Last week, I read an article that graphically illustrated what the average American male’s body looks like. As interesting as the article was, what was much more amusing was reading the back and forth comments from the men and women who read the article. Many women were immediately visually turned off, since the body of the average American male is, well, not flattering — especially compared to other countries. The truth is, the United States has far too many men (and women) with terrible diets and sedentary lifestyles, which causes us to put on excess weight. Other countries don’t consume nearly as much processed, fatty foods. This lead many of the American women in the comment section to not only praise the bodies of men outside of the U.S., but to also heavily criticize the average American male body as being gross and extremely unappealing. And this is where things got funny as hell: The American men in the comments section indignantly began turning on all the women for being superficial, which would’ve been a good point if we weren’t collectively so brazen about treating women the same way.
In fact, I saw a similar response by men who were upset with women talking negatively about D’Angelo after TMZ recently displayed his weight gain. Women were asking one another, “What the hell happened to this former sex symbol?” And men were asking the women,”How dare you criticize his looks?!” Interestingly enough, we men tend to be very quiet when it comes to fat shaming celebrity women. Dudes weren’t breaking their necks to defend Jill Scott, Jennifer Hudson, or Angie Stone before they lost weight. And many of us still don’t defend Gabourey Sidibe or Mariah Carey. It’s gotten to the point where we even fat shame pregnant women.
If we’re keeping it real, we need to admit that American women probably face more fat shaming and body criticism than women anywhere else in the world. When it comes to body image, being a fat woman in America is to occupy one of the lowest rungs of respect among any group of citizens, especially if they are relatively young. Old, fat women aren’t absolved of needing to keep up a svelte appearance, as much as they are summarily written off as expendable and unimportant once they dare gain weight or even walk around with wrinkles. But young women with guts are routinely told how unattractive they are by a throng of men asking, “would you hit it?” Regardless of age, whether it’s the red carpet at the Grammys or a presidential debate, women must unfortunately endure endless critiques about how their body looks. Men, luckily, don’t have to go through any of that. So why the hell are men getting so upset that women have their own superficial standards?
The last thing us men want to do is have our fat shaming turned against us, especially when facts show that we will probably deserve far more criticism than the average woman receives. Men don’t care about fat shaming until we’re the victims, because most men realize that if women chose to be just as picky about body size as we are, many of us would be spending a lot more time in front of our PlayStation and NOT by choice. We will throw women under an intense social microscope and feel entitled to tell them how repulsive they are, but the second they point out that we have big guts, and a bunch of dudes are walking around shaped like a lower case b, we hop all into our feelings. When I was reading the comments the men were posting under the article, men were damn near crying tears into their MacBooks because women stated they didn’t want a man who was shaped like a summer squash.
The truth is, superficiality is either a good thing or a bad thing, but to make it fine for one gender and disgusting for the other is stupid. Any man who truly judges a woman on character and reprimands men who fat shame, definitely has the moral authority to do the same to women who criticize men. But, if you are a man who actively advocates the ideology that women need to “keep in shape” or find themselves the object of your demeaning-ass comments, then you probably need to shut the hell up.
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.