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drydemI have been thinking recently about gendered standards of beauty and the ways in which they are acheivable. Society constructs interesting dichotomies in terms of what it means to be an attractive woman vs. what it means to be an attractive man
One of the difficulties that I have encountered in my life is the fact that it is very hard for me to achieve a state of beauty. Attractiveness in men is societally complicated, to the point that a man is not constructed as a site of desire. Society constructs it so that it is the women who entice and the men who pursue, which makes it difficult to be a man who entices. Men who attempt to beautify themselves, who use products(generally designed for women) to make themselves more attractive, are stigmatized as potentially homosexual, which, even for those who do not have a problem with being such, acts as a social stigma.
All this makes the pursuit socially questionable, where people ask why are you pursuing attractiveness in the first place. This is not the only difficulty though. One of the tricky aspects is the ways in which male and female beauty require completely different efforts. Female beauty is constructed passively, while male beauty is constructed actively. What I mean by this is simple. Women, to achieve beauty, are expected to diet, which is effectively not doing something they supposedly shouldn't. Men, to achieve beauty, are expected to work out, which is effectively doing something they supposedly should. While I agree with neither position, it is a difficult one to negotiate as a man. If I want to be attractive, I effectively have to sacrifice a great deal of time and energy to achieve this. It's interesting to me that so much of our standards of beauty rely on this active/passive gender divide which hearkens back to issues of gendered division of labor.
Now, I am not saying that women have it easy in terms of standards of beauty. There is an expectation that women MUST work towards being attractive, must diet, must be a force of enticement, whereas men don't have that pressure to the same degree.
However, I am saying that there are serious difficulties in terms of being a man who wants to be attractive. One of the key ones is the fact that there is not as good a mechanism of resistance for men who do not fit standards of beauty. For women, it is possible to invoke a discouse or curviness in response to pressure for skinniness. A woman can present herself as proud of her womanly shape. For men, there is not the same mechanism of resistance. For men, beauty is presented as hardness, a firmness of body that invokes ideas of strength. What do you invoke in resistance to that? softness? weakness? The only vaguely positive spin I see is non-threatening, but the ways in which our society glosses over gendered violence, threat is ignored.
Honestly, I sometimes wish that society supported my efforts to be beautiful. Instead, I slave away in HPER, trying to achieve some sort of muscular perfection that I only vaguely believe in.
One of the difficulties that I have encountered in my life is the fact that it is very hard for me to achieve a state of beauty. Attractiveness in men is societally complicated, to the point that a man is not constructed as a site of desire. Society constructs it so that it is the women who entice and the men who pursue, which makes it difficult to be a man who entices. Men who attempt to beautify themselves, who use products(generally designed for women) to make themselves more attractive, are stigmatized as potentially homosexual, which, even for those who do not have a problem with being such, acts as a social stigma.
All this makes the pursuit socially questionable, where people ask why are you pursuing attractiveness in the first place. This is not the only difficulty though. One of the tricky aspects is the ways in which male and female beauty require completely different efforts. Female beauty is constructed passively, while male beauty is constructed actively. What I mean by this is simple. Women, to achieve beauty, are expected to diet, which is effectively not doing something they supposedly shouldn't. Men, to achieve beauty, are expected to work out, which is effectively doing something they supposedly should. While I agree with neither position, it is a difficult one to negotiate as a man. If I want to be attractive, I effectively have to sacrifice a great deal of time and energy to achieve this. It's interesting to me that so much of our standards of beauty rely on this active/passive gender divide which hearkens back to issues of gendered division of labor.
Now, I am not saying that women have it easy in terms of standards of beauty. There is an expectation that women MUST work towards being attractive, must diet, must be a force of enticement, whereas men don't have that pressure to the same degree.
However, I am saying that there are serious difficulties in terms of being a man who wants to be attractive. One of the key ones is the fact that there is not as good a mechanism of resistance for men who do not fit standards of beauty. For women, it is possible to invoke a discouse or curviness in response to pressure for skinniness. A woman can present herself as proud of her womanly shape. For men, there is not the same mechanism of resistance. For men, beauty is presented as hardness, a firmness of body that invokes ideas of strength. What do you invoke in resistance to that? softness? weakness? The only vaguely positive spin I see is non-threatening, but the ways in which our society glosses over gendered violence, threat is ignored.
Honestly, I sometimes wish that society supported my efforts to be beautiful. Instead, I slave away in HPER, trying to achieve some sort of muscular perfection that I only vaguely believe in.
