So I was reading this post over at Renee's about the Sexiest Man Alive list done by Star magazine and I came across this one part that kinda made by blood boil.
When we look at a man's physical body, it is never seen as limiting his potential...
Is it me or does it seem that some women love dictating what it is like to be a man?
As I commented over there (which BTW was modded down, I guess some people can't stand the truth) this is simply not true. Now before you start the "who has it worse" pissing match note that she did not say that a man's physical body aren't as limiting of his potential as a woman's physical body can be. No she straight up said that a man's physical body never has any bearing on his potential. I say nonsense.
Let's take actors for instance. If you look at the actors that some up on that list (she has some of them in her post and I can't find the list online) you'll see that not a one of those guys is what you would call fat. But that's not the trick to her post. Simply two paragraphs later she makes the very true point of how fat men are marginalized (and of course taking the paragraph in between to add in the obligatory "okay yeah there is something unfair that happens to men but above all else remember that they are privileged" mitigation).
So on one hand being fat doesn't limit my potential while at the same time because I'm fat I'm often automatically dismissed as not being considered sexy. Now while writing this post it hit me that maybe, just maybe when she was talking about "limiting his potential..." she was talking about his ability to succeed and trying to separate that from whether or not he thinks he is sexy. Then I realized that those two are not so easily pulled apart. Even if you eliminate careers that link directly to one's looks what a man (or woman for that matter) there is still the simple confidence factor. When you think you aren't attractive you shy away from things that might put your face out there. As much as I complain about answering phones all day I'd still rather do that than be a teller at my bank (yes there was that one woman whose firing from a bank over her attractiveness that caused a lot of noise but compared to say the modeling industry something happening like that in banking is pretty rare) and have people look at me all day.
And there's being large pretty much means you must be an athlete. Or that you're not very intelligent. Or that you don't practice good/regular hygiene. Or you're not active and must be lazy. Or that you must be lousy in bed (assuming you don't crush the poor woman right?). (And of course there's swinging the pendulum to the other side and making assumptions about small guys.)
But hey what do I know? I'm just an actual man rather than a woman trying to tell men what their lives are like. (Either that or I'm really missing something here.)
When I read that post I was reminded of an ad for that new music game Power Gig.
Notice what happens to the guy when the narrator says, "You don't need to be sexy, or good looking."
