Feminism and male body image

I am a female feminist who recently began dating a male non-feminist. He is a kind, respectful man, but he doesn’t call himself a feminist. I am ok with this, because despite the fact that he is averse to the word right now, our relationship is based on feminist principles. There are issues of equality and politics and sex that we’re constantly navigating, and equal power distribution and respect are important to both of us. Consequently our sex life has been fairly feminist as well. We actively pursue open communication, and fully informed enthusiastic consent is important to us. It would make for fantastic sex, except for one increasingly important detail: he has a very low opinion of his own body.

As most women in America, I didn’t grow up hearing about body acceptance and diversity and respect. Instead I grew up battling eating disorders and hating my body, constantly fighting against it and punishing it. It took a lot of time and effort to overcome those messages. It’s a daily struggle, but I manage to live in a place of support, love, and acceptance with my physical form. I’m proud of the way I feel about my body today.

When my partner and I have sex, I feel wonderful. The equal and open way we approach our sex life gives me a feeling of safety and satisfaction. But all comes crashing down around me when he inevitably comments on his own body in a negative fashion. Whenever he makes a body-negative comment, I feel incredibly sad that society has impacted him in the same way that it has impacted me. I understand how crushing those social pressures feel, what it feels like to literally loathe your natural form. I don’t want that for him. I want him to love his body, the way I do – but not because I do.

Unfortunately sadness isn’t the only thing I feel. In those instants the secure walls of love and acceptance I have built around my body start to crumble. I am suddenly very aware of the 15 pounds I gained and never lost again in college. I become self-conscious; I no longer enjoy our sex.

I wish more than anything that our society didn’t affect people this way, but unfortunately it does. I believe that the pervasive body-negativity in our culture affects women AND men. I also feel that not enough work has been done on men’s body messages in culture and the media. In response to the (unfortunately) high incidence of eating disorders, fad diets, and over-exercising in women and girls, we (fortunately) received positive counter-messages, though fewer and farther between than the negative ones. Men, however, receive almost none. There is little to no attention paid to their body-negativity. And given that less attention is paid to men, they have fewer tools to cope with their body hatred.

Just as women have to cope with narrow definitions of femininity and the “female box” society puts us in, men have to cope with masculinity and the “male box” – and real men don’t have body image issues. Real men are confident, powerful, money-making machines who get all the ladies they want regardless of body type. Real men aren’t supposed to care about their own bodies. Oh, they are supposed be strong and muscular, but in an offhanded, nonchalant way. Nothing about a man’s pursuit of a better body should have anything to do with self-esteem issues. “Feelings” and “low self-esteem” are for women. These are the messages men get in our culture.

As a feminist, I believe that the movement towards equality is incomplete without the participation of everyone – women, men, and children of all races, cultures, religions, etc. We are just making the road longer and harder when we exclude people. This extends to every feminist issue we address, including body acceptance. My body acceptance can’t be complete if my partner is dealing with his own (and if that consequently triggers my own body issues). But whereas the feminist movement has given me websites and memoirs and workbooks and female empowerment networks to cope, my partner has no tools of his own. At best they are adapted. I will admit that my research amounted to a few google queries, but shouldn’t “male body acceptance” turn up more than just vague sub-categories on female body acceptance websites? If both he and I are told he can’t call me fat, but neither of us have scripts on how to deal with his body, doesn’t that undermine the equality we aim for in our relationship and sex life?

A mentor of mine a long time ago told me that if you stand on a chair and hold hands with someone standing on the floor, it’s a lot easier for them to pull you down to the floor than it is for you to pull them up on the chair. Feminists can’t win by only addressing female bodies, or by only including males in that they too shouldn’t hate our female bodies. Yes, we have experienced the effects of body hatred in different ways, compounded by the gendered power-structure of our society. But that doesn’t mean that men don’t experience body-negativity at all. By addressing only female body perceptions, we leave men on the floor. We need instead to create the tools to get them up on the chairs with us. It’s time men’s body perceptions as well as women’s found a more prominent place in feminist discourse.