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I feel like writing a book called "The Global Prettyfication of Men". All over the world, in a whole host of things - from rugby to Bollywood to James Bond to even increasingly politics - to paraphrase MLK, it seems that men are no longer judged on the content of their character but on their looks and bodies.
In rugby, not only are the players usually a lot more muscular than in the past, but also they take far greater care of their hair and even skin. Reading through journalist Carolyn Hitt's book "Welsh rugby in the 70s", what is striking is how, by modern-day standards, unkempt and unshapely most of the rugby players were. Would someone like Gareth Edwards, JPR or Phil Bennett, with their messy hair, long sideburns and skinny frames come even close to making it into the current Welsh team? In their place, players like George North, Jamie Roberts, Leigh Halfpenny, Gareth Davies and Rhys Webb all have bulging biceps, six-packs and are notorious for how long they spend sorting out their hair and moisturising their skin.
In Bollywood, the male actors are noticeably more muscular, clean-shaven and (given India's quite racist beauty standards) light-skinned compared to even 10-20 years ago. Actors like Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan, John Abraham, Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor seem to spend almost as much time in films and live performances with their shirts off as their shirts on!
As for James Bond, even many feminist writers themselves commented on how Daniel Craig - particularly in Casino Royale - was the first Bond to be sexually objectified more than any of the women were! Would a fat, hairy actor like Sean Connery come even remotely close to being selected to be Bond nowadays?
In politics, Spanish Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez has stripped off for the Spanish edition of Men's Health, while Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera has also stripped off for political campaign posters. Here in the UK, politicians who looked like Tristram Hunt and Chris Phipps would have been relatively rare in the past, whereas now they are ten-a-penny.
How and why has society become much more judgemental of men's physical appearance than used to be the case? Also, is this growing trend harmful, beneficial or neither for men in general?
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