men's egos and women's bodies

Are our expectations about men's self esteem just as unrealistic as those regarding women's bodies? Is it okay to be an unconfident male? Or at least is it as okay or not okay to be an unconfident male as it is to be an unconfident female?
I think I'm making the analogy clear enough... Is the analogy even proper?

Although I can't speak for females, I've heard that unconfident men are the biggest turn off next to limb-less men. As a man, I'll know if I want to hang out with you after one hand shake. Also, women who aren't confident with their bodies are either fishing for compliments or actually unattractive.

as a unconfident limbless male, i can only say that i wish i were more flexible.

i believe he's saying 'is it ok for me to be bummed because i think i'm ugly, cause girls do it so that should make it alright for guys too' and also 'do women expect too much from a guy appearance wise? we're not al brad pitt you know'

shit i think i'm ugly, some people told me i'm cute, i don't get it, but i'm willing to go with it, and i don't know if a lack of confidence is a turn off, but confidence is definately a turn on. why don't you get nekkid here (suicide boys group or big cuddly boys for us real men ) everyone will tell you you look good, or at least all the people that think you look like shit will keep their mouths shut. then you can be confident.

almostfamous - now taking bookings for his 3 minute life answers clinic.

I believe (at the moment anyway) that female self esteem is typically very physicalised. As in, a woman's image of herself as a person is very connected to her body, and her body image.

Male self esteem is partly physicalised too (I'm constantly getting spam email about hair loss and erectile dysfunction -- do they know something?), but I think less so than women for two reasons.

1. Male social roles have traditionally been so bound up in external stuff like career, that male self esteem often gets wrapped up in (and vulnerable to changes in) their social circumstances. Where women face social pressure to look attractive, men face social pressure to look successful and powerful.

2. Women's bodies are shapely in a way men's are not. They have all these obvious curves and things. Men's bodies are mostly a bunch of straight lines and hidden dangly bits. (If men's bodies do have curves, they're usually unwanted!) Which means a woman's breasts and butt are comparatively "on display" in a way that a guy's most obvious external features are not. So, to me anyway, it's kind of understandable that women are self conscious about these bodily aspects -- it's hardly a secret if a woman is big or small breasted, but it's usually not obvious if a guy is well endowed or not. So men's self consciousness tends to be as hidden as what they're self conscious about. Women's self consciousness tends to be as apparent as what it is they're self conscious about.

My theories of the moment anyway.


[Edited on Oct 26, 2003 by mikhaill]

On reflection, though, it's kind of an odd thread title ...

Though I can give a crushin handshake at will, I'm a wussy low self estem fool, but I dont care...its who I am,,,besides I prefer to give a brotherly hug more so than a handshake.

Are you saying unconfident women find more acceptance? Or that women get more attention usually regardless of how confident they feel? Or what?
Your question does make me wonder if there's a certain baseline of respect that women get no matter what (let the fusillade begin!), which men do not...
Chauvinistic, I know, but I detect it.

I don't think you can infer that from what was kind of a confused question.

Just a thought that popped up.

Confidence is sexy I'll admit, but, and I'm just speaking for myself, insecurity, a small amount of it at least, can be cute in that "look at how much of a dork I am" kinda way, if that makes any sense. Whoo...run-on sentence anyone?

And also...mikhaill is a genius. I've suspected it for a while now. This confirms it.

1st double post of mine ever! Sorry

[Edited on Oct 26, 2003 by oninotaki]

What the man is saying is obvious. Is the amount of pressure that our society puts on women to be attrative equal to the amount of pressure that society puts on men to be confident? Is it just as bad for a man to be unconfident as it is for a woman to be fat? Its a very simple question.

Now as too the actual question I have to say yes. In my experiences I have found that men who are not confident recieve about the same amount of respect as a woman who is not physically attractive.

Now I am not claiming to understand why these things seem to be, I am just saying that in my experiences I have found it to be more accurate than not. Anyway thats my two cents. Now this may change from culture to culture and I can only comment on the american culture of detroit that I have grown up in.

I'm usually not a very confident guy (though I'm getting better thankfully) and I know for a fact that it makes me less attractive. I've been told so more times than I'd like to hear.

uh, mikhaill...
Beauty is a social construct based on very very primal bio-chemical reactions. I don't believe one can accurately formulate a basis, be it geometric or otherwise for the origin of beauty. An example that comes to mind is the prevalence of the idea in ancient greek and roman cultures that the masculine form was the pinnacle of perfection and beauty . Why do you think god was a man? It had to power, of course. But aesthetic concerns played at least a small part, I'm sure.

As for the lack of clarity of the question, I want to compare two different reactions. One reaction is that of society (in this case society means any group of Americans) to men with low self esteem. The other is that of society to women whom are unattractive.

The reason for the comparison is the confirmation or refutation of folk knowlege that circulates within my group of friends. One premise is that unattractive women have a harder time in general in life than attractive women do. The other, albeit unrelated, premise is that unconfident men have a harder time in general in life than confident men do.

In addition, I don't care what effect social opinion has on female self esteem. That isn't in the question at all. I'm not saying it's not important; it's just not what I'm asking. I also don't care where self esteem comes from. I'm only asking is the pressure on men to be confident comprable to the pressure on women to be beautiful?

if that's the question, then - no. i'd say no.

I'm pretty confident, and I'm amazed at how many beautiful women -- most of them, really -- aren't. It has nothing to do with fishing for compliments or actually being unattractive, I think. It has something to do with what they're comparing themselves with (an insane, unreachable "ideal", which is usually not very alluring to begin with), and with other, more personal, individual things.

Sometimes male confidence helps women feel better. I hope it does, anyway.

Yeah, I didn't really grasp the point either, which is more or less why I took a shot in the dark. If I was actually taking a shot in the dark at a real person's head, I'd say I hit the neck.

Whew!! OK.

I'm not sure I mentioned beauty or its origins in my post. I was addressing the source of gender-related social pressure in order to respond to your question of "[whether] the pressure on men to be confident [is] comprable to the pressure on women to be beautiful?", some of which involves aesthetic/beauty-related issues.

I also note that you say "I also don't care where self esteem comes from" but I'm not sure your question can be answered without thinking through such issues. If there's pressure on men to be confident or on women to be attractive, it comes from somewhere, surely. And I was just giving me reasons for saying why I'd expect exactly what you're saying -- that women would be more self conscious about being judged physically while men would be more self conscious about being judged socially.

In short, I'm not disagreeing with you, in that I think there's something that rings true about your premisses below.

This seems to me to be compatible with what I was saying before.

But a couple more points about beauty, since you bring it up. You say beauty is "a social construct based on very very primal bio-chemical reactions" -- but this kind of begs the question of which is more important, at some fundamental level, the social construction or the biochemical basis.

See, the hard-core social constructionists want us to believe that it's only how things are socially constructed that matters -- that everything is in an important sense arbitrary, and things are as they are simply because they've been constructed that way. Anything could be considered beautiful, for example, if only we were brought up with different standards of beauty than we have. But if there's a biological element to our perception of beauty, then while beauty may be socially variable, it's not arbitrary -- there's some bias brought into the equation by nature.

There's evidence supporting this by the way -- little babies barely old enough to crawl will crawl towards adults wearing masks with "nice" faces drawn on them, rather than ones with "ugly" faces drawn on them. That suggests (like you say) that there's some primal reaction going on, some aesthetic standard being applied by infants not old enough to have been inculcated into accepting whatever society's prevailing mores happen to be.

Another thing about beauty -- turns out if affects both men's and women's lives in tangible ways. Research shows that better looking people (both women and men) do better in the labour market.

"Holding constant demographic and labor-market characteristics, plain people earn less than people of average looks, who earn less than the good-looking. The penalty for plainness is 5 to 10 percent, slightly larger than the premium for beauty. The effects are slightly larger for men than women; but unattractive women are less likely than others to participate in the labor force and are more likely to be married to men with unexpectedly low human capital. Better-looking people sort into occupations where beauty is likely to be more productive; but the impact of individuals' looks on their earnings is mostly independent of occupation. "


That's what the numbers show.

This has been way too long. Heh.

You're right, you never mentioned beauty directly. I inferred it from the above statement so I'm sorry if I put words on your fingers.

I have to disagree with you on the effect any consideration of the origin of self esteem would have on one's answer to the question. If men's confidence were to spring from money, beauty, ability, or even something as arbitrary as their name or the color of their eyes... it's all the same when considering the question. The same goes for women. For women, that social pressure regarding their bodies affects their self esteem doesn't matter because I'm not talking about the women themselves. For men, that male confidence and their success are dialectical (as are the nature/nurture elements of beauty (sorry, that's a huge tangent)) doesn't matter because I'm not considering the men themselves . I'm talking about what we expect of men and women.

I really don't mean to turn this into a pissing match, either. So please don't read this like I'm yelling. It's way hard to have discussions on these things because there is no inflection.


[Edited on Oct 27, 2003 by jeykool]

This thread =


If you have never had periods of extreme confidence or total lack of confidence then you are strange.

Confidence goes up and down like the tides.

Some people will tell you it is a reaction to the way you meet your daily goals, such as acting in a certain manner, or completing a task, both, or failures in any of them.

But they are wrong.

Confidence is only affected by the phases of the moon.


[This Post Was not Editted In Any Way]

[Edited on Oct 27, 2003 by Nescafe]

[No!! Thats a Lie! Watch it will say it again! Its a Pathological Liar!]

[Edited on Oct 27, 2003 by Nescafe]

I can't really reconcile those two statements. I agree with the second statement; it was what I was getting at too, in the sense that to me the "origin of self esteem" (as you put it) is bound up with what we expect of men and women.

That's OK, I wasn't regarding it as one, at all.

You left home to say that?

Way to trivialise a discussion.

I want to say that jeykool starts my favorite threads. His threads are so good, in fact, that I just gave him some hot USER action.

I have to make dinner, so I'll leave with a precís: in my experience, it has always been much more acceptable for women to lack confidence in their bodies than it is for men to lack self-esteem. I will think about this whilst making risotto.