I have a degree in psychology (not saying I am any more qualified to make this judgement, but I did study sexuality in college). I just thought of this while sitting in bed checking my email just now. I think men and women experience body image issues differently. I think men are more practical about it and women are more emotional about it. And I am not saying one is better than the other, in fact I think if both sides tried to see it from the other's perspective then we might have better discussions about this. But I want to start with the Kmart commercial from Christmas.

Kmart had a commercial with a bunch of guys and they were HO HO HOing with their speedos on and stuff. You might remember the commercial. While I agree that it was stupid (simply because it was just not funny and dumb), I think getting offended over it is a bit much. But, if women were up there sexing it up on the screen, I can easily see how that is offensive because women look at their own bodies a bit differently than men. As a man, when I see a half naked guy on the TV screen, I don't develop a bad self image at all. I am not saying this is good or bad, I am just saying this is how it exists. But switch sexes, and a woman might have bodily image issues if she sees women sexualized all the time. And that is perfectly legitimate. It is so understandable how a woman would have those issues if the media sexualizes women all the time. But being a man, I do not have body image issues because the body builder was on TV with his shirt off. Mine come from a different place.

I am just saying that men (for the most part) seem not to have as many body image issues or if we do have those issues, we are not trying to look like the guy on TV, however, we just want to look buff ourselves. Men seem to see it as a logic problem. "That guy is on TV, he looks buff, I want to look buff, I need to go to the gym." And women tend to see it more as an emotional thing (which is ok and I think if men did that too then we would have more progress in society).

And this is coming from a guy who is 360 pounds, lost 20 pounds in the gym last year, and is going for another 20 pounds by June. I have serious body image issues so much so that my self esteem is shot. But my body image issues came from within. I did not compare myself to my friends, I did not compare myself to what society wanted. I just got down on myself and I decided that there need to be steps taken to fix it.

I might be wrong and if I am then I deserve to be called on it, but that being said, I think it is a mistake to view body image issues the same for men and women. Sex, in general, is a different experience for men and for women, so it is not hard to see how body image is different as well.

And to be honest, a big motivator in changing my weight is to help with depression, but also because it makes sex a lot better... and that sounds... well just tops to me. That sounds like the cat's meow to me!

This brings up another post that I am going to write so look for that one.