Men Face Body Pressure, Too

There's absolutely no doubt that women face worse idealized beauty standards than men. But because of that, it's easy for us to overlook male insecurities and dismiss the very real pressures they do face. As much as most women aren't built like Beyonce, most men aren't exactly Ryan Gosling — and sometimes they feel a little embarrassed about it. Reminding us of this is a new photo campaign depicting ordinary men stripped down to their underwear.

UK tabloid The Sun , noted that "this month saw David Beckham striking yet more smoldering poses to plug his new H&M undies range." So the paper recruited four "real men" to emulate the poses in popular underwear ads. I don't like when people talk about "real women" (because what are women who do not have curves or do wear a size negative 2, robots?), so we'll go with the term "ordinary men." These ordinary, non-underwear-model men bared hairy chests and unsculpted abs in an attempt to show that less-than-Photoshop-perfect can still be sexy.

The folks at Queerty wonder, however: "Are you just as sold (or turned on) by these men as you are by the models they replaced?"

If I'm being honest: No. Well, maybe one of them, but that's just because I have an incorrigible beard fetish. But whether or not these men are "just as" sexy as the underwear models isn't really the point, in my assessment. Most of us aren't as sexy as underwear models, and that's okay. The point is that sexiness comes in many variations.

David Stanley at The Good Men Project wrote about the stunt yesterday, admitting that, yes, he would like to emulate the "6% body fat, high cheekbones, and skimpy bulged out drawers" of the men in Calvin Klein ads. But staring at the men in these photos, he was reminded that confidence is "extremely sexy" in men and women, regardless of body type.

"Look at those photos," writes Stanley. "When you can snug up your Jockeys, look into a camera, and your eyes say 'This is who I am. Too effing bad if you don’t like it,' that’s sexy."

Touché. And skin that doesn't look like you just took a shower in spray tanner? That's pretty sexy, too.