14 DAY TRIAL // Some people say that magazines featuring supermodels cause feelings of insecurity in most women buying them. They try to change their appearances so that they would closely resemble their idols. However, no one would have guessed that the same thing applied to men. Don't get the wrong idea, they don't want to look like male models, but their awareness levels in regard to their own bodies increase if they regularly buy and read magazines depicting objectified women.
A recent study, conducted by Jennifer Aubrey, assistant professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science, and published in the Human Communication Research journal, showed that young college males tend to exhibit elevated levels of attention towards their own bodies, if they constantly read men’s magazines, such as FHM, Stuff and the likes. The tone of these magazines focuses on one's appearance, and their readers tend to follow the pieces of advice they read.
"We found that reading lad magazines was related to having body self-consciousness a year later. This was surprising because if you look at the cover of these magazines, they are mainly images of women. We wondered why magazines that were dominated by images of women were having an effect of men's feelings about their own bodies," said Aubrey.
The researcher said that peer-pressure is highly influential on men in general, in that their innate instinct is to attract beautiful women. If they perceive other men as a threat, as in if they see a picture of a couple in a magazine, they tend to become more aware of their appearance and try to make up for their drawbacks by taking better care of themselves.
"We found that the men who view the ads with the average-looking boyfriend in the picture reported less body self-consciousness than the men who saw the ads with just the model. When the men felt that the model in the ad liked average-looking guys, it took the pressure off of them and made them less self-conscious about their own bodies," the author concluded.