Thanks for the body image issues, dudes.

If I hear a guy criticizing a girl's body, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

This is a very touchy issue with me, along with the use of the word "bitch". In fact, I hold these convictions for very similar reasons.

There really is no denying a sex-based double standard in many parts of American culture, and the most infuriating one for me is body type. The "acceptable" weight range for women that men consider attractive is rather narrow and located on the low end of the BMI spectrum. And yet women are supposed to balance this small waist-to-hip ratio with a disproportionate breast size. I'm not going to be totally unreasonale and say that all men prefer this type of woman--there are of course exceptions. I'm talking about men in general here.

Now turn the lens to the other half of the human population as seen by females and what happens then? Few women are concerned with how much a man weighs. They may be looking at how well-muscled he is, but it's not a huge turn-off if a guy isn't a bodybuilder. In any case, a woman could just as easily find an almost scrawny (and maybe a little flabby) fellow attractive attractive if he had a "nice face", and especially if she liked his personality.

Besides what men and women appreciate aesthetically, there's the difference in what men and women are expected to wear. The societal norm for women is form-fitting, short, eye-catching clothing--and not just for the disreputable ones. Even other women may chide their friends for "hiding their figure" in more loose-fitting clothing. The norm for men, however, seems to be "anything goes"--they can wear form-fitting stuff too, but they don't need to show nearly as much skin and it's perfectly acceptable to wear very baggy clothing too (especially in certain subcultures). No dude is going to get on to his friend for wearing something that "doesn't show off his figure"--I felt ridiculous even typing that. That's just not how it works, right?

What result does this have on body image? A woman's body shape is more exposed than a man's, purely because of how women's fashions are designed. A guy in baggy pants and a t-shirt could easily hide fifteen extra pounds or some flab on his stomach--but a woman, in her tight tops and jeans, will show every ounce of "extra" fat that she may be carrying. I say "extra" because a guy's definition of "extra" and a doctor's definition of "extra" are totally different. This results in a lot of body image issues among women as they compare themselves to "skinnier" friends (most of the time these friends just have a different body type or a different metabolism). Perfectly healthy women can easily descend into the oubliette of body-hatred where they don't even want to look in the mirror at themselves anymore.

Body image issues are brought on 100% by our society's standards of "beauty" for women--even women with a pre-disposition to psychological issues wouldn't develop them if our culture were one of acceptance for all body types. And this is a ridiculous subject to make our women obsess over, considering the plethora issues that dwarf having the "perfect weight" in comparison. How sad is it that a fifteen-year-old should be developing anorexia here in America, the land of the plenty, when millions of children are starving just across the Atlantic (or the Pacific, for that matter)? It's nauseating, actually.

This brings me back to another peeve of mine that I mentioned at the beginning: the word "bitch". My problem with it is a degrading term with connotations unparalleled in any insulting terms for males. It's an eighteen-wheeler with centuries of oppression and misogynism hitchhiking on it. The lack of a male equivalent is very telling for body image issues, as well. Forcing half of the population of the U.S. to be subservient to the other gender's idea of beauty, causing them to obsess over it and hurt themselves to achieve their standards instead of accomplishing something worthwhile--this not only personally infuriating but a threat to all the progress feminism has made in the past century and even to the American idea of "equal opportunity".

So if you tell me you support equal opportunity or important social, humanitarian, or political issues...

...I'd better not here you evaluating a girl's attractiveness based on her body shape.

I might not ever be able to take you seriously again.