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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.
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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.
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Certainly not in detail
If women do talk about men’s bodies—which, again, is rare for us—it’s not in this extreme detail in which men discuss women’s bodies. We don’t take it to the level men do where we have very specific inch-by-inch specifications about what we like. We just say, “He has a good body” or…we say nothing.
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Our bodies work differently
Women’s bodies respond so differently to diet and exercise, alcohol and sleep, and all of the elements of life that affect weight than men’s bodies do. So men just have no right saying which women need to eat more or less or exercise more or less. They haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
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Truly, men are uneducated in the matter
In most areas of life, there’s an understanding that there are the experts, and then there are those who don’t know what they’re talking about, and the latter leaves the discussion up to the former. But men completely break that rule when it comes to discussing the female figure. They have no clue what they’re talking about—only women understand the female body—and yet, they gab, gab, gab about it, all day long.
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But even women refrain
Funny enough, women—the ones who really understand the female body—don’t sit around and assess the female figure the way men do. Do we talk about body issues and our relationship with our own bodies? Yes. Absolutely. As we should. Be we do not comment on the measurements of other women or dare to say someone has a good or bad body.
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A woman made them
For every man out there thinking he has a place ranking and rating female bodies, I’d like to remind them that a woman made them. Women give life—and some woman gave that loud-mouthed man his life. For the very fact that the female body is capable of producing life, it is perfect—no matter how it looks.
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And women let men have sex with them
Women also let men have sex with them—when we happen to find one we like. I bet men rather like that, don’t they? I can’t help but laugh and also feel so angry at the same time when I hear a man commenting on a woman’s body as I know that he’d sleep with her in a second if she gave him the time of day.
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So they should be grateful, and quiet
So between us putting forth life and being the reason men get to do their absolute favorite thing sometimes (sex), perhaps I can suggest that men just shut up about women’s bodies and be grateful that we allow them to have any relationship with our bodies whatsoever.
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We aren’t out here for you
We don’t go out into the world to give men something nice to look at. We don’t go out to be a pleasant site for dudes. So it drives me nuts when men make comments on how a woman should or shouldn’t look as if to say, by not meeting their standards, we are failing at our job in some way.
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We’re just trying to live our lives
We are just trying to live our damned lives. Running errands. Going to work. Socializing. Exercising. We do not, on top of all of the emotional and mental strife life comes with, also need to worry about whether or not our aesthetic is pleasing to some random dude at the gym. Men just get to go about their lives without worrying about how their look pleases or offends anybody.
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There’s no “good” or “bad” body type
There is no such thing as a good or bad body. As women, our bodies let us dance, jog, go out with friends, laugh, enjoy food, travel, and live life—and that’s what makes a body a good body and why every body is a good body, so the concept of the good or bad body shouldn’t even exist.
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But men create that idea
It’s just men who create the idea of how the female figure should look. It’s always been men. First it was sculptors and painters, hundreds of years ago, adjusting the dimensions on their little statues to be more “flattering.” Now it’s rappers and, well, really just about any dude with no sense of respect. But the idea of a “good” or even “perfect” female body was totally invented by men, for men. It’s fake.
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Really: do you think women created it?
Think about the stereotypical idea of the “perfect” female body. You know what it is. I don’t even want to give it the respect of mentioning it here, but rappers talk about it all of the time. Do you think women created that? No freaking way. We don’t want those dimensions. We don’t want the thousand hours of weekly treadmill and squatting time (plus the inevitable injections and implants) that come with that. We’re just trying to hang out.
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We decide when we’re sexualized
Men have it all wrong, by the way, about sexualizing women’s bodies. Because, men, you can comment on how sexy a woman’s body is all you want (well, actually, stop that—per this article), but at the end of the day, a woman’s body only becomes sexualized when she is turned on. And something tells me the goons who sit around assessing the female figure don’t turn many women on.
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Get a life, fellas
Really, the guys I know who love this topic don’t tend to have much else going on in their lives. And they don’t seem to be getting laid much, or in any promising relationships. So, of course, they feel rejected and spurned by women and try to take back control by criticizing their figures. But they’ll still go to bed alone at night.
