Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: 'Twink Death', Male Body Image & Looksmaxxing

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Hello EICheetahs, This week we're discussing the rise of male body image pressures, from increased testosterone use and right-wing pushes to get bigger, to cosmetic surgeons coming for male celebs online. Are we seeing a slow equalising between men and women? And why does this feel so depressing?THANK YOU to everyone who messaged in for this one as always.And thank you so much for listening, ORB xxx-----Beefcakes Are BackT-Maxxing Has Gone Too FarThe Toxic World of Perfect Looks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Media. Media. Media. Media. Media. Media. Oh, the time is media. Oh, my climate.

So good. I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And I'm Manoni. And this is everything in conversation. This is our midweek dash of content designed to top you up before the Friday episode. We would love you, yes, you, to take part in these extra episodes, whether you agree with us or even better disagree with us. You can get involved by following us on Instagram at Everything

is Content Pod. That is where we decide on topics and open the floor for all of your opinions. This week we're talking about the pressure on men to look a certain way. There's been a few different stories on this recently from claims that Twinks are over, allegedly the death of Twinks, to the rise in men ordering testosterone online thanks to Red Pill influencers. So just to start on the 21st of January, singer Troy Savon made his substack debut with an essay responding to a cosmetic surgeon's TikTok dissecting his appearance. In the two-minute video, Dr. Zane Khalid Majid, who has 250,000 followers on the app, said Sivan showed signs of quote, twink death and pointed to several problem areas such as shadows and volume

loss in the singer's face. For anyone unclear, twink is a term that usually refers to men who look young and pretty. Sivan responded on Substack by sharing more about his personal struggles with body image, including the fact the video had triggered lots of these issues for him. He described a two-prong approach in his mind with this whole situation, one being the self-love, stick-out approach, and the other was just ripping the plaster off, getting cosmetic work, in the hopes of ending the ongoing lifelong insecurity. Not long after, Bessel published a piece by David Mack titled Beefcakes A Back. In it, the writer talks about twink death and the rise of beefcakes with brains in pop culture. He used the hotties from heated rivalry to the actors in the pit and Paul Mescal in Hamnet as examples, and he said that allegedly we're lusting after jacked men who are thoughtful, considerate and smart.

I actually came across the piece because the author Megan Noland called it out for perpetuating the same beauty bullshit magazines do for women when they're lauding the end of big boobs, the end of small boobs, the rise of big boobs, whatever, and, you know, certain features being in and out. And the final thing I will bring up just to wrap this up is this piece that was in the Atlantic about T-maxing, which is essentially about testosterone. The piece was by Yasmin Tayag and it was called T-Maxing has gone way too far. And she was talking about this very real drive in the US that's coming from the top from politicians for men to get bigger and to become more masculine, obviously is a right-wing ideology. She writes, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gone further, calling low tea counts in teens, as a, quote, existential issue.

The secretary, who at 72 has the physique of a Marvel character, has touted testosterone as part of his personal anti-aging protocol. He also recently proclaimed that President Trump has the, quote, constitution of a deity and raging levels of testosterone. She highlights that the decline of testosterone, which is, you know, a big part of the right-wing ideology of the reduction in masculinity in the US. She says it's true, but the actual fact is the levels are so minimal,

experts are not concerned in the slightest. Still, there's evidence that men across the country are finding ways to increase their testosterone even when they don't need to. She calls it a panic over testosterone. So I know I've said a lot, but I guess what did you guys think of the choice of violence situation? And have you observed this kind of right-wing push for men to become super jacked? So after I read that subset from Troy, which I thought was amazing and also just really sad, I then went on to the doctor's TikTok and was up four hours, like into the small hours of the night,

watching these videos both fascinated, terrified, and also becoming completely, totally insecure about things that I had no idea we were supposed to be feeling insecure about. There were wrinkles that I didn't even know were an issue that I didn't know have the name. I couldn't believe the amount of comments of people being like, I'm 19, my, I don't even know what they're called, whatever this real name for the smile wrinkles that you get at the side of your mouth out, they're really deep. And then this doctor's replying really earnestly, it's got so much worse than I thought. And far be it from me to be like, it's worse. men. It's just, it's going to be so much worse for women if it's getting this bad for men.

Like, it is across the board terrifying how much we are obsessing with the way that we look. And I do wonder if it is a reaction to, I mean, he's spoken about this before and I can't remember what the exact article was, but when you can't control the world that's around you, what you can control is how beautiful you feel in a world that, like, values beauty. So I understand that. But I felt so sad for Troy. Imagine just waking up one day and seeing someone tear apart your face like this for natural things are aging and also the brazeness with which the doctor was saying it as though it was like somehow helpful or that everyone felt and thought this way about people and it does

feel like something we should be taking much more seriously however there is a world in which this can pass you by because I do think it is much more happening on TikTok or at least I don't get it on my Instagram algorithms and the other piece that you shared about sort of like beefy cakes versus twinks I was like what the hell am I reading like what year are we living in this is so objectifying. It's the way that people are coming out and with their full ass writing the most insane things. And I do wonder if maybe there's this idea that because it's about men, there is a carte blanche to say things that we've kind of decided you have to say in slightly more clever ways about women. People are still saying it, but they're doing it in sort of like backhanded

compliments or ways that don't seem as obvious. This is just blatant madness. What did you think there? You're so right that there was at one time in history you could just be like, woman you are fat that is unacceptable you must solve it and now you're right it has to be so coded and that's where we've been through cycles of oh it's wellness it's it's clean eating it's it's this it's toning it's slimming down like it's not that whereas i do think this is quite we've not reached that point where anyone is having to really cloak the language or at least they're doing it in a way that's so row it's like you should be more masculine here's why i really like choice piece i love that he called this guy a random sicko fucko plastic surgeon because i think that's

exactly what he is and what all of these public, like classic surgery content creators who do this, who do this sort of like live, it's not quite looks maxing. I forget what the term is. Maybe it is. Maybe it's a different brand of that, but it's like facial symmetry and they will choose a famous person, man or woman, whoever, and then they will say this is what they should do. I saw, I saw them do it to Natalie Dyer once who, of course, has like a very angular, interesting face and they were like, basically change your entire face and then you'll be beautiful. It was so revolting as to be like almost numbing. And so I really like that he just puts it in such exact language, random sicko-faco plastic surgeon.

I hate that this is happening. Like it's kind of the stuff of nightmares, isn't it? You think like, how bad could today actually be? And then you go on the internet and someone's going like, here's everything wrong with your face. You'd go right back to bed. It feels, as you say, and only like this is happening on different areas of the internet. Like it's not on your TikTok algorithm, but it's on other people. It is very much an online beast.

It feels like content creation, as it is this enormous industry, it's this enormous cultural force. And it's shaping trends so quickly. It's encouraging us to want to change our bodies and faces at such speed. Like it's the power of a million Don Draper marketing campaigns. Like you can automatically expose this hideous idea to tens of thousands and millions of people. And it feels like a monster that has gotten so out of control. Women have experienced it. Men are now experienced this commodifying of body.

and body altering where basically no one is safe from someone saying, I would like to make some money and here's how I'm going to do it. You have to break your face. You have to change your body. You have to pay me the money to exchange your misery for contentment because you'll finally look how you're supposed to look. And I just, I think the piece is really worth reading from that perspective because he's saying like I'm clicking, not interested in the GLP1 medications. I'm saying like my feed is all of these deep plain face lifts. I'm saying like I don't want to see it. But I'm hoping for the best because actually you can't really run and hide. Like it's a very online issue. And I think it's the kind of thing that consumes me. I worry about these things. I worry about

aging. I think about my body quite often and my face quite often. If I were to suddenly, if I were to spend a year not online, I wouldn't be free of it. But I think I would automatically be at least 70% happier with the way I look. Like this is definitely an internet issue. I think you're right. I definitely think it is an online issue because we had a message from James who said, I worry about my appearance in the first. that I'm getting older, but no quote influencer is going to make me get a facelift or make me feel so crap that I contemplate it. Could be that I'm also in a happy long-term relationship. I don't hear any of my male friends in their 40s talking about this stuff either.

And we have seen how it seems to be young men. We talked about clavicular, was that his name? A few weeks ago, you brought him to the podcast, Enoni, and I've only seen him get bigger and bigger. And also, I do think there is a conversation that we'll definitely get into about how the right wing is using looks maxing is utilizing all of this obsession with male aesthetics as part of their MO because we saw clavicular with Andrew Tate and a lot of red pill influences they're in a club they made the club play yay's Heil Hitler song which obviously has been fucking banned in many countries across the world particularly in Germany because of how anti-Semitic it is but all of these people together having a great time in the club paying horrendously anti-Semitic music they're all

in the same bubbles, they've all got their hands together. There is something very dark going on and I do think this is a very specifically, very particularly online issue. Yeah, we had a mess from Alice, which I thought was interesting, where she said, sorry, probably going to seem cruel and dismissive, but to me this is men feeling the impact of the patriarchal structures that they not only create, but the structures that have also treated women this way since the dawn of time. Yes, this is unbalanced, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to what women face. Rather than wallowing, men can see this as an opportunity to correct the damage done to women or provide empathy and understanding, but I haven't seen anything of the sort. Also, a man being told to

moisturise is not attainable beauty standards, which I do agree, and they do not moisturise unless they're told. But one thing I will say that I think is really crucial to this conversation is there is an element that it is concerning gay men, especially with Troy's Savan's substack and the doctor that kind of diagnosed all the problems with his face. The doctor himself also had undergone quite a lot of treatments. I went so far back on his page that he was saying like, I've done this so you can do this too, which instilled in me the same weird, conflicting feeling that I get about the Kardashians, which is they promote these things, but they're also very much beholden to themselves. This doctor talks about feeling so much

better once he was able to redefine his face. He does look kind of like drastically different through, I assume like kind of tweaks, like Botox and Filler and whatever else. So I do think that there is an element that especially gay men, maybe already do feel the pressure that women feel from beauty standards because there is an alignment in the way that we view ourselves and our beauty and that kind of thing. And then you've got the other side which is kind of the very straight facing version of it, which is sort of the clavicular hammering your jaw, the testosterone. It definitely is that thing of like the beauty standards cough on women and the men are getting a cold that does feel like what is happening. But I do have a propensity to feel sorry for them.

I don't feel as harshly as Alice does, but I do understand where she's. I do understand where she's coming from. And it definitely is an online problem. And it definitely is a brainwashing one. Because like I said, I really do believe that lots of wrinkles are really beautiful. And I had never even stopped to consider to find out that those smile ones by your mouth. I thought universally, we'd all agree that they're like lovely wrinkles. And I couldn't, it was the comments of much younger people than us being so concerned about it that I went on my own Instagram and was like, oh my God, mine are really deep? A people looking at me and being like, she's got these massive smile wrinkles. And I was like, whoa, lock your phone, go to sleep. Because I'd never thought about it before.

And it just shows that as long as no one says anything to you, you honestly don't know. It's like the hip-dip thing. I have hip-dips. I didn't know what hip-dips were until 2015 or whatever that became a thing. So it definitely is an online problem. But as we said before, we are living too much of our lives online. So it being an online problem doesn't take away from the realness of it. Because more often than not, we're on our phones more than we're out in a coffee shop.

And that sort of makes me think like, because I will not claim to be an expert in the beauty standards within the gay male community because I'm not among them. But you will see a lot of stuff online about some really shallow and often quite racist prompts that people have on their grind your account of like no fat people, no Asian, stuff like that. And so I do know this goes on from talking to friends. I understand that there is a whole hierarchy of beauty that I, even as a woman, don't understand because it's separate.

What I think I have a better grasp on is the straight male beauty standards and the kind of beauty premium or the attractiveness premium placed on them and that they place on themselves on other people because I date straight men and so I'm kind of more privy to their inner world and I do have good male friends who will talk to me about boldness or it's kind of the big three.

It's height, baldness and muscularity. How pent you are, whether you are approaching beefcake or whether you're kind of like skinnier. And I think that's a big one as well. Like people making fun of other men's legs for being tiny or you skip leg date. Like it's very,

I think it can be separated into those categories whereas for women it's granular. And we got a message from Cara that said I think a lot of men don't really know how to talk about it, whereas unfortunately young girls are taught from a young age that complaining about their looks is a type of social bonding. And she references the scene in mean girls, which I think is so formative for a lot of us. When they're standing around, they're saying, oh, my nail beds suck, all this. And it's so granular. Women will go, well, we've got strawberry legs. We've got septum arms. We've got the hip dips that you mentioned. We've got this, that and the other. I've got a short torso. I've got a ridiculous filter. And it's like, fuck. Whereas men will go, I'm balding. And it not to downplay the effect of hating your appearance, but it is very interesting to me, how grandkids. granular because I guess women have we've done everything in the body soon will be being like well my liver is misshapen like it's so bad I do think it's a reminder that beauty standards for men they are lower and the intervention required for a man to be put together except to be put together is much lower the labour required is much lower like you do not have to put makeup on you do

not really have to have a great hairline you don't have to wear the best clothes you don't have to be under a certain weight I think there are just fewer examples of this for men like I'm thinking of the mean girl scene and then I'm thinking of what if there is a parallel to in men's media, it's far more often like something like Tyler Durden in Fight Club. It is this male ideal of really, really handsome and also really muscular. It's a man will undergo like a training montage and then he'll be fit or whatever else it is. And like, I want to say Captain America, there's a, the weedy guy becomes the superhero by like leg lengthening surgery or like, I don't know what it is in the film, but like he's tall, he's buff. That's the male ideal. It can be frustrating in conversations with

men to have them be like, an eye cannot go bald and you go, I feel for you, but also I as a woman really can do nothing. I cannot age a day. I cannot have my hair wrong or, you know, I'm a slight if I do this or I'm prude if I do. Like it's, it can be a little bit testing sometimes as men arrive at this conversation to have to catch them up and be like my sweet summer child. Since I, since I was nine years old, this has been my reality. Like, welcome. I'm sorry you're in this club, but like maybe a bit of deference to the hells and the horrors that have come before you. Is that fair? think so. So Ian said, as a man in a same-sex relationship, I feel like male beauty standards and ideals have always been in the gay dating conversation, which has never been healthy, but on a

macro societal level, relatively harmless. But I think the branding around it for straight men, looking a certain way via looks maxing or whatever, does feel so linked to the manist's space that it feels murky and somehow misogynistic. And Anand somewhat responded to that. And he said, I find it fascinating, mildly ironic, that men are seemingly being held to unrealistic body ideals, not by some expectation of women who seem infinitely tolerant of men's attractiveness or lack of, and instead by other men. And I often think about this because I don't know if you saw recently, but there was this video really sweet and endearing of L Fanning.

She's doing a lie detector test, and Dakota Fanning's there. And they put down a picture of Jack Black. And Elle Fanning literally starts going red. And she's like, oh my God. And they're talking about this crush. Dakota's like pissing herself. And they're both being like, oh, my God, do you remember when I saw him on the red carpet? And they're just talking about how obsessively gorgeous and handsome they think he is.

And Jack Black to like the Manosphere community is doing everything wrong. He's hairy. He's not, you know, perfectly structurally symmetrical. I don't actually know that as a fact he could well be. But it is true that women often are very much not demanding these things of men and it is very much tied up in other men. And it always goes back to that theory that I do somewhat believe, which is like men don't like love women. They love other men and they respect other men and they just like kind of want women around. Whereas all of our beauty standards we do feel is in the pursuit of other men. There are certain things that I do think. we do for women subconsciously, but that's because of that John Berger quote of, I'm a woman watching herself being watched. And so as women, we sometimes watch other women being watched and we look at women through our own prism of what we imagine a man would look at them through. Either way, it's just a mess, but it is interesting how this idea of like what men are looking for in this like kind of attractiveness scale is just actually nothing to do with what women want. Ultimately, fundamentally, we're all under the patriarchy and it's bashing us all on the

help with the hammer. It's so true and it's so interesting that you make the point about who is it all for because I'm going to bring up the podcast that brought up last week diabolical lies and the episode that I mentioned on is there a skinny apocalypse in Hollywood. There was this reader message, not even, you know, a prolific thinker talking about the sexlessness of eating disorders and specifically when it comes to anorexia and I think the same thing applies here. There is a real sexlessness in the innate control that these pursuits of physical perfection lead to. It's the ultimate control of the body, whereas sex is about letting go, it's about vulnerability, it's about being loose, it's about being sensual, it's about seeking pleasure.

What we're doing, what we're seeing is this rise of dominating the self, rampant individualism, self-perfection, the idea of policing each other on how good each other are at this pursuit as well. And for women it means becoming smaller, reducing. For men it means becoming bigger, taking it more space. It's so gendered, it's so political, it's so right wing and it's so deeply sexless. And it's so interesting that men are doing it for other men because that makes total sense for me. But it also feels like men are doing it in pursuit of furthering this right-wing ideology of what makes a man, what makes a woman. And to be a man is to be strong, it's to dominate, it is to be aggressive, to cause fear.

And in that piece about beefcakes are back, I think it's sad. The positioning was not great, but I think what the colonel was saying is maybe the, all of these texts like heated rivalry, exploring these men who look traditionally masculine but are really soft to one another. And that's the interesting thing about it. It is maybe opening that window up about what men can be in this really subtle and beautiful way where it's like, yeah, they're these very macho hockey players, but they're very soft and communicative with each other and very loving. They're vulnerable. They open up. They also find a way to come out and challenge the masculinity of it all. And I think rather than going into that, what he spoke about was the

physicalness of it all and I think that was the kind of sad point about it. And the other thing that Annan said in his message, which I thought was really interesting is, he said, I've seen a resurgence in men using fat as an insult. This alpha male mindset is a bedfellow of fascism and the idea of Ubermensch. So no surprise at all that it's on the rise in the hellscape we call modern life. It makes me think of, we've talked about this, like that the leg lengthening surgery specifically as well as I think the ideal is I want to beef up, I'm going to be strong, but I'm also going to be physically dominant, I'm going to be tall. And that, I mean, I watched in the documentary, I mentioned there as Channel 4 documentary. I forget the name of it, but we will link it again.

The coast of the show talks to men who've had leg lengthening surgery, and it's really heartbreaking because this surgery is so expensive and so invasive. There are fewer examples of this. It's not common surgery. It's incredibly prohibitively expensive. And it's, I think, you know, the recovery is unbelievably long and painful. But it shows a creep towards men being as willing as women. to undergo real pain and suffering and part with a lot of money to achieve the goal. The goal might be different. It might be located somewhere else. But it does show an industry marching towards, again, dominance in another gender.

Like the beauty industry and the cosmetic industry has got its hooks into women. Like I hardly know a single woman who hasn't had some kind of baby Botox, some kind of needle in her face, some kind of lip filler, not to mention procedures where you go under the knife and when you are sedated, something a bit more serious. but reading about leg lengthen surgery for men, it's impossible not to feel very sad and also like, who has, where is this messaging coming from? I know a lot of women do like tall men, but more often than not, I do believe it's other men that are trapping them in this mindset of you cannot be sure,

even though there was a whole push. Women are constantly opting out of kind of male beauty trends on their behalf being like, but short kings, but Rat Boy Summer, but my crush is Jack Black or my crush is, you know, Stavroch from Begonia. It's Max Branding from EastEnders. We are constantly signaling at least I mean, every woman I know has got plenty of those kind of crushes. The men that I talk to, they will admit as if it's like some kind of big secret, a crush on a woman who just isn't slim, a very beautiful woman or a woman who is a bit older, whereas women are like, with a whole pussy, I want to shack Jack Black. So I think it is other men.

And I'm just, I'm very saddened by the profit element of this because there will be people making a huge amount of money who've had their fill of making money from women's insecurities now being like, but I could charge. I think leg lengthing surgery costs like 200,000 for, for, for women's. one go and you need like multiple goes. Like it's a really enormous sum. That kind of stuff, it's impossible for me not to feel like men are setting each other up for failure and someone is taking home such a tidy profit. And you're right. It's all linked to physical dominance, which women don't demand of men, but men absolutely do of each other. Well, I think it's also so

related to the insult culture thing because, and I think the same does happen as women, but when you feel like you're not attractive, you obviously try and pick it yourself and figure out why. Whereas I think when you feel loved and held and valued, you do start to feel less concerned about the way that you're presenting yourself. And I think in a world where we are seeing this bigger divide between men and women ideologically and literally physically, there is a lot of space between all of us all the time because we're, you know, living in this like neoliberalist individualistic society. Everyone's just sort of like picking at themselves and trying to figure out ways that we can kind of peacock and become the best without truly understanding what it is that we all.

need, which is more of sort of like a collective understanding of each other. And there's so many conversations that we've had where you can just see that this is a symptom of kind of every single thing. Everything actually really neatly presents itself. And it's funny because like the skin, I only know this is my sister who says to me, she's a dermatologist, but the skin is the biggest organ in the body. So everything eventually presents itself in the skin. And it feels like the beauty standards are like the biggest organ in society that's the most visible. And everything eventually starts showing up in the way that we present ourselves to each other, like what our faces are saying about this time in the world, which is like you said Ritura, pretty sexless.

Like the funny thing is I actually do loads of the self-gare things. Like I exercise really regularly. I might go for a cold swim. But I do it with a lot of joy de vivre in my heart, unlike these men who are getting hooked through in the morning, they're doing it with bad intentions. But we're kind of like freezing our faces so we're emotionless. We look emaciated and like lacking desire because we're literally taking a drug that doesn't make someone to eat.

I know that's a really simplified version in the. people that need it medically. But I'm saying from like where we're coming from, it's like we're all trying to starve ourselves of both like food, sex, pleasure, human interaction. And we're all just becoming kind of like dolls and cybor. And we're sort of worried about this AI takeover at the same time as turning ourselves into sort of just like vessels that we can project onto each other. It's so true. I completely agree with everything you said. I think that is such an interesting way to summarize everything that's going on. I don't think they're independent. I think they all do ironically feed into each other.

We had a message from Hannah who said, I rarely see women comment poorly on a man's appearance unless they are very conservative. This is a very generalized view of cis straight men, but it's a standard imposed by themselves as a symptom of misogyny. A man must be big, strong alpha, which becomes a bit of a competition,

and with the reach of Andrew Tate, A. Al, it's become an extreme, probably equal to the ideal of thinness for women back in the late 90s, 2000s, because of social media. People are able to see bodies, faces, routines of millions and millions of people now, which we shouldn't do.

obviously. So they're exposed to beautiful, unrealistic ideals that take up entire days to implement. Skin care, lymph drainage, gym sessions, walking after every meal, cooking fresh no UPFs, 20 supplements, read five pages, journal, etc. In some ways, it's a form of regimented punishment. Punishing yourself too far for something desirable but unattainable, a way to keep people busy so they don't question things and they keep spending money. And that really is the thing that I always find with all of these discussions about beauty, whichever way we take them. I think they're a distraction and I I know that sounds Tinhati, but they are a distraction. There are so much going on in the world right now. Even that bustle piece, the more I reflect on it weeks ago, where we spoke about the women in their 20s and 30s, they can't afford to buy a house.

So they're using that money to engage in cosmetic work. I think it's a distraction. I think it's a distraction from looking at the core reasons why they couldn't afford a house or the kind of environment around them or what's going on in the world. I don't think turning inwards in the pursuit of self-perfection is something we should be encouraging anymore. I'm getting more and more radicalized the more we talk about this. And I do think I have to put my foot down a bit more and not just be a bit wishy-washy and say, you know, we can't blame this, we can't blame that. I don't blame individual decisions. We're all at the behest of the beauty industry. But I don't think it's okay for me to encourage that either. I think it should be that we opt out.

I think we should all be pushing for opting out. I understand if it's impossible or feels impossible and we're not able to. And people have to make the choices they can under this beauty regimen that we're all under. But I do think we should be aiming for opting out. We got a message from Jimmy that said, I feel like this, unrelated to them being secure about becoming dads at 40, which is an interesting idea that perhaps this deepening well or this new propensity for more men to focus on their looks and to feel really self-conscious and to pay money and kind of pay in time to correct it is maybe related to how

to an emptiness in certain people's lives because fewer and fewer people are doing what their parents did and kind of being like, well, I don't have this. I don't have what they had. And I guess it is, as you say, it's the male equivalent of that. And I worry about a lot of men, especially like gym going men and the relationship to food and body. because the PR around that for men is so different. I mean, men will talk about macros and counting calories and eating lean and eating clean and stuff. And I think because perhaps their caloric intake is, you know, it's high because they are, they want to build muscle.

People are not, people are so reluctant to call it an eating disorder. And so many of these gymbrose have eating disorders. It's just, it has a different face. And, I mean, women are very aware of it peer to peer. Women understand counting calories from a very young age. We can spot it in one another. and often as a result we have a better chance of getting treatment and recovering. Whereas I think men in general, certain men who are devoted to the gym and they're in bodies

and do it in a really punishing way, like not with the joy to vive of someone that just wants, you know, enjoys exercise and actually enjoys what a body can do, but it's like, I must remain big. This is where I can control anything. Like you could have a lifelong eating disorder as a man and no one will either know nor seem to care. And I do feel in that space, I feel very, very sad for them. And that is they're all victims of this. And the more that we say beefcakes are back, the more it almost laundered as that image of the gym going man

who does nothing but obsessed by his body and is really kind of cruel to his body and other people's bodies because it's a human and fallible thing. It's really difficult to maintain. I mean, and only you'll know this, like any kind of performance body, any kind of bodybuilding body. The point is it's for competition. And then it's the constant elastic push and pull of like, okay,

and now I get to recover a bit. But then I'm right back at it. Because they're not starving, I think many men don't, would never entertain the idea that they have an eating disorder or a body image disorder. But in fact, I mean, so many of them do. I know that men that do and they just cannot come a weight to it. Yeah, it's funny.

Two past partners of mine, one of them would literally only eat, like chicken and broccoli and sweet potato. Like, we could not go out to eat because that was all he'd eat. And another one after that said to me, he was like, I think I actually did have an eating disorder when I was saying about it. I just didn't know. And he luckily recognized that in himself.

But you're right, there's a way of framing it. Because men are, we're told that men are so much better at control or stuff. It's kind of not seen as a big deal, whereas women are, you know, oh, it's so much harder for us, and it's just seen, I don't know. I think what's so horrible about watching this for men is, like, as much as women definitely do experience it 10fold and then obviously trans women, like a million fold, is the fact that for a long time there's never really been like a trend with men's bodies. There was always like a million different types of body a man could have that were fine, whereas with

women, we're used to the cycle of sort of like big, small, small, bums, hips and hips and and bums and bums and bums and bums and bums and whatever. And men, it was like, oh, he's tall and big and this one's small and thin. And then it's like, you can have a small sport and they're all really hot. We like rat men and fat men and whatever types of man that they put in front of us. Everyone will eat them up. So it is sad to see that they might have to go through this a thing of like every few years. You're like, oh, fab, my body's back on trend or wear shorts this year.

Like, just ridiculous. And Grant said, people of all genders are learning to be self-conscious about things they never once considered problematic and the beauty industry profits from it. And what you were saying, Ritirutera, about having to recognise how much of a distraction it is and how much money we spend is so true. I always think about this. If I ever go on holiday with a man or I'm just in a man's bathroom, the amount of stuff that I have to put in my bag,

I've got my toiletries and I've got my makeup. And it is heavy and it's a lot of stuff. And luckily now you can actually take more liquids through Gatwick. But there were points when I was traveling when I really needed to check a bag and the amount that I was with didn't. Like just even in really small, stupid ways, like we're literally carrying more. We have less time in our day.

And as much as I have tried to cut down in the ways that I feel possible that I can. When I was thinking how much, like, how often I have to buy my specific moisturiser for my Rosatia and the shampoo condition that I buy when I've, you know, had a good month and then the makeup that I have to replenish. Like it's hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I don't even think that I spend a lot compared to a lot of people. And I don't,

I can't imagine ever stripping back enough to feel comfortable in the world as my sort of raw self, a.k.a. full body hair, natural colour hair. No beauty products on. I think I would honestly feel terrified to go out onto the world. Even like in a country where no one knew me, I would feel like I wasn't good enough to bring up,

you know, like Florence Givens, women don't owe you pretty. Unfortunately, we feel like we do and I guess that is where men are getting to. And just because it's not as bad for them, it doesn't mean that I don't want them to not have it. Sorry, it's way too many negatives, but you know what I meant. Yeah, I feel the same. I do feel sad. I don't feel angry. I just feel more sad because it doesn't feel great to have more people added to the pile. It feels worse. It just

feels like rather than tackling the issue, we're just adding more people. So it just means that on the kind of scale of the power dynamics between us and the beauty industry, they are just completely just like outweighing us by a giant proportion. And it kind of feels like the power's growing. It's that classic quote of like, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. I bizarrely probably because the amount of pop culture

that's spoken about dystopias and things like that at the end of the world, even political things we're seeing right now, it feels easier to imagine that than beauty having no place in our life. And that's really depressing. That's so bleak. And I also think about American Psycho, that scene in the beginning when he is doing his push-ups, He has this mask. He talks about his like 10 step routine and he's peeling it off. And the whole point is that was meant to be horrifying. He is this alien, this like abject being. And now he's all over TikTok as almost like the signifier of an amazing alpha man. It's just been completely stripped of context. He is just like a poster boy for what a man should be and how cool it is to care that much about preserving the self. Back then, that was a horrifying visual. That was an amazing stark visual that was like terrifying and set the film.

off as like this scary thing. It's just, I guess it's kind of emblematic of how deeply we care about looks and how that isn't a source of ridicule anymore, this idea of a man caring that much. It's really impressive to one another. So last thing for me and something I think it's quite hopeful is a message we got from Grace who says, as a mum of boys, I'm very worried. Can you believe toddler superhero outfits have built in muscles? It's so concerning. But it's also not new. Grandparents always talk to boys about being strong and brave. Highly recommend sunshine, that's spelled S-O-N-S-H-I-N-E magazine slash Insta as a useful resource for anyone raising boys, which I think is really helpful because I just have no experience in that realm.

I don't have any young men really in my immediate family or little boys. And then another thing from Jenny, which is so worth all of us remembering, something I think that's often missing from the debate about beauty standards, regardless of gender is how fundamentally boring and egotistical to spend that much time worrying about how you look. Go outside, touch some grass, read a book, gow of your head. Which is kind of what we're saying, like log off. wherever possible. I think we have spoken about it in a previous episode, but there is this substack called the anti-cosmetic surgery essay that every woman should read, which I'm now going to say

and man, because it does really flag some of the things that Routir was saying, which is like, we do have to opt out. Like this is an attack on us, on our senses, on our livelihood, on our well-being, on our humanity. And it's much bigger. And maybe actually affecting men might mean that we see this, but it's often seen as like just silly, girly things. You know, you're getting a nails done, you're getting a lashes done. It's silly. It's not. It's like political financial control that keeps an underclass more impoverished than they should be spending more time on pink tax than they should be. Potentially, you know, men getting involved in that might make the seriousness of it carrying more weight. Unfortunately, that is sometimes what happens. But that

essay is one that stuck with me and one that I kind of want to reread because I've almost forgotten it already. But I just remember feeling like I've been slapped around the face in a good way. Thank you so much for listening as always. And for all all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We love reading every single one of them, which we always do, even if we don't read them all out. Please also give us a follow on Instagram and TikTok

at Everything is ContentPod. And please, please, please, please give us a review wherever you listen if you haven't already. We'll see you, as always, on Friday. Bye!