Wonder what the Ideal Man looks like? I don’t think most men give this a second thought, but talks with my wife and her friends lead me to believe the ladies all have preferences. Obviously, we hit enough of the buttons to be acceptable or the ladies would not be sticking around.
The wonderful folks at superdrug.com, who dashed every girl’s dream of body acceptance with their “Perceptions of Perfection Across Borders” study have done the same for men. The original study involved sending an un-retouched image of a nice-looking woman to artists in 18 countries. The artists were asked to Photoshop the image to reflect their country’s accepted norm. Of course, this norm is based on the respective artists’ individual biases as well as what they perceive as their country’s preference. Which is all a fancy way of saying that this study is not scientific.
Part Two of this study involved a photo of an average-looking guy sent to artists in 19 countries asking them to Photoshop the Ideal Man. Not surprisingly, there were similar variations in size and proportion, but the differences were surprisingly small in most cases. Only the U.S., Egypt, and the Philippines had an ideal man with a six- or eight-pack–even the beach-culture obsessed Aussies were more lenient. Where the women’s study faces were barely retouched, the men’s had many more differences, much more obvious clues about preferences.
According to Denise Hatton, Chief Executive of YMCA England, a founding partner of the Be Real campaign for body confidence:
Men suffer equally with women around low body confidence as many strive to attain a standard of ‘attractiveness’ that is both often unobtainable and, as this report shows, driven by cultural perceptions and advertising ideals. – Denise Hatton, Chief Executive of YMCA England
I am going to suggest that this is a condition found in younger generations than we Boomer males. But what do you think?
