View from Europe
About 25 years ago in Europe, something strange happened. Almost overnight it became socially unacceptable for men to self-objectify. Up until that time we could build muscle in the gym, play frisbee on public family beaches wearing string-sided Rios or thongs, and people felt free to comment on your hard-work. We used to wear our jeans skin-tight, and I mean tight around the crotch, not tight around the calves and baggy around the crotch. And some poor fellas feeling under-endowed used to actually stuff socks down there to enhance the bulge.
Then all of a sudden it became the restricted province of the female, who could buy breast enlargements and go topless, show off their pert thong-clad bottoms and say “Aren’t I gorgeous? Don’t you all want me?”. But according to all the online fashion gurus, any clothing that reveals a hint that you actually have a penis, is a cause of public revulsion. And any top that suggests perhaps you go to the gym more than once a week makes you a social douche-bag! Any hint of leg above the knee and it’s assumed you need to visit your trick cyclist!
Business-men in late middle age wear suits because it is the best way to present a body that’s likely to be past its best. But since you can’t play beach volleyball in a suit, everybody hopes you’ll wear something like a tent so they can’t see any hint of masculinity lurking within. And even with a stripper body you can now walk through a London park shirtless on a hot summer day past groups of young ladies who don’t even look up from their mobile phones. And when they’re unavoidably cornered, political correctness forbids them from making any comment or showing a reaction, because you’re no longer supposed to comment on anyone’s appearance, whether it be negative or positive.
I know this because I recently returned from a third world country where, free from our political correctness, people commented on my physique freely – something I’ve not experienced in the UK for many years.
After the new era started in the mid-90s I think a lot of us thought it was a passing fashion or phase, and that what comes around would come around again. But I now believe it won’t, because of other social changes in the Western world that have cemented it in place for a long time to come. But maybe one day, just maybe…
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