My viral Instagram post reminded me how much I hate my body
Almost all the comments didn’t bother me. Except for the ones about my "double chin."
Last week was bonkers. I spent it in the crosshairs of hundreds of conservative men online, many of them with photos of guns on their Instagram accounts. Then it ended with Trump in the literal crosshairs of an AR-15 rifle.
I’m still unsettled from the assassination attempt, worried that it will bolster Trump’s support and fan the flames of America’s trademark violence. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s me trying to understand why I reacted a certain way to comments on one of my Instagram posts.
The post—me saying that patriarchy hurts men too—sort of went “viral.” Right now, it has nearly 40,000 views. Usually, my videos get a few hundred, maybe a thousand. There are nearly 1,200 comments, the majority of them from men who didn’t like what I had to say.
“Beta.” “Soy boy.” “Cuck.” “Gay.” “Woman.” Almost all the comments didn’t bother me. I get the sense that these men feel threatened. Something about me wearing a “Protect Trans Folks” shirt saying I want more than just competitive relationships with other men got under their skin.
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Yet a few comments really got under my skin.
The ones talking about my body. Like: “His double chin is my favorite part of this picture.” And: “Exactly the sort of man who talks about the patriarchy. No jaw and estrogen through the roof.” And: “Yeah not taking tips on how to be a man from someone who is lacking T and has Moobs.”
Reading these, some part of me takes over my nervous system, tensing my shoulders and getting me to rewatch the video to see if I, in fact, have a double chin. It also gets me to go to each commenter’s profile and see what they look like. To compare my body to their ripped muscles and boxy jawlines.
I’m familiar with this part of me. It gets activated almost every time I look in the mirror. It checks out my stomach from every angle. It sizes up my arm and leg muscles. It worries that my gut is too big for women to find me attractive. It worries about being too weak to fight off other men who want to harm me or my partner. It doesn’t care that my partner tells me I’m attractive and literally told me I looked hot in the video days before it went “viral.”
I’ve been trying to figure out where this part of me came from.
My best hunch is from my mom. She (unintentionally) shaped my ideas about what women look for in men. She audibly oohed and aahed when Brad Pitt appeared shirtless on the screen in Thelma and Louise (1991). I was six years old and used to getting a lot of her attention. She also scoffed years later when he divorced Angelina Jolie, calling him a “dog” for likely cheating. She giggled with my younger sister about Johnny Depp’s good looks in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) but then called him a “dog” too when he got divorced.
Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, those were the men I wanted to look like. Pitt angular and ripped (and, it turns out, starving himself) in Fight Club (1999). Depp pensive and wide-jawed in Secret Window (2004).
But my body doesn’t look like that. My dad gave me his gut. One slice of pizza or doughnut and I gain nearly a pants size. My jaw is more oval-ish than square. I have skinny arms and even skinnier legs.
This ashamed part of me never feels like I’m muscular or fit enough.
It shames me when I eat a bagel or ice cream. Which then activates another part of me that says inside my head, “You’re not going to stop me from eating what I want! I’m having another scoop of ice cream!” The cycle rolls on and on. I gain a little weight, then lose it. I feel like shit either way.
The only (slight) healing I’ve found is from feminism. Women have for years been rejecting societal expectations about what their bodies should look like and embracing their uniqueness. Studies have found that feminist mothers and their daughters felt more positively about their bodies and less shame than those who don’t ascribe to feminist ideals.
I envy the way many women praise each other’s bodies. They lift each other up no matter what. I want that sort of connection with other men. I don’t want every interaction to feel like a dick-measuring contest.
I know we have a lot to overcome to get there. The so-called “traditional” masculine norms of homophobia and turning everything into a competition will be tough to unlearn (just look at all those comments on my Instagram post).
But we all have a stake in this, not just men. If we want to transform this backwards, violent, deeply unequal society into a fairer, safer, more free society for everyone, all bodies need unconditional love.
I’ll end with the words of
, who writes the newsletter :“Men … internalize deep pain about not measuring up to a certain ideal. How is that a surprise when all of us, not only women, are walking around just wanting to be loved in a world that so often reserves its love for only the most beautiful? Even if you don’t care about men’s feelings and body image issues for some reason, this affects you, too: That casual cruelty about men’s looks is allowable ... directly contributes to a culture in which everyone’s looks are constantly scrutinized and insulted.”
Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@jeremymohler.blog): How do you feel about your body?
(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get my weekly Friday Q&A posts about improving your relationship and friendships, plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing.)
As a psychotherapist and a man, I've observed a sense of freedom men often have with their bodies. Walking alone at night or facing less pressure around appearance are privileges I haven't always considered. Social media creates a vicious comparative culture, bombarding us with unrealistic expectations and highlighting physical flaws. This can make anyone feel insecure and question their body autonomy, leading to anxiety and depression. It's crucial to be mindful of what we consume online and cultivate a kind of body neutrality – appreciating our unique bodies for what they are, not just how they look.
These people are, I hate to say, extremely gullible and manipulated. This entire masculinist internet culture is the product of grifters, who these men, because of some deep insecurity and inability go think for themselves, have been sucked into.
It's a subculture where a man presents himself as prototypically hegemonic and then manipulates the fragile masculinity of a particular type of weak- minded and self-doubting man to adopt the behaviors he sets.
What's especially depressing about it, besides the unhappiness it creates in ALL these men is that they are drawn in by a desire for validation, connection, approval--even love. But it's so deeply cynical and manipulative and empty that the very thing the person craves becomes frightening or less valuable to them, because these things require some openness and self-acceptance and the norms they are taught actually teach them to fear these moments, and suspect others.,
Sometimes I guess they have the distraction of body building, materialism, and so on but they've really all learned to strip out their worth as an individual and see themselves and others as a commodity. Such a life cannot be meaningful.
Not to mention their TOTAL subservience to the hegemonic man who lives in their head, possibly from a youtube channel or school or somewhere.
They aren't living an authentic life, based on their own desires. They're being told by someone else what to do, what to want, how to be.
What you said is profoundly threatening to them, because all their vast efforts are centered around fear of what they want, their own standard humanness, any honesty or vulnerabilty--and you don't have this affliction. You ARE authentic. You are doing the thing they've been manipulated to fear--you are being real.
It's not about bodies so much as it is about minds. What you have is antifragile. Yes, they can hurt you but they can't destroy you. You can keep seeking human connection. You don't suspect every interaction is a dominance struggle, you aren't going to flip out at your romantic partner for having their own opinion. It's just a deeper form of security, even if you don't feel particularly confident--you are confident enough to be authentic, which is very hard for people and why they get weird like this.
You have your own beliefs. You are brave enough to state them.
Note their EXTREME fear of the feminine, in themselves especially. This can become pathological. They sometimes even get painful surgeries because of the pathology this fear causes. Go look at Leonardo DiCaprios face. If THEY had his face they would be anxious and mutilate it because his face was very soft, his chin is not prominent
Almost no film stars have the face they think is adequately unfeminine. Virtually all handsome yourhs have the characteristics--because the point of this subculture is to make you hate yourself.
It's called looksmaxxing. It's really awful. Pleaase never do it.
This is all very sad. I remember when it started on reddit!
I know it's hard to hear this shit from them but trust me that as a young man, you have dodged a bullet!