How Body Shaming Affects Men Too

When the subject of body shaming is brought up, the majority of people automatically think in terms of its impact on women. However, the truth of the matter is that it affects men, too, and the impact is far greater than many of us realize.

We do tend to think of body shaming as being a problem that is primarily associated with girls and women. The entire beauty industry has an inclination toward females, which often drives judgment about physical appearance in that direction, too. However, despite that commonly held belief, men are not exempt from being judged based on certain body standards, and they are not immune to feeling shamed when they are led to feel that they don’t live up to what people expect of them.

For men, a great deal of the body shaming issues are focused on weight and muscle. Men are fat shamed on a regular basis and often feel that they are judged based on the muscles in their arms and abs, as well as on their height.

A recent study showed that at the same time that many people are attempting to try build a greater value for healthful living and proper weight maintenance, a line is being crossed that is causing people who are overweight and obese to hate themselves, and many of those people are men. This typically starts during adolescence and one in every ten teens with an eating disorders is now male.

Though physical standards and expectations may not be the same in men as they are in women, it’s clear that they do exist and they are causing emotional and physical harm to some men in the same way that many women feel that it controls their lives. The pain these men are feeling is acute and it should not be ignored.

It is also worth noting that eating disorders don’t present in men in the same way they do among women. Females often turn to severe food restrictions or binging and purging. Women are more likely to go to eating extremes when they have an eating disorder. On the other hand, men aren’t as likely to starve themselves or induce vomiting after binging. Instead, they are more likely to take dangerous supplements and extreme amounts of exercise in the hopes of losing fat and bulking up. It is also common for men to suffer from depression or to start using illegal drugs as a result of poor body image.