In relation, males, too, have been targets of magazine culture. It is a rare occurrence that walking by a magazine stand, one will fail to see a normal representation of what an average male body looks like. Instead, overly-developed muscular men, usually with bikini-draped female counterparts, are found gracing the covers of male fitness and bodybuilding magazines. This sounds two messages to the onlooker: first, in order to be a real man, you must be a finely chiseled, muscled man. Next, in order to be sexually attractive to females, you must have big strong “lats” (back muscles) and well-developed “bi’s and tri’s” (arm muscles). Evidently, magazines such as SHAPE and Vogue, targeted towards their youthful and mature demographic respectively, prey on the insecure and impressionable female mind while FLEX and MUSCLEMAG targets males.
The above two trends in media also facilitate a third in today’s society. This is the preoccupied obsession with fitness and diet. It has puzzled many as to why over the past few decades, males and females have increased their attendance in gyms. Based on numerous studies available, physical activity is advisable for long life and health. But in reality, surely not everyone is partaking in exercise for the sole purpose of obtaining optimal health. A large percentage of the individuals in gyms across North America exercise for aesthetic purposes; which brings into account, once again, the role of the magazine and mass media. Onlookers, who see the happy, slim woman on the cover of SHAPE or the well-defined muscled man of Muscle and Fitness magazine, immediately relate physical fitness with happiness. The magazine companies understand this mentality and therefore make money off impressionable and fragile minds who seek self-satisfaction. Because the “Twenty-minute Glute Workout” in SHAPE and the “One-Helluva Chest Routine” outlined in Muscle and Fitness are regimens that will enable a reader to obtain body satisfaction, individuals blindly buy into their insecurities while magazine publication companies continually reveal both the problem and supposed ‘solution’ to obtaining the “perfect” physical form. In actuality, the propagation of such false ideals, dictating what the body should or should not be, increase profits on the publisher’s part while holding the reader’s mentality in low regard.