“I clicked on Justin Bieber’s Calvin Klein ad immediately.”
“It was a standard fashion shoot. But it wasn’t his package that created the controversy. It was the fallout.”
A website “quickly released what they claimed were the pre-Photoshopped versions.”
“His muscles were smaller, his package was less prominent, and he had less hair on his happy trail.”
“I think it’s telling about masculinity and male body image. Whether or not the photos were actually ‘shopped is irrelevant to how people responded.”
“When the supposed originals came out, blogs and comment boards had a heyday mocking Bieber for looking like a little kid.”
“We mock women for all kinds of things, but being too small usually isn’t one of them.”
“I think the infantilizing remarks come down to emasculating Bieber.”
“To be a real man is to be masculine. And to be masculine is to be powerful, dominant, and large in musculature, height, and, yes, package size.” (That’s the stereotype.)
“These expectations reinforce the notion that men are the dominant gender. And when guys don’t measure up or appear weak or womanly, we shame them.”
“Of course this just results in guys being stupidly competitive or using violence to solve problems.”
“Another issue the debacle brings up is the sneaky Photoshopping of guys.”
“The average action figure today has more muscle than the world’s largest body builders.”
“Researchers have actually found that boys with higher exposure to this imagery have lower rates of self-esteem and are more likely to have an unhealthy relationship with exercise [or] drugs, or to use steroids.”
“The bottom line in both issues is gender roles being taken to an extreme.”
“The expectation that we live up to some bizarro extreme and mocking each other when we don’t is damaging on all fronts.”
In reality, very few people fit into these molds we’re trying to cram them into. We all have feminine and masculine traits.
Check out the whole story in Laci Green’s video below.
