Masculinity = Muscularity?

After weeks of talking about the evil media and its contribution to spread female stereotypes, it is time to pay a little attention to the male too. When we think about media and gender stereotypes, most of us immediately think about women. We can come up with billions of examples of how the media sexually objectifies women, casts stereotypical gender roles onto women to be caretakers, and portray women in a misleading way. But what about our male counterpart?  I have always had the notion that men are the devil and the creators behind the stereotypes against women and they enjoy all the sexism being shown on TV. It wasn’t until recently when I read a research done on the connection between male model and male self-esteem that made me realize men also very much suffer from media’s gender stereotypes.

Even though women grimace at men who stare at the bikini model admiring her perfect physique and call them shallow, we tend to ignore how men must feel when our eyes wander all over that male underwear model with the perfect 6-pack. I would imagine the same thought process happens in their mind as in ours.  First we scold the other sex for being superficial and being a pervert, and then we turn to feeling dissatisfied about ourselves because we don't have that picture perfect body the other sex admires so much. Women often complain that media and their big breast; tiny waist, size 0 models and actresses have painted an unrealistic picture of the ideal female body that men long for. The same could be said for men. Media, overtime, has changed people’s definition of masculinity. 

Masculinity is defined by dictionary.com as having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, such as strength and boldness.  Traditionally, masculinity is associated with qualities or behaviors. A man can display masculinity through courage, through leadership even through love for family. However, media has created a new superficial meaning of masculinity where muscularity = masculinity. With the help of media, masculinity became more and more about appearance rather than behavior and qualities.  Just as femininity has grown to become more about big breast and long hair than being loving and caring. A father working his hardest to provide a good life for his wife and kids but is slightly overweight would now be viewed as “less manly” than a 20 year old who wastes his parents money all day but has a perfectly toned body. Media has twisted our view and made us forget that personality is way more important than appearance.

Women blame men for falling for the female stereotypes media presents, but to be fair, women fall for them too.  Women often associate big muscles on a man with masculinity when in truth, that’s just one of media’s many lies and masculinity really has nothing to do with physical appearance. People are often concerned with how the supermodels contribute to lowering women’s self-esteem but we need to remember that they also have the same effect on men. And people really need to remember that masculinity and femininity does not depend on physical trait but a rather depends on values and qualities the person has.