Gender Identity Beauty and the Term Paper

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" (Barry, 36) He continues to suggest that women shouldn't care what they look like either. He says that women may say they are obsessed with looks because men want them to be, but argues that (a) women shouldn't be idiots just because men are, and (b) that men don't recognize women's beauty efforts anyway. "Many men would no notice if a woman had upward of four hands." (Barry, 36)

McLaughlin does not deny that the gender stereotypes are precisely as Barry reports them to be, though she recognizes as stereotypical what he claims as truth. She says that it had always before been that "what mattered in life was how women looked and what men did." (McLaughlin, 31) This is talking about the same thing Barry is when he says that men would find some way to bolster self-esteem other than appearance. However, McLaughlin continues to point out, that this is changing: "how men look is also beginning to carry more weight." (McLaughlin, 31) She quotes a number of sources to explain how men are having plastic surgery to get rid of love handles, pretty up their face, tighten their body, and enlarge their penises. She also speaks of the increase in lifestyle magazines for men that feature idealized male body types, weight loss and fashion tips, and other style issues that were previously the domain of women. She also point out that anorexia and bulimia are becoming more common among men. Like Barry she claims that the cause of these emotional problems is social, and she quotes the doll phenomena, speaking of Barbie and Ken. "The key to how men feel about how they look... is social expectations. What do they think folds expect them to look like?" (McLaughlin, 32) She briefly discusses men's magazines and the role of media ads such as those by Calvin Klein, to point to how men are increasingly becoming sex objects.

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If these two articles are really both presenting some element of truth, then one must recognize that perhaps they represent very different aspects of the truth. One notices that Barry is, obviously, a male writer and that he also speaks a great deal more about the way men act. He says that men will never sit around in a circle discussing this, and that they will never ask about the way they look. His joking, ribald humor has something of the sense of a cover-up. He presents no facts or supporting evidence, and one can quickly realize that he is giving something of a performance. He is embodying the male role (a G.I. Joe toughness that is forced on men just as Barbie-ism is forced on women) which is tough and self-sustaining and certainly not self-conscious. Yet he never acknowledges that sometimes men's perspective of themselves might be attached to reality and not the inaccurate sense of the "average self." McLaughlin, on the other hand, as a woman is not interested in maintaining the myth of male strength and is able to look unabashedly at facts (such as increases in objectifying ads, anorexia and plastic surgery rates, and weight loss articles) to discover the secret inner battles of men. Certainly, on the surface men may never gather around Brad Pitt to try to look like him, but McLaughlin's more objectify research suggests that they will sneak home and work out all night to get his muscles, or maybe even….....

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