, approval of cosmetic surgery was unrelated to any specific demographic factor.