Gender Identity Beauty and the

Gender Identity Beauty and the Hunk: Comparing Men and Women's Perception of Physical Attraction and Gender In Patricia McLaughlin's "Venus Envy," this style columnist discusses the way that modern men are increasingly pushed to obtain the sort of beauty standards that were previously only required of women. She speaks of the increasing male obsession with their own good looks, which has resulted in increases in male plastic surgeries and similar social phenomena.

She stresses the way that men today seek to alter their opinions, much like women have traditionally done, in order to "feel about myself." (McLaughlin, 32) From reading her report, one might think that all men were becoming body conscious metrosexuals. This illusion may be threatened if one then turns around and reads "The Ugly Truth about Beauty" by essayist Dave Barry. This supposedly humorous essay seeks to compare women's self-conscious fixation of beauty with men's casual conviction that "average is fine, for men..

they never ask anybody how they look." (Barry, 35) He carries on for a bit explaining how all women "grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie." (Barry, 35) while men are allowed top look however they like. It is quite impossible, of course, that both McLaughlin and Barry are entirely right. Men cannot both be entirely oblivious to their personal appearances and increasingly likely to undertake plastic surgery and become anorexic or bulimic. They answer, in all likelihood, lies somewhere in between.

It seems very likely that while the social standard for men indicates that they must not care about their personal appearance (perhaps for fear of appearing effeminate), the media pressure towards looking beautiful (or handsome) is such that secretly men become obsessive about controlling this aspect of their reality. A careful reading of both may show how the two can both be true.

Dave Barry's essay does not work very hard to put forth evidence for his claims, probably because they have the force of years of gender stereotypes to back them up.

As far back as biblical times women have been stereotyped as impossibly vain, and from the beginning of the feminist movement it has been understood that this (supposed) vanity is taught by what Barry calls "many complex psychological and societal reasons, by which I mean Barbie." (Barry, 35) This sort of oversimplification is typical of his work, which seems to function mainly on vaguely humorous assertions about the difference between men and women.

He suggests that men can never give a good answer to the question, "How do I look?" (Barry, 34) and that they would do better to just fall over and feign illness rather than try to answer. The reason for this, he suggests, is that women have grown up convinced that they must try to apply make-up and do other extreme things in an attempt to look like Barbie or Cindy Crawford, while men do not have the same pressures.

Men, he points out, grew up playing with extremely ugly action figures. He continues to point out that men determine how they believe they look early on and never change their minds. Most men think they look average, he suggests, and the remainder think they are stud muffins regardless of how they look. "You're not going to get a group of middle-aged men to sit in a room and apply cosmetics to themselves under the instruction of Brad Pitt, in hopes of looking more like him. Men would..

find some way to bolster their self-esteem that did not require looking like Brad Pitt." (Barry, 36) He continues to suggest that women shouldn't care what they look like either. He says that women may say they are obsessed with looks because men want them to be, but argues that (a) women shouldn't be idiots just because men are, and (b) that men don't recognize women's beauty efforts anyway.

"Many men would no notice if a woman had upward of four hands." (Barry, 36) McLaughlin does not deny that the gender stereotypes are precisely as Barry reports them to be, though she recognizes as stereotypical what he claims as truth. She says that it had always before been that "what mattered in life was how women looked and what men did." (McLaughlin, 31) This is talking about the same thing Barry is when he says that men would find some way to bolster self-esteem other than appearance.

However, McLaughlin continues to point out, that this is changing: "how men look is also beginning to carry more weight." (McLaughlin, 31) She quotes a number of sources to explain how men are having plastic surgery to get rid of love handles, pretty up their face, tighten their body, and enlarge their penises. She also speaks of the increase in lifestyle magazines for men that feature idealized male body types, weight loss and fashion tips, and other style issues that were previously the domain of women.

She also point out that anorexia and bulimia are becoming more common among men. Like Barry she claims that the cause of these emotional problems is social, and she quotes the doll phenomena, speaking of Barbie and Ken. "The key to how men feel about how they look.. is social expectations. What do they think folds expect them to look like?" (McLaughlin, 32) She briefly discusses men's magazines and the role of media ads such as those by Calvin Klein, to point to how men are increasingly becoming sex objects.

If these two articles are really both presenting some element of truth, then one must recognize that perhaps.