OK guys...admit it.
You care about how you look.
It's cool, no judgements. But WHY do you care and what bugs you the most about HOW you look?
A Chapman University psychologist has just published a study examining how men feel about their bodies and their attractiveness.
The survey reported that between 20 and 40 percent of men surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with their bodies.
That raises some interesting questions; and the discrepancy between gay men and straight men's body image raises even more.
Take Two's A Martinez spoke to Dr. David Frederick, a leader in the study at Chapman University to find out what these numbers mean.
On why there are so few studies on men's body image compared to women
I think for a long time we've known that women are dissatisfied with their bodies... Some of the dissatisfactionon for men can be a little more hidden. You'll see it more in men will obsessively work out, they'll obsessively exercise, or they won't express their dissatisfaction because it's not considered as masculine to admit you have that concern.
On how body satisfaction differentiated between hetero and homosexual men
Over all, the gay men were only a little more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies. Where the gay men and heterosexual men differed were in all of the other things we measured. We asked about how much they try to modify their body, how much social pressure they feel about their appearance and we asked how feelings of their body affected their sex life. That's where the [differences were].
On what he and his team hoped people took away from his study
Even though men on average are less satisfied than women, there is a huge group of men who are dissatisfied with their bodies who are feeling pressure from the media to have a very toned body. Which can in some ways be a very positive thing to aspire to, but in other ways can lead to very harmful practices such as abuse of supplements and abuse of steroids among other things... One thing we really want to bring attention to is just how many men are feeling dissatisfaction because that's a very overlooked problem.
To hear the full conversation, click the blue play button above