Warning! Warning! Alarms go off inside your head. You’re at the mall walking around with one of your best buds looking at CDs, when all of a sudden you look up and see this drop dead gorgeous girl, whose looking at CDs in the next aisle. You grasp the CD case you were looking at firmly, and use the reflection quickly to make sure none of your pimples are ready to burst, and that your hair is fixed right. You take a breath and look up. She gives looks at you out of the corner of your eyes and you feel a skip in you chest. She looked at you!

That was only a brief glimpse into the complicated life of a teenage boy. A boy who reads magazines, wants a car, plays video games, and watches a lot of TV.  His ultimate goal is to look as good and cool as possible, like those guys in the Gap commercials on TV, with their perfect smiles and their arm always around that really hot girl.

Why have we as males become more concerned about our looks and body? It seemed that only twenty years ago it was just the girls really worrying about their make up and nails, but times are changing.  Changing for the worst.

Most of the men and guys on TV and in magazines look good or have good bodies. They most likely wear the clothes that are in style. In the movies, these guys often get the girl or are the hero of the picture. As of late, shows such as Friends and The Real World – shows where the relationships are shallow and mostly based on looks – have become more and more popular. A lot of times the reasons that they dump a guy are because he needs to lose fat around some areas.

Shows like these only make guys more self-conscious about their looks because they think that the girls expect us to be a rippling Arnold Schwarzenegger with a perfect body. A lot of times we also think they want us to look like the guys in the Mark and Spencer’s ads, holding a hot girl. What they’re really saying is, ‘Hey guys! Look like me even though you probably won’t be able to. If you do though, you’ll get lots of hot girls.  This puts a lot of pressure on having ‘in’ clothes and being cool.

Another source that has altered the male thinking is the magazine. Because girl magazines, like Cosmopolitan, encourages women use the power to choose and be ahead of the relationship, it also places stress on guys to look better for girls.

These magazines are read by a majority of the male population, and anything that gets published in them is sent out to a couple million males. A couple of million. The opinions stated in these magazines therefore become public opinion. Both magazines and the television have had a big effect on why we as males are more concerned about our looks now, then fifty years ago. The real struggle is to not let these materials conflict with what we really know. What we consider important.  What we really value. 

 

When you consider it in the long run, these things do not matter: popularity, money, and what you do. Focus more on what matters, like relationships that are not based on whether your hair looks good, or if your face is clear of acne.

May 24 2005

84% of British teenagers believe that a better body would improve their life. The results of a survey by teen magazine Sneak reveal that teenage boys have become obsessed by the way they look. More than a quarter of the boys polled – whose average age was 15 – said that they would consider plastic surgery in their quest for good looks.

 

Raisingkids.co.uk’s founder, Dr Pat Spungin, is today quoted in the Times as saying she wasn’t at all surprised by the survey’s findings. ‘It’s a change because usually in the past this has not been an issue for young boys,’ she said. ‘They’re more concentrated on what they can do than how they look. The main reason is we live in an image-obsessed society. Traditionally girls have always been concerned about their appearance. Young boys have not been evaluated on the way they look in the same way. We appraise men now as we do women.’

 

42% of the boys said that they felt under pressure from girls to have the perfect body, while 28% said it was the effect of seeing pictures of celebrities looking good that made them stressed. ‘In a previous generation someone like David Beckham would have been lauded for his talent on the field,’ Dr Spungin told The Times. ‘Now what he is doing is extending his brand to encompass his appearance,” she said. “I think young boys pick up on that. It’s not enough to be an ace footballer. You have to be a good-looking ace footballer.’