Are men pressured to be beautiful?

Are men pressured to be beautiful?

By: James Haggerty

We all know that what we have seen from media in the past 100 years or so, isn't exactly in women's favor. Sure, every now and then a man would be represented in a bad light, but nothing comparable to what women have been led to believe through media. Actually, maybe there is one or two things.

He's probably easy to look at.

He's probably just as easy to look at.

He's the EASIEST to look at it. Ok, I'm getting carried away now...

Anyways, while the beautiful and bodacious female character is all too prevalent in media today, is the representation of men pretty off-base as well? It's debatable, but what can't be argued is just how many perfect looking male characters are on T.V. and in movies. What is considered "perfect" is also debatable, but that's for another day.

Another thing that each of these characters seems to have in the bag, is a beautiful woman that wants to be with them. Even if she's actually a secret agent. This might not seem harmful at all, but it certainly can be for young impressionable men. Once you get to a point where you've seen this scenario played out 500 times, it might actually make you believe that's how it should be in real life. This could make someone feel as though, since they don't have a beautiful woman waiting for them at home, they are failing as a man. They could also think that since meeting woman might not come easy to them, they will never be capable of being the "hero". Thinking this way can cause men to constantly think less of themselves, very similar to how women may feel when seeing certain tropes on them.

With that being said, I challenge you to find some maybe not so attractive male actors.

Here's one.

Here's another.

Okay, okay, I get it.

As a male, sometimes I hear about tropes that women deal with and are currently dealing with, and the first thing I think is, "but men deal with that too." It's a natural reaction almost, but it's incorrect. Simply because everything I think I know, is a result of years and years of tropes put out in the media, almost telling me what to believe. As I said before, what makes someone look "perfect" is open to interpretation, even what I've listed out could be considered way off-base to someone else. However, this is the way that media generally makes me feel about the way men are represented.

Finally, I'm a huge advocate of erasing character tropes for women and men. While this is just one argument there are a few ways that men should be better portrayed in media but ultimately, and unfortunately for women, there are many more issues concerning the female character and how they should be represented.