> I don't recall developing an eating disorder or wearing makeup at an early age
Shouldn't you take this as evidence that there is something different in the way girls and boys are treated? In case you're not aware, eating disorders are horrifyingly prevalent among college-age women. [this statistic](http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/e...) reports 25% engage in purging, and in my anecdotal experience, that number could be an underestimate. It would stretch my imagination to think of purging as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, so I'd say it has to have societal roots. Saying that women are statistically more likely to go to college, and therefore can't complain about a society that profoundly fucks with their psychology is analogous to saying that blacks are statistically over-represented in sports, so they can't complain about a society that holds them back in so many other ways.
In order to look how fashion advertisers tell them they should look, women have to have extraordinarily low body fat.
In order to look how fashion advertisers tell them they should look, men have to have extraordinarily low body fat... and high muscle mass.
If you know anything about body building you'll know that the second is extremely hard to do. Building muscle mass while at the same time keeping body fat to extremely low levels is a rather unnatural thing to do, far more unnatural than just being skinny. Not only that, but it's not strictly dietary, it takes time and money to build that muscle mass.
So why do women have more eating disorders than men, who actually have a harder time achieving their "greek god" form?
My guess is women take what they see in advertising too seriously. The majority of guys in this world don't actually expect their women to look like that, and the standard reaction to women who demand that from their men is "fuck it".
The men on daytime TV sitcoms are not roll models for men, they're there for the women audience of those shows to laugh at to feel better.
Look at action movies. Those are the roll models of men. Look at advertisements targeted towards men. Those are the roll models of men.
Of course as memory serves, the female lead of Everyone Loves Raymond is actually more out of shape than Raymond himself... But hell, how about the most popular woman on television? Oprah isn't exactly trim.
Shouldn't you take this as evidence that there is something different in the way girls and boys are treated? In case you're not aware, eating disorders are horrifyingly prevalent among college-age women. [this statistic](http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/e...) reports 25% engage in purging, and in my anecdotal experience, that number could be an underestimate. It would stretch my imagination to think of purging as being a biologically rooted phenomenon, so I'd say it has to have societal roots. Saying that women are statistically more likely to go to college, and therefore can't complain about a society that profoundly fucks with their psychology is analogous to saying that blacks are statistically over-represented in sports, so they can't complain about a society that holds them back in so many other ways.