Expectations of beauty affect both the sexes

It has been said a thousand times and will be a thousand more, but beauty is a fickle thing. Everybody wants to be it, and most will do anything to get it. It is impossible to open up a magazine these days without seeing some half-naked young thing strutting their stuff, photoshopped beyond belief so they are almost unrecognisable as human.
Yet, we are supposed to worship this ideal, and, perhaps more worryingly, expect it in our partners. But, in case you were thinking I was preaching to the choir, I was talking about the men.
Male beauty in particular is an unusual topic to talk about. People are quick to jump on the bandwagon talking about how the media has unrealistic expectations of beauty in women that they forget the same is true with men. Everybody knows that women are not naturally that pruned and polished but does everybody know that neither are the guys? The (hopefully) obvious answer is ‘yes’ but I’m not so sure.
Try looking for a major ad campaign which doesn’t feature a man with a body that would make Brad Pitt jealous and let me know when you find one. It is nigh on impossible. Flicking through my housemate’s Cosmo was a humbling experience at best, what with the multitude of ruggedly handsome gentlemen and their toned physiques, wearing next to nothing.
Of course, women have it tough too; bikinis aren’t that flattering for the majority of ladies out there but at least with women, there is a much wider variety of shape and size; see yet another trashy magazine – anorexia to ‘elephant bum’ fat in approximately 50 pages – a far cry from the strict triangular male build that is constantly thrown in your face with us guys.
Obviously, when it comes to advertising, it is all about sex, but that is precisely the point. Whilst countless girls are off dieting and plucking in order to try and get a guy, countless boys are knocking back  endless protein shakes  and living their lives around the gym in order to try and get a girl because somewhere, somebody has told us that if we don’t look perfect, nobody will ever love us. It sounds absurd said like that, but then, if it isn’t true, why do people do it? Even if it is just to feel better about themselves, why do they need to fit in the first place?
This question is, of course, rhetorical. The reason people try to change themselves is that (bizarrely) what you look like is said to lead to what you become.  Supposedly, if you look good, you’ll feel good. Naturally,  a plethora of products is required to become a ‘better you’ in consumerism at its best, (or, depending, worst.) It seems like a waste of breath to state though that what usually happens is that you end up consuming the product, and feel no better, if not worse. There’s always something else to do to yourself and something else to buy.
It isn’t just advertising though; entertainment plays a large role in this preaching of unrealistic expectations. One culprit in particular is the latest craze, the vampire phenomenon Twilight, based on the books written by Stephenie Meyer. For those not in the know, normal human girl falls in love with supernaturally attractive vampires. For those who have read them, can you count the amount of times the heroine talks about how physically attractive her  beau is? I couldn’t. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so fundamentally disturbing. He loves her because she is beautiful within (and delicious, in an edible sense.) She loves him because he’s hot.
If the roles were reversed, it is highly unlikely that you would have even heard of Meyer but instead, this propaganda (for want of a better term) is quietly assimilated. Unfortunately ladies (and, a few gentlemen), the man you end up with is not going to look like Edward. However, in an irony that is almost delicious, not even Edward, the male protagonist played by Robert Pattinson, looks like Edward. The chiselled physique he will be showing off soon in cinemas near you is the result of careful make-up (unless he has had a body transplant since he filmed Little Ashes. )The standard you see from the men is just as artificial as that of the women yet this is seemingly unspoken.
Allegedly though, men are not as concerned over their physical appearance as women. If this is the case then could somebody explain to me the rise of the ‘metrosexual’, why the male toiletry industry is the fastest growing one in the UK and now worth over one billion pounds or why liposuction and breast reduction rates in men are becoming increasingly common?
Worse, can someone please explain why over 11,000 men per year now seek treatment for anorexia? Young men are under just as much pressure to look good as young women but the difference seems to be that unlike women, there is nobody telling these boys that what they see isn’t real or indicative of the everyday man’s body.
The problem runs deeper than the media though. It is an unfortunate truth that many guys simply don’t talk about their insecurities with their peers as women do. Instead,  they tend to bottle them up which probably explains why the male teenage population is the most likely to commit suicide.
Even today, to talk about such worries as that of body self-perception is seen as ‘unmanly,’ as is the failure to have a six-pack when this should not be the case. We are taught as children that ‘boys don’t cry’ because boys are tougher than that. Physically, yes. Emotionally? I’ll get back to you on that one.
Ultimately, half of the problem is that gender roles are still deeply inbred, and feminism and its related movements haven’t come as far as they think they have. Still to this day there is the feeling that women are to be desired, whereas men are to desire and both have to have the physique which the social code entails. Happiness, according to this code, does not exist for those who deviate.
Naturally, the majority of people do deviate, which is why the issue of beauty is so frustrating. Your random person in the street isn’t going to look like they got lost on the way to some modelling audition but a quick flick through some magazines would make you think otherwise. And yes, whilst the hourglass figure or the triangular body does look good, it cannot be denied, for the most part, it is an ideal aesthetic standard, and, as communism told us, to put the ideal into reality often leads to trouble.
In other words, most of us are going to live our lives distinctively average looking and we should come to terms with that, both in ourselves, and in others.