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From Believing: Biology As Ideology By Petrocelli And Lorber

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Society standardizes men's appearance, holding men to such a high standard that some men use steroids in order to achieve the physique and strength required of them. Matthew Petrocelli and Judith Lorber explain this fact in their articles "Getting Huge, Getting Ripped" and "From Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology", wherein the two authors explore why society holds men to such a high standard, and what men do in order to reach the standard set for them. Men cannot truly express themselves or their feelings without the fear of being viewed as effeminate and mocked due to it. This has led to men doing strictly "masculine" activities and hobbies, including bulking up in order to further differentiate themselves from women and placing all …show more content…

This stems from them being viewed as less capable of doing the more masculine tasks that society requires of them. "I am not saying that physical differences between male and female bodies don't exist, but that the differences are socially meaningless until social practices turn them into social facts" (Lorber, 726). Society has dictated that male bodies have been built to be better suited for more physical tasks, with female bodies often viewed as much weaker and less durable than that of male bodies. Men, therefore, must fulfill the expectation of having a strong, muscular frame, capable of withstanding the tasks required of them. Petrocelli discusses this in his paper, with many participants reporting bullying in their youth due to their small frames and bulking up later in life to make up for this. "A few reported having grown up small or being bullied and they wanted to build the type of size and strength that would forever alter those early perceptions or experiences." These men felt compelled to gain muscle in order to make their past frailty forgotten and to help recover from being bullied over it. By building up their size and strength, people would begin to forget how small they used to be and view them as much more capable of doing everything required of them. Lorber supports what Petrocelli writes as she describes how men's self-confidence centers around society's expectations for what they can and cannot do. They must be strong and capable. If they do not possess such qualities, ridicule and mockery will follow, as Petrocelli's interviewees prove. Men feel compelled to bulk up so that they will not face such mockery and so that they feel powerful and worthy of people's

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