Before I get to your questions I would just like to announce that this weekend Professor
Boyfriend and I got a joint membership to the YMCA and we bought a dehydrator. We're
pretty much common-law married now. In lieu of wedding gifts though just let me know what
you would buy us in the comments below. I already have a dehydrator.
On last week's Ask Cristen I talked about why bad words are bad. Here are a couple of
things that you all had to say about bad words. Michelle Willison for instance says, 'I have
always gone by what my grandmother told me in terms of cursing. "Curses should be like
good dishes. Stored away and only used on very special occasions so that when you do
use them everyone notices.'" I would like to sew that on a pillow and sell it on Etsy
so I can buy more things to dehydrate. Next up Anastasia Bromberg, 'As a person who speaks
multiple languages, I found that there is a hierarchy of "badness" when it comes to
cursing. Growing up in Israel, I already have a rather gruff/blunt manner of speaking but
I still tend to use softer English curses on a daily basis. When the word I'm looking
for doesn't exist in the English language or I am especially frustrated or furious I
resort to cursing in Russian, which I find has a lot more impact and makes me feel a
wee bit guilty.' Makes me wish that I spoke either Russian or German. This week's question
comes from Ermisenda Alvarez who says, 'I'd love to hear your take on the increase in
men's sexualization and whether you think there has been any increase. Example: the
emphasis on the "perfect muscle-ripped body".' The best that I can answer this question without
having inhabited a male body and knowing those male insecurities inside and out, I do think
observationally that there has been an increase in this objectification of men. One statistical
indication of this is the more recent documented rise of eating disorders and body image problems
among men in particular. The National Eating Disorders Association in fact estimates that
ten million males in the United States will suffer from a clinically significant eating
disorder at some point in their life. That might be anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge-eating.
The greatest proportion actually is EDNOS which stands for an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise
Specified. The National Eating Disorders Association also estimates that 33% of adolescent males
use unhealthy weight control behaviors, 37% of men binge-eat, experience depression and
up to 43% of men are dissatisfied with their bodies. For younger men in particular who
are growing up in the age of social media where it's all about self-presentation, taking
your selfies, pictures of your abs, looking all like sexy in your bed and all that stuff,
it's not just girls who are doing that. One contributing factor to all of this that the
National Eating Disorders Association points out is muscularity in the media and I'm just
going to quote them because that's easier than summarizing. The muscularity of ideal
male body representation has increased from the 1970s to the 1990s presenting a largely
unattainable muscular body type. Even more recently in 2013 there was an article in Ad
Age that got a lot of attention because it focused on what it called 'Hulk-vertising'.
We are seeing ripped male bodies selling things not normally associated with sexual imagery.
The author then contends that hey maybe we're seeing more of a rise of the objectification
of the male body in addition to the always-objectified female body. And all of this at the end of
the day really is catering to this male ideal of saying hey guys, do you want to be sexy
and hunky? Well guess what? You can buy all of these things and that'll help you maybe
kind of get there. There's also this compounding factor with this rise of body image issues
among guys is that they're less likely to seek out help. And for that very reason even
though I'm not a guy I wanted to talk about this issue because I feel like it needs to
be talked about. I want to hear from you. Guys, does this ring any bells at all? Do
you sense that there is an increased objectification of men, do you feel like there are more messages
than ever before being targeted at you saying, hey dudes, you better look like this, better
act like this, better wear this, better buy this if you really want to be a legit guy
who can get laid? And what do you want me to talk about next week, let me know in the
comments below as well and I'll see y'all next week.