Afew weeks ago, I spent the afternoon wandering around Center City, soliciting donations of merchandise for a charity silent auction I was coordinating and feeling pretty damn good about life -- it was a gorgeous fall day and I thought I was looking pretty good.
Well, that is, until I happened to wander into a particular upscale boutique of trendy men's clothes, with piles of purposefully distressed jeans, garishly colored striped button-downs and designer boxer-briefs, all costing more than the price of a semester at most other colleges. While this place didn't exactly fit into my meager clothing budget or my own fashion taste, I smiled and played along, all for the good of this charity event.
As the store's owner dug around the back for the gift certificate forms, he encouraged me to poke through the merchandise. I tried to keep the small talk going by mentioning that I had actually been in there a few times before -- to use a credit I'd won at some on-campus raffle -- but was bummed out that his pieces weren't meant for my body type. (Believe it or not, there are plenty of us who don't share the skeletal frame of newfound porn star Paris Hilton.)
"That's okay," he said with a sugary smile as he returned with the documentation in hand. "We go up to XXL -- I'm sure we can find something that fits."
Feeling the sting and burn that accompanies a slap to the face, I muttered my thanks for the donation and hurried toward the door, trying my best to keep my lower lip from quivering as I reeled from this blatant insult.
The thing is, it's hardly the first time I've encountered obvious slams about my weight on this campus. After all, who could forget the woman at the Fresh‰ns smoothie counter who offered me a second Fat Burner booster tablet last week?
Or what about the Career Services counselor who, after spending 30 minutes telling me that I knew infinitely more about my field of interest than she ever would and essentially providing no help at all, inconsiderately overstepped her bounds by suggesting that I "put a little more energy and money" into my appearance.
Sure, it's easy enough to nurse my repeatedly wounded ego by laughing off all these insults, assuring myself that there's nothing wrong with me and that they just didn't notice my overwhelming resemblance to David Beckham. (Oh no, not that too!)
But come on, let's face it: this is a campus obsessed with body image. After all, our dorms are perpetually infested with rodents, and the campus floods whenever there's so much as a drizzle, but who cares when we have a brand-new, $24 million fitness center? I mean, let's be honest -- who wants to empty mousetraps or wade through Lake Superblock with a flabby stomach? And don't even get me started on the public skin show masquerading as a frat volleyball game that takes up residence every May and September on the court across from my dormitory.
And sure, there's no doubt that we're living in a society fixated on physical attractiveness, an ultimate irony considering the ever-climbing American obesity rate. For proof, look no farther than the enormous career boosts Mark Wahlberg and Travis Fimmel received after their now-infamous Calvin Klein ads, though both have proven to be good at little else besides standing around in their briefs looking like sides of beef. Or, more simply, just look at Jessica Simpson.
But what has changed, to my utter dismay, is the amount of pressure I now find myself under, as a 20-something guy, to conform to some preconceived notion of acceptable masculinity decided upon by the gods at Abercrombie & Fitch's marketing department, as equally infeasable for most boys as those old Kate Moss photos. What happened to the days of John Wayne and Steve McQueen -- guys who probably couldn't even spell deltoid, let alone identify their own and critique those of others?
I know, I know: women have been battling these demons for decades, trying in vain to achieve Calista Flockhart's weight or Janet Jackson's abs. But remember, from a very early age, girls are taught to look beyond the impossible Barbie ideal, laughing at her towering height and overwhelming bust, should she come to life. If girls don't have to look like Barbie, why am I still held to the Ken paradigm?
In fact, in recent years, plus-sized women have even found their own unconventional body models -- ranging from the curvaceous Jennifer Lopez to the "fabulous and thick" Mo'Nique -- to look up to, while us guys have had to make do with jokesters like Jack Black, and well, he's not quite as sexy.
Look, of course, even I've fallen victim to these overwhelming pressures -- heck, I'd do just about anything for Iggy Pop's sculpted torso (well, except for the actual culprit: decades of abusing hard drugs and booze) or Justin Timberlake's toned biceps.
But after years of self-disgust, skipped meals and all-around frustration with my apparently unacceptable 34-inch waist, I've finally started to reclaim my body as what it is above all: mine. And sure, I may never have a Ken doll's stomach, but how much fun could he really have without genitals anyway?Rory Levine is a senior Communications major from West Nyack, N.Y.
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