It’s a pretty widely known fact that girls face some pretty serious pressure to have the perfect body and features in today’s world, which is driven by social media. Young girls constantly see heavily photoshopped pictures of celebrities and models and fail to realize that they are completely fake. But what about boys? Do they face the same problems with their own self-image? The answer, yes.

Guys face the same reality that young girls do where they see images of men with six-packs and arms that are so sculpted, you can practically see the veins popping out. Young men try to replicate this because of what society has deemed as “manly” or “attractive.” The thing that bugs me the most about the whole thing is why do we have to tell guys and gals what is attractive?? Why do we even have to define what is and isn't manly?

In reality, most girls I know don't care that much about that. It's mostly the media that keeps reinforcing what "perfection" is, knowing that the masses will do anything, no matter how dangerous it is, to achieve it. I'm certainly guilty of seeing male celebrities and thinking they're so hot because of how chiseled their bodies are, but the older I get, the more I realize how truly irrelevant that is when it comes to genuinely liking someone.

Young boys and girls can start to feel self-conscious about their size and bodies as soon as they start school, around age 5 or 6. Some kids are taller, leaner, tanner or anything you can think of. While growing up, boys are constantly told to “be a man” or “you toss/throw/catch/act like a girl.” They get an idea in their heads that what they are doing, how they are acting, or how they look is somehow wrong. Telling a man this phrase is telling him that he has to bury his emotions and his feelings and to never show weakness. If he cries, he is weak; if he is kind, he’s a wimp. This simple phrase has the ability to be crippling. Telling the young man this will give him extreme feelings of inadequacy. It tells him that he’s not man enough, he’s not strong enough.

I really do wish we as a society could focus on more important things than what someone's body looks like. There are so many funny, smart, genuine men and women out there that don't realize how truly great they are because they're so stuck on having the perfect body. However, some men do want a muscular body just for themselves and not just to attract their preferred gender, and there is no shame in that whatsoever. While this is great, we shouldn't make it a standard in our society. People should be able to feel healthy and comfortable in the bodies they're in.