Buzzfeed released a video on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 examining men’s beauty standards around the world. For years, women’s beauty standards have always been talked about, and how these standards are almost impossible to achieve. People never normally talk about the men’s beauty standards probably because people don’t normally associate beauty with men. This is a nice breathe of fresh air and opens the conversation for men to speak openly about this. What the video does is look at what different men’s beauty standards in different countries all over the world. They were able to compile all these standards be researching beauty magazines where there are articles on men’s beauty and through social media. Here are some of the countries that were looked at in the video.
The first country that was examined was America, and from the look from the model in the video is seems that men are expected to look like a stereotypical macho man. The video calls it “Lumbersexual,” where the man is bearded, perfectly muscular, and is white. The model has stubble, the man bun that has been becoming more and more popular on men, and is quite muscular. The only thing missing was the plaid shirt to really sell the lumber jack look. This is a similar look that can be seen by Jake Gyllenhaal and even Bradley Cooper.
While in America white men are supposed to be the pinnacle of men’s beauty, in Brazil almost half the people say they are mixed race. They have the European facial features but tan skin, and apparently plastic surgery is fairly common with men. What the men get done for themselves was not mentioned, but in an article from The Guardian from last fall the overall procedures were “515,776 breasts reshaped, 380,155 faces tweaked, 129,601 tummies tucked, 13,683 vaginas reconstructed, 219 penises enlarged and 63,925 buttocks augmented.” Men might be tweaking their faces to look more like they are from Europe so they can be the “ideal beauty.”
Over in India, normally the people have fairly darker skin, but a trend for men is to try to make their skin lighter. In the video it says that people from the Asia Pacific make up 65% of the skincare products’ market worldwide. They’ll bleach their skin just to try to have lighter skin, and that seems extraordinarily dangerous. These products are advertised with stars that the people look up to, and the sale for the products are very high. It would be like Jennifer Aniston advertising skin bleaching instead of Aveeno.
In South Korea, the look is a little more androgynous then the other countries. The features are usually soft in the face and a lot of the men wear makeup. The bodies are more lean muscle instead of the looks from America and Brazil, but like Brazil plastic surgery is fairly common with men. These surgeries are focused towards having bigger eyes and a high bridged nose.
The video goes over many more countries including Mexico, Turkey, and the Philippines. This is a conversation that needs to be had because of recent men being objectified by Instagram accounts that are dedicated to taking pictures of men on the train in various countries. And a lot of these beauty standards are almost impossible to achieve as well. So its rough for both genders.
Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
