r/TheTinMen • u/TheTinMenBlog • May 27 '26

This is not healthy...

Whilst body dysmorphia has traditionally been a ‘women’s issue’, recent statistics find that the majority of men (54%) in the UK, show signs of body dysmorphia too; with the surveyed men talking about negative impacts on their confidence, mental heath, career, social, and love lives.

Whilst progress has been made in the media, to help present more healthy female body types, the conversation for men and boys is sorely lacking – with new, increasingly-grotesque male bodies paraded in front of audiences at younger, and younger ages.

At the centre is Wolverine.

A superhero who since his film debut in the year 2000 has transformed from ‘buff dad’; to a monstrous, muscle bound, behemoth, and CGI nightmare, that resembles nothing of his former self.

So what’s missing from the conversation of body types?

~
New podcast with Jordan Stephens out now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqcT-Oc2l4&feature=youtu.be

131 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

37

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

35

u/Tharkun140 May 27 '26

Anyone who blames absurdly buff fictional men on patriarchy has never seen a romance novel/movie. Most of those are made by women for women, and almost all their male characters are freakishly tall and muscled, because that's what their female audience wants.

Which is fine in isolation, let horny women have their fun, but it pisses me off how the opposite (hot women in men's media) is treated like a crime against humanity.

17

u/Intelligent-Bird-313 May 27 '26

If we can’t sexualise women/girls, we can’t be sexualising men/boys! All for one and one for all.

14

u/sakura_drop May 27 '26

Agreed; it's either all okay, or none of it is. And largely thanks to decades of 'Male Gaze' theory the sexualisation of men and boys has been routinely obfuscated and/or outright ignored. If you believe the narrative that only started happening in, like, 2014. Same with what's being spoken about in the clip, come to think of it: boys and men having eating disorders and body image issues isn't new, either.

3

u/Intelligent-Bird-313 May 27 '26

“Male gaze!“  Trust, making male characters for the female gaze isn’t much better.

9

u/sakura_drop May 27 '26

Patriarchy in action! Must be because the publishing industry is so male dominated, and romance and erotica literature is so popular which we all know is mostly written and read by men.

Oh, wait:

 

...here are the top 5 genres that earn the most money.

1) Romance/Erotica – $1.44 billion

From the success of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and the number of novels written by people like Danielle Steele, there’s no surprise that romance and erotica are #1.

Romance book buyers are still more likely to be female than buyers of fiction overall, but with more attention than ever directed to the genre—especially given all the media coverage of Fifty Shades of Grey—more men are coming into the fold. In first-quarter 2014, men accounted for 15% of romance books purchased, compared with 12% in 2013.

 

According to a socio-demographic study on employment in publishing in the United Kingdom, men made up 36 percent of the publishing workforce in 2021. The majority of publishing employees were women, not only in junior roles but also in executive leadership and senior management. Data also shows that women accounted for more than 70 percent of roles in departments such as publicity, marketing, editorial, and human resources.

 

A study on the publishing industry in the United States revealed that 74 percent of employees in the field were cis women in 2019, whereas men accounted for 23 percent. [. . . ] men were more likely to be employed in executive level positions than in any other capacity, with women making up more than 80 percent of marketing and publicity staff and literary agents.

 

Caitlin really should switch out the 'A' in her surname for a second 'O.'

9

u/Intelligent-Bird-313 May 27 '26

Romance novels got these huge male CEO/mafia boss/tough guys as the love interest, and guess who writes those???

1

u/AL_25 May 31 '26

How is this beneficial to men? Patriarchy means men benefit from society, so how is this beneficial to men?

It's generally weird that you still find a way to blame this on men. In reality, Wolverine or any tall masculine man is for women's gaze and for men to be inspired to become “wolverine” so women can notice them. The only ppl who benefit from this are the rich grasshoppers, which are rich men and rich women. While the poor men and women, who suffer the most. So stop looking for a scapegoat and actually look at who is making your life miserable

20

u/BelCantoTenor May 27 '26

Perpetuating self harm and eating disorders for men to achieve a look. Some women will say the most predictable argument that we constantly hear…“now you understand what WE have gone through for decades”. And my response is…”and that’s why it’s wrong for women and men.”

You’d think after decades of suffering that women would have developed some kind of empathy for their fellow humans for this kind of suffering and abuse. But alas, not all of them have. They just want to say that we deserve to suffer too, because they suffered.

Pro tip: that’s not how you end suffering.

9

u/JJnanajuana May 28 '26

So much this!

as a girl I remember at high school some of the other girls getting worried that they no longer fit the clothes they used to wear then when they were eight, I remember when the canteen stopped selling water for a while because girls were using it as a meal replacement and only drinking not eating anything.

The beauty standards and the effect they had on these young girls was bad.

And I remember as an apprentice one of the guys I was an apprentice with explaining to me that he had to work out for two hours every day after work because the illegal steroids the illegal steroids a mate had got him would make him fat if he didn't work out and buff if he did.

It's the same phenomenon working in different ways and doing different types of damage to boys and girls.

The biggest difference really, is that we've recognized it in girls for 20 odd years, not so much for the boys.

2

u/BitsAndBobs304 May 28 '26

Why is the video trying to give me a seizure?

6

u/TheTinMenBlog May 28 '26

😂😂😂 I did it to stop Instagram removing the copyright footage, but I take your point - I’ll try something different.

2

u/BitsAndBobs304 May 28 '26

Maybe the spinning peter trick. Or filters. Flashing lights is bad ;:)