Ken Comes Separately

"Is she fine, so well bred
The perfect girl, a social deb

Is she the sort you've always thought
Could make you what you're not?"

Natalie Merchant - Jealousy

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"as Lora saw the expression on Leon's face, she knew why he had brought her here, and knew that her battle was already lost.
The girl floating in her crystal coffin had a face that was not beautiful, but was full of character and intelligence. Even in this centuries-long repose, it showed determination and resourcefulness. It was the face of a pioneer, of a frontierswoman who could stand beside her mate and help him wield whatever fabulous tools of science might be needed to build a new Earth beyond the stars."

from The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke
(original short story version, 1958)

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"But the scenes describing cruelty to women are comparatively perfunctory. The real high-spots of the book are cruelties committed by men upon other men"

George Orwell (in a 1944 essay decrying the literary upswing in power obsession and cruelty)

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I suddenly wish I'd kept at hand my old Animorphs collection (first baker's dozen of the series) but they're currently resting on my mother's bookshelf and I'm not calling her up to quote mine for my no-account blog account. But from the first slim volume or two I recall a character drawing an unfavorable comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger because "he has muscles in places where other men don't even have places" and we teenage boys fantasizing about swapping out our worthless bodies for cooler animals all had a good laugh over that. It's funny that we should all feel worthless because a stronger man exists. Laugh. It's funny.

 

I don't know what young adult novels and comic books advertise these days (I'd guess... vapes 'n shrinks?) but across the decades they've marketed to their bookish teenage boy core audience's stereotypical obsessions: whoopee cushions, ham radios, portable chess sets, toy soldiers, collectable coins. And, while we're at it, let's target every possible source of anxiety. Alongside olden days ads for paper-boy jobs (after all you'll need the cash to pay for her dinner) and mail-order high school degrees -

- so you don't have to stand there sheepishly with your hands behind your back, bowing your head in shame while a pretty secretary denies you due to your insufficiency (don't you just love the extra knife twist?) plus martial arts handbooks for SECRET ancient Chinese/Japanese/Oriental/far-out-far-east techniques of assuredly superlative deadliness - alongside all that comic books hammered their young audience with assurance that your body's not good enough. The occasional ad for shoe lifts is just the tip of the iceberg.
 

Aww, before guy is sad.

(And they apparently come packaged with broader shoulders and a stronger chin.)

The real bonanza comes in the form of bodybuilding ads. Not just all the generic exercise equipment (of assuredly superlative deadliness) and protein powders but more generic promises that if you send us your money we'll make you into Charles Atlas. It'd be a fool's errand to try cataloguing such rip-offs' staggering breadth and repetition in a mere blog post (plus I assume most are still running) but here's a classic:

(arm candy not included)

1969, just as feminists were burning their bras in protest of men's supposed expectations and blaming men for being sent to Vietnam on their behalf. Yes, that is indeed the future and once governor of California in his first gig stateside, shilling for a snake oil peddler. Just from his Wikipedia summary, Joe Weider was sued/fined at least half a dozen times over a period of three decades for demonstrably false muscle gain claims, never stopped lying, was never made to stop lying, and in reward for all that lying is still treated as a hero to jocks everywhere. And yes, herr governator was still shilling for the scheister as late as 2006, while in office. Republican politics didn't start with the Trump cartel. But I digress. That image ran the very next page after the cover proudly displaying a Comics Code sticker of approval for youth-safe content. Eat it you worthless twig.

 

You've been bombarded all your life with feminists' complaint that the media present "an unrealistic image" of feminine beauty. So long as you keep on the horse blinders they mandate to look only at the female victim side of any issue, always and forever, they're not strictly speaking wrong.

 

But first off, the demands placed on men are far less reasonable and far more often blatantly impossible. If it's not realistic to maintain a D-cup rack with a wasp waist, consider altering your entire skeleton because no woman wants to date a man under 180cm. And yes, losing weight is actually easier than building muscles in places you don't even have places. "You can bend iron bars, tear phone books, smash rocks with your fist" sure takes the wind out of half an hour of pilates, don't it?

 

Second, through all the half-century of nonstop wailing over unfair pressure placed on women, the self-described "egalitarian" feminists have never once even pretended to give a shit that boys are beaten over the head with such suggestions from a far earlier age. Who's more sexualized, Beauty or the Beast? (I refer you to millions of teenage girls' Tumblr feeds.) Nobody has ever questioned whether muscle-man shirtless scenes are harming young boys' self-image. Nobody needs to. We want their self-image harmed. That's how you fabricate a malleable psyche by dating age.

 

Third, while female diet fads are often presented as-is or as the demands of fashion, the male version makes no secret whatsoever of just who ultimately stands in judgment of your worth. Get a degree or the pretty blonde secretary will say you're not good enough. Grow extra bones or the elegant dame won't dance with you. Grow Schwarzeneggerrian musculature or the chick in the bikini won't let you pick her up. If you can't beat the beach bully, your girl will leave you for him. For boys it's not just "the body you've always wanted" but explicitly and proudly "girls will shit on you" and again, nobody sees anything wrong with shoving this down a teenager's throat. Worry solely about Barbie's cup size or be branded a misogynist.

 

Fourth, women were already protected from such psychological abuse before feminists took over. "Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities" dictated the same comics code which green-lit the obscenity above and every over-muscled he-man for decades on end, even as (heavens forfend) it would not allow the words "horror" or "terror" in comics' titles. While sexualized depictions of women have been outright banned over much of the globe for the past centuries (with "high art" as a convenient dodge for anyone rich enough to afford it) nobody has ever admitted that the image of a male hero was itself always sexualized, in every culture and every century, always glorifying women's provider/protector ideal for a mate. Not only must Prince Charming be every bit as physically flawless as the princess or more so, but he must slay dragons, conquer palaces, move mountains or kill/be a superhuman android from the future in order to prove worthy of taking his place in the nuclear family unit. Unrealistic body image? Try an unrealistic image of your entire existence!