新編大學(xué)英語(yǔ)第四冊(cè)u(píng)nit5 Text D: Turning Boys into Girls
UNIT 5 AFTER-CLASS READING 3; New College English (IV)
Turning Boys into Girls
1 I love Men's Health magazine. There! I've told you and I am not ashamed. My affection for Men's Health is driven by pure gender politics by the realization that this magazine, and a handful of others like it, are evening things out in a way that Ms. can only dream of. With page after page of bulging biceps and masculine jaws, robust hairlines and silken skin, Men's Health is advertising a standard of male beauty as stereotyped and unrealistic as the female version sold by those large-eyed, very young girls seen on the covers of Glamour and Elle. And with a variety of helpful features on "Foods That Fight Fat," "Banish Your Potbelly," and "Save Your Hair (Before It's Too Late)," Men's Health is well on its way to making the male species as insane, insecure, and irrational about physical appearance as does any women's magazine.
2 The days when men scrubbed their faces with regular soap and viewed gray hair and wrinkles as a badge of honor are fading. Last year, international market analyst Euromonitor placed the U.S. men's toiletries market hair color, skin moisturizer, tooth whiteners, etc. at $3.5 billion. According to a survey conducted by researchers for Men's Health in November 1996, approximately 20 percent of American men get manicures or pedicures, 18 percent use skin treatments such as masks or mud packs, and 10 percent enjoy professional facials. That same month, Psychology Today reported that a poll showed that "6 percent of men nationwide actually use traditionally female products to create the illusion of a youthful appearance."
3 What men are putting on their bodies, however, is nothing compared with what they're doing to their bodies: While in the 1980s only an estimated one in 10 plastic surgery patients were men, as of 1996, that ratio had shrunk to one in five. The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery estimates that nationwide more than 690,000 men had cosmetic procedures performed in '96, the most recent year for which figures are available.
4 Granted, Men's Health and its journalistic cousins (Men's Journal, Details, etc.) cannot take all the credit for this breakthrough in gender leveling. The fashion and glamour industries have perfected the art of creating consumer "needs", and with the women's market pretty much saturated, men have become the obvious target by manufacturers and sellers of everything from masculine cosmetics to special clothing. Meanwhile, advances in medical science have made cosmetic surgery a quicker and safer option for busy executives.
5 There are also underlying social factors. With women growing more financially independent, aspiring suitors are discovering that they must offer more than a full wallet if they expect to win (and keep) the fair young lady.
6 Whatever combination of factors is causing the big increase of male vanity, magazines such as Men's Health provide the ideal meeting place for men's insecurities and marketers' greed. Like its more established female counterparts, Men's Health is an affordable, efficient delivery vehicle for the message that physical imperfection, age, and an underdeveloped fashion sense are potentially crippling disabilities. As with women's magazines, this cycle of insanity is self-perpetuating. The more men obsess about growing old or unattractive, the more marketers will exploit and expand that fear; the more marketers bombard men with messages about the need to be beautiful, the more they will obsess. Younger and younger men will also be drawn into this cycle of self-doubt.
7 Having elevated men's physical insecurities to the level of a mental disorder, men's magazines can then start doing what really matters: selling merchandise. On the cover of Men's Health each month, in small type just above the magazine's title, appears the phrase "Tons of useful stuff." Thumbing through an issue or two, however, one quickly realizes that a more accurate description would read: "Tons of expensive stuff." They're all there: Calvin Klein, Versace, Nike, Omega... The magazine even has those annoying little perfume strips guaranteed to make your nose run and to alienate everyone within a five-mile radius of you.
8 Masters of psychology, marketers use their sexiest messages and most popular male models to tempt or intimidate the readership of Men's Health. And just like in women's magazines, the articles themselves are designed to sell stuff. All those helpful tips for choosing blazers, ties, and belts come complete with information on the who, where, and how much. The strategy is brilliant: Make men understand exactly how far short of the ideal they fall, and they too become vulnerable to the lure of high-priced underwear, running shoes, hair dye, skin softener, suits, and boots. As Mark Jannot, the grooming and health editor for Men's Journal, told "Today" show host Matt Lauer, "This is a huge, booming market. I mean the marketers have found a group of people that are ripe for the picking. Men are finally learning that aging is a disease."
9 To make all this "girly" image obsession acceptable to their audience, men's magazines employ all their creative energies to transform appearance issues into "a guy thing." It appears that, no matter how much skin lotion and hair gel you're trying to sell them, men must never suspect that you think they share women's insecurities. If you want a man to buy wrinkle cream, marketers have learned, you should encourage it as part of the usual masculine shaving routine. Aramis, for example, assures men that its popular Lift Off! Moisture Formula will help cut their shave time by one-third. "The biggest challenge for products started for women is how to transfer them to men," explained George Schaeffer, the president of OPI cosmetics. Shaeffer's Los Angeles-based company is the maker of an almost unnoticeable nail polish that has proved a hit with men.
10 On a larger scale, advertising a physical makeover or trip to a weight reduction clinic as a smart way to help one in his career seems to help man rationalize their image obsession. "Whatever a man's cosmetic shortcoming, it's apt to be a career liability," noted Alan Farnham in a recent issue of Fortune. "The business world is prejudiced against the ugly." Obvious rationalization can be seen in Forbes' poor attempt to differentiate between male and female vanity in its article on cosmetic surgery: "Plastic surgery is more a cosmetic thing for women. They have a thing about aging. For men it's an investment that pays pretty good dividend." Whatever you say, guys.
11 The irony is rich and bittersweet. Gender equity is at last headed our way not in the form of women being less obsessed with looking like Calvin Klein models, but of men becoming hysterical over the first signs of wrinkles.
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