Joshimodo said:
Let me cover my arse before I go on - I wholly believe that us males do not have it as bad as women did in the previous eras. This is a fundamentally different kind of sexism, but sexism nonetheless.
Thank you for addressing that issue up front and being honest, most guys making posts like this wouldn't do the same.
That said, I do have issue with your examples of 'reverse sexism' or 'sexism against males' that I feel I should address.
As some quick examples, take that recent story (http://extrawiggleroom.tumblr.com/) about the plus-size model launching that parody campaign in the (degrading) American Apparel competition. For one, it's good that "plus-size" models are being more welcomed, because frankly I think most models look like sickly caricatures of people rather than actual people. Yes, American Apparel's competition is a disgustingly insulting charade, but that's not the issue here.
The thing is, plus-size models in the past couple of years have been sweeping through various major campaigns, such as Boots in the UK. Now, have you ever seen a male version of that? Ever seen some not-so-slim chubby guy modelling the latest fashion, or showing off in one of those mind-boggling perfume/aftershave ads?
Not a chance. All men portrayed in any kind of upmarket ad are chisel-jawed, trendy, slightly moody or casually playful supermen.
You need to understand that whole 'chubby model' thing was done to help change social views regarding appearance and standards of beauty, and whether you want to believe it or not
the pressure to look beautiful has always been harder on women then on men.
Given that this is a gaming site let me ask you something. How many unnattractive/faceless/non-human looking male protagonists can you think of?
I personally, can think of a few. Kratos from God of War comes to mind, with a face that even a mother couldn't love. Masterchief who never shows his face also comes to mind, he has no requirement to look pretty and you can bet that every single exotic distinctly non humanoid looking alien in Mass Effect will be male.
But now tell me how many unnattractive/faceless/non-human female protagonists you can think of? I personally can't think of any, unless you count that female Fox from Star Fox but even then they kind of creepily sexed her up.
Otherwise beauty is not an
option for female characters, it is a textbook
requirement. Superficial and borderline impossible to achieve bodies and faces are now a default expectation when designing any female character for a game, movie, TV show or comic. You'll never see a female superhero who is overweight or who has a monobrow or an ugly deformed face, but with male characters you see them every day.
This isn't just in fiction, it makes its way into the real world too. When a male actor gains a few kilos in his later years he may never be nominated for 'sexiest man of the year' but his career won't get damaged by it and the tabloids won't lash out at him viciously because of it.
Yet I've lost track of how often I've seen tabloid media get up in arms and hostile towards actresses who put on a bit of weight. I remember once they did it to Rhys Witherspoon, who had gained maybe five kilos at one point.
Even though she is a great actress and was still really beautiful, the way she was judged and the hostility of it made it seem like her entire worth was just gone given that she couldn't live up to body image standards.
Hell, Seth Rogan himself once admitted that if he was a woman he wouldn't have had a career. Because in our media fat men are considered 'funny' but fat women are more often then not just considered 'gross'.
Which is probably at least partly why there is such a high rate of anorexia and bulimia in teenage girls.
That's the substantial difference here, yes both sides have to deal with obscene high standards of beauty. But men don't have it as bad in that respect, the whole 'chubby women' thing was an attempt to try to break down the ridiculously high standards against women in terms of expectations of beauty.
Tragically all it resulted in was a whole lot of 'heffer' jokes.
Also, as far as aftershave ads and such go, it's worth noting that unlike products that use women's bodies as shameless marketting material to attract male audiences, products like aftershave try to present a sense of power and strength to an, again, male audience.
The gorgeous handsome men in those ads are not there to make women wet their pants with spasms of sexual glee, they are there to be a personification of what a man thinks is the traditional view of masculinity.
Those guys are for the male audience that the product is selling to, it's who a man imagines he could BE rather then who he would want to have sex with.
In the world of advertising, it usually goes like this:
Women = sexualized for men.
Men = sexualized for men (just in a different way)
When portraying family scenes in "funny" adverts (usually to do with insurance, or something along those lines), men appear to be nothing more than bumbling idiots, with the woman in the ad sitting to the side shaking her head and rolling her eyes, effectively acting like the male is some kind of pet doing something silly and amusing. However, I guarantee that if you portrayed women as some kind of complete household idiot outside of her and her girlfriends in lifestyle/health ads, the full fury of the feminists would erupt and there would be a media outcry.
Yes, those ads are sexist. But not sexist in the way you are thinking of.
They aren't sexist because they are arguing that men are idiots when it comes to housework and suck at cooking or cleaning, they are sexist because they seem to expect that women should just be naturally experts at housework and cooking and cleaning.
That the woman knowing how to do the housework is just the natural order of things and that there's no expectation for men to learn to cook or clean, because clearly that's 'women's work'. In fact, the presentation of a successful businesswoman having no idea and needing to ask her husband for help working out how to use the oven might actually be a GOOD image for feminism, because it would defy the gender stereotypes on both fronts.
As far as that whole 'feminist outrage' thing goes, feminists are already raging pretty hard about these kinds of ads:
http://www.themarysue.com/dumb-men-commercials/
Also I actually had a point to make about the whole newscaster thing but I forgot what it was, I'm tired and I need rest.
EDIT: By the way I apologize if I seemed hostile, I didn't mean to if I came across that way.
