Emphasizing Male Beauty

The typical discussion about body image for married couples is extremely one-sided.  It is commonly assumed that married women feel unattractive if their husbands do not initiate sex with them, compliment them, or nonverbally indicate that they find their wives attractive.  At the same time, men are commonly assumed either to be apathetic about their bodily appearance or to care about it far less than women do.  Assumptions are asinine to begin with (one cannot make assumptions and be rational at the same time), but many of them damage those who make them or those who are affected by them.

If a woman said that she felt this way about a situation with her boyfriend or husband, perhaps no one would find it odd.  Women are usually expected--and overtly conditioned--to want to be seen as physically attractive.  Random comments from family members and strangers reinforce this from an young age onward.  Many people who would identify as egalitarians still pay a great deal of attention to the female body and try to make encouraging comments about how attractive various women are, even as they tend to ignore the male body.  Male beauty is acknowledged far less frequently than female beauty.

Complementarians tend to go even further and assert the sexist claim that men are not only not as physically beautiful as women, but that they were also intentionally designed this way by God.  This is Biblically and logically false [1], of course, but most of the social pushback against needlessly emphasizing female beauty has to do with concerns about discouragement in women who are insecure about their appearance.  It is as if people do not realize that traditional Western ideas about beauty demean men first and foremost and that the male body is ignored as a result.

The authors of the Bible are not hesitant to describe the beauty of the male body [1], and Christians should be among the first to affirm that there is no logical connection between being a man or a woman and possessing or not possessing physical beauty.  While the focus of this post is on the negative ramifications for men when the female body is equated with beauty, there are benefits for both genders when sexist ideas about beauty are properly rejected.  Women do not have to feel like there is any special reason for them to be concerned with their appearance--not to mention that they can explore the visual aspects of their sexualities--and men do not have to feel like they are unattractive because they are men.

Wives, girlfriends, and single women can contribute to a cultural environment where the physical beauty of both genders is openly appreciated by simply giving genuine compliments to men in their lives, whether they are husbands, boyfriends, or platonic friends.  Admiring someone's body does not have to be a sexual or demeaning thing, after all.  Ironically, the rejection of sexual prudery often leads people to this realization!  The nonsexual nature of complimenting bodies aside, men have the same capacity to love their bodies that women do, and it is irrational to treat women as if they deserve to feel more comfortable with their bodies than men do.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html