Why Men Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Comment On Women’s Bodies
Source: Peter Glass / Design Pics / Getty
When I hear a group of guys sitting around, analyzing and critiquing a woman’s body as if it is a car (nice hood, slim interior), it makes my ears get hot. How dare they. Who gave them the right. Where do they get off. That poor woman is just off somewhere, living her life, probably trying to pay rent and navigate things with a moody boss and figure out this thing called existence—she’s a complex, layered, emotional being—totally unaware that some Neanderthal she was generous enough to match with on Tinder is now turning her body into a topic of discussion with his equally bird-brained friends.
They’re so pompous about it, too. The very fact that men think they are entitled to comment on women’s bodies is so incredibly egotistical. “Somebody must want to know what I have to say about this,” they think. No—we don’t. Nobody intelligent or respectable wants to know what Chad from sales thinks of Karen in HR’s bum. Men know nothing about what it means to be a woman and how it feels for us when outsiders critique our appearance. They don’t know what we go through or what we experience, living in this skin. So it just speaks to their enormous egos that they should dare speak on something—and with authority, as they often do—that they know nothing about.
When I find men I work with, or am friends with, start talking about a woman’s body, I shut it down. “Nope. That topic is not for you. That’s off-limits. You don’t know what you’re talking about and nobody asked,” is what I say. The male comment on the female figure may be one of the issues at the root of our often messed-up society. Here’s why men shouldn’t be allowed to comment on the female body.
We don’t comment on theirs
For some reason—maybe because we know what it feels like—women don’t make a pastime out of commenting on men’s bodies, picking them apart, and assessing everything about them. We don’t find the male body very interesting. But imagine if we did have a culture in which women were as openly critical of men’s bodies as they are of ours? They’d cry like babies.
