Men Are Pressured By The Media

Gone_But_Not_Lost
One of the things you will hear quite frequently in modern times, is a discussion about how women are pressured and persecuted by the media. The consensus view being that men are controlling the big sexist media machine to keep women down and degrade them, tell them how they're not good enough. Telling them that they're ugly and fat.

Sure there's some truth to this. The media in general is pretty big on making girls feel bad but the reason I am writing this article today is because I feel that this argument is almost entirely one-sided and unfair. That in fact, while although the media does this to women, there are two things being overlooked. The first being that this is not an industry being run entirely by men, and the second being that the media does a similar number on men.

These two facts are forgotten, overlooked and ignored entirely so often that it is starting to get on my nerves. Enough so that I feel the need to vent while at the same time try mybest to set the record straight. So here's how I see it...

Women seem to think that they completely cornered the market on low self esteem, the media is used to push them to do things and feel bad about how they look. They talk about clothing, makeup and haircare ads. They talk about magazines like Cosmo telling them they're not good enough. They bring up the movies talking about women a certain way or music videos degrading women. I'm pretty sure you've heard the long version of this argument before so I'll leave this section short.

Men get this too. Men have things like Old Spice telling us we aren't manly enough, Axe telling us we're not attractive or that we don't smell good, or that our hair isn't good enough. We have clothing ads telling us we look like crap and I might add entirely focusing on cute skinny young guys with great hair. We have Magazines like FHM and Maxim telling us we're not good enough unless we're out there hitting the clubs and picking up girls. Telling us we're no good in bed. Movies tearing guys down. Chick flicks that tell improbable or impossible love stories that we're somehow supposed to measure up to. Not to mention you at least get bigger girls in movies and stuff. I defy you to name fat celebrities that aren't comedians. Lets not forget ads and commercials for penis pills and "natural male enhancement" and the like. Ha!

Some women might see this and agree that sure we might have it bad too, and then try to argue that we still don't get it as bad as women when it comes to looking good. I might agree, but where the pressure on us lacks in that department it only gets worse when you remember that it's not enough that we're drop dead gorgeous. NO! We're told we also need to be rich. We need expensive cars,fancy watches, fancy homes, and we need the money to be able to support out woman, spoil her rotten, and treat her to fine dining and gold, diamonds, vacations and who knows what else. Not to mention we need to be hung like a horse, and dynamite in bed.

As for music videos, can you HONESTLY tell me that no female pop star doesn't do exactly the same thing? She needs her man to be perfect, rich, build like a stone statue, and half naked most the time and even then half the videos result in her saying that some minute character flaw makes him not good enough. This is usually followed by some incredibly hypocritical music video by the same singer either about how she can't find someone who treats her right or how looks or money are not important. My fucking ass.

Now I don't see the media easing up on people anytime soon. I imagine we're going to have alot of troubles with both sexes being pressured to act this way. The only thing I can offer is that both men and women try to ignore the media in this regard, and stop worrying about what other people think about their appearance. People really just need to love themselves better. They also need to stop accusing the opposite sex for all their problems. Clearly not all women are superficial, material, sex crazed monsters. Not all men are looking for the trophy wife with the huge tits. Really what we need is to try and remember this.

I do have my hopes that the sexes will understand this and back off on one another. Though I hope this will happen, I don't think it ever will. All i can do is hope that despite my soapboxing on this issue, some of the people reading this will have some new thoughts on the matter. So in the mean time I as always will wish all of you good luck out there.

Toban Frost
Men Are Pressured By The Media
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