Men's Memes: Feminism and body image

Friday, February 09, 2007

Feminism and body image

Feminism has brought the relationship between the sexes to an all time low. One of the consequences of feminism's banning of mentioning the real differences between the sexes is that a lot of young people today are growing up with totally unrealistic expectations of themselves and members of the opposite sex. Essentially they are growing up with a model in their minds that theres basically no difference between men and women, other than the obviously physical ones. This causes a lot of confusion and messed up behaviour in the youth.

Feminism hasn't - on the whole - been able to deny the physical differences between the sexes, as these are obvious to see (its easier to deny the mental and personality differences). So basically the differences between the bodies of men and women has become the only acceptable form of sex difference to portray in the media and in public. You are allowed to show men and women as having different bodies, but you aren't allowed to show men and women having - on average - different interests in life, or different levels and types of intelligence (unless you are doing so in a way which puts men down).

Now, here is an important point: because body differences are the only acceptable way of communicating differences between the sexes, they have been given a lot more attention ever since the rise of feminism. Starting in the 1980s, male movie stars became far more muscular, and women today seem to pay far more attention to their looks and weight than they did 30 years ago.

Even if young people are confused about the mental differences between the sexes, they mostly instinctively know that to appear attractive to the opposite sex, they should enhance their masculine traits (if they are male) or their feminine traits (if they are female). The problem is that politically correct society has blocked women from appearing feminine in their behaviour, and has taken away most of the uniqueness of masculine 'roles' from men by giving them to women.

Is it therefore any surprise that many young people are now paying FAR too much attention to the way their bodies look? Research has shown that many young women over-exagerate how important slimness is to appearing attractive to men, and many young men over-exagerate how important large muscles are to appearing attractive to women. This is why eating disorders and body image disorders have risen so much, even amongst boys. Just another fantastic benefit brought to you by feminism.

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."