Beauty Standards: Men vs. Women's Perception of Physical Attraction

Introduction: Two Opposing Views on Male Vanity

In Patricia McLaughlin's "Venus Envy," this style columnist discusses the way that modern men are increasingly pushed to meet the sort of beauty standards that were previously required only of women. She speaks of the growing male obsession with personal appearance, which has resulted in increases in male plastic surgeries and similar social phenomena. She stresses the way that men today seek to alter their appearance, much as 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 picture may be complicated if one then turns to "The Ugly Truth about Beauty" by essayist Dave Barry. This supposedly humorous essay compares women's self-conscious fixation on beauty with men's casual conviction that "average is fine, for men... they never ask anybody how they look" (Barry 35). He elaborates on how all women "grow up thinking they need to look like Barbie" (Barry 35), while men are allowed to look however they like.

It is quite impossible, of course, that both McLaughlin and Barry are entirely right. Men cannot be both entirely oblivious to their personal appearance and, at the same time, increasingly likely to undergo plastic surgery or develop anorexia or bulimia. The answer, in all likelihood, lies somewhere in between. It seems very likely that while social norms for men dictate that they must not care about their appearance — perhaps for fear of appearing effeminate — the media pressure toward looking attractive is such that men secretly become obsessive about controlling this aspect of their lives. A careful reading of both essays may show how the two positions can simultaneously contain truth.

Barry's Argument: Men Are Indifferent to Appearance

Dave Barry's essay does not work very hard to provide evidence for its claims, probably because they carry the weight of long-standing gender stereotypes behind them. As far back as biblical times, women have been stereotyped as impossibly vain, and since the beginning of the feminist movement it has been understood that this supposed vanity is socially taught — what Barry reduces to "many complex psychological and societal reasons, by which I mean Barbie" (Barry 35). This kind of oversimplification is typical of his approach, which relies mainly on vaguely humorous assertions about the differences between men and women.

He suggests that men can never give a satisfactory answer to the question "How do I look?" (Barry 34), and that they would do better to simply fall over and feign illness rather than attempt a response. The reason for this, he argues, is that women have grown up convinced they must apply make-up and take other extreme measures in an attempt to look like Barbie or Cindy Crawford, while men do not face the same pressures. Men, he points out, grew up playing with extremely ugly action figures. He continues by arguing that men form their self-image early on and never revise it. Most men think they look average, he suggests, and the rest consider themselves irresistible regardless of how they actually appear.

"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 goes on to suggest that women shouldn't care what they look like either. He argues that women may claim to be obsessed with looks because men want them to be, but counters that (a) women shouldn't be foolish just because men are, and (b) that men do not notice women's beauty efforts anyway: "Many men would not notice if a woman had upward of four hands" (Barry 36).

McLaughlin's Argument: Men Face Growing Beauty Pressures

McLaughlin does not deny that gender stereotypes are precisely as Barry describes them; she simply recognizes as stereotype what he presents as truth. She acknowledges that it had always been the case that "what mattered in life was how women looked and what men did" (McLaughlin 31). This echoes Barry's claim that men would find ways to bolster their self-esteem through means other than appearance. However, McLaughlin argues, this is changing: "how men look is also beginning to carry more weight" (McLaughlin 31).

She cites a number of sources to document how men are having plastic surgery to eliminate love handles, improve their facial appearance, tighten their bodies, and enlarge their penises. She also discusses the rise of lifestyle magazines for men that feature idealized male body types, weight-loss tips, fashion advice, and other style content that was previously considered the domain of women. She further notes that anorexia and bulimia are becoming more common among men. Like Barry, she locates the cause of these problems in social expectations, and she too invokes the doll phenomenon, referencing both Barbie and Ken: "The key to how men feel about how they look... is social expectations. What do they think folks expect them to look like?" (McLaughlin 32).

She briefly examines men's magazines and the role of media advertising — such as campaigns by Calvin Klein — to illustrate how men are increasingly being treated as sex objects, subjected to the same objectifying gaze that women have long experienced.