I find the newest Man of Steel an over-exaggerated version of what a man should look like. Nothing against Henry Cavill. At 6′ 1″ with chiseled muscles, strong jaw, broad shoulders his angular face has perfect, even features. He’s a Ken Doll come to life. My brain recognizes that this is the ideal man but my subconscious isn’t attracted to this Hollywood ideal. He looks plastic and unreal to me. He’s not the ordinary men that I interact with in my daily life. He’s been dieted, pumped up by the best physical trainers and airbrushed into some strange ideal to fit with this country’s admiration of the perfect physical form of a man.
If you look at a casual Youtube video of him not airbrushed he looks a little more ordinary. More appealing in my opinion. I wonder how many other women feel the same way.
Men have been presented with the perfect woman by the media largely in the form of porn for years. Porn depicts women who are unrealistically modified, starved and airbrushed. They are one dimensional, images. When men absorb themselves in these images and videos it sets a standard in their mind that ordinary women can’t live up to. These guys start to hold their lovers, girlfriends, wives up to this impossible standard. When the women fall short, the men lose the ability to desire the real woman in their life. Instead they turn to the one-dimensional woman on their computer screen.
I haven’t met women who have this same problem. Its a gender thing they say. I think its a human thing. I think that being too absorbed in any kind of media that portrays one dimensional, perfect human specimens affects our brains and how we view the real people around us.
I haven’t seen Man of Steel yet. Maybe when I do I will melt and want to delete this post. But most likely I will enjoy it for its entertainment value. I doubt it will make me hold men up to the standard of Henry Cavill. But its one movie. Not something I will lose myself in every day.
My Life Untangled 