Naked and serious: Men about the attitude to their body
speaking of body image, for the time being they mean mostly female physicality, although it is not easy for everyone to live surrounded by images and stereotypes about femininity and masculinity that are retouched to unnaturalness. Continuing the conversation about how the standards of appearance put pressure on men, we asked ten different heroes to undress in front of the camera and tell them how they perceive their body, whether they feel the need to change it, whether they attach importance to self-care and evaluate themselves from the point of view " norms and beauty.
Sergey Berlin
I am a tattoo artist - I see nudity of different people sometimes more often than doctors or photographers. For me, appearance is nothing more than the outer form of consciousness. Since we have dense bodies in this world, we must take care of them: go for a massage, give physical exertion. My work is connected with close contact with people, so I watch my face skin: I put on masks, I use eye cream. I follow the nails on the fingers: they are always in sight, and this is the first thing that the client pays attention to.
It so happened that I started using face and hand cream very early and never encountered pressure about it - except that my mother did not understand me, but I didn’t care. In addition, I have always been surrounded by men who look after themselves. Masculinity is decisiveness in the eyes when no one and nothing can change your decision to go the way you chose. This behavior, the way a person controls space. With the size of the biceps is not connected.
It seems to me that the perception of a man’s appearance has not changed lately. Whoever has been watching himself, he has got a lot of different new tools, and they (we) are happy. And those who never took the face cream in their hands did not start. In Russia, there is no culture of self-care among men. I often go to Europe for work and I see how men take care of themselves there - in my opinion, this will never happen in Russia.
Denis Krivtsov
Attitude to male appearance is different than to female: for example, male nudity, I think, causes less attention, including because there is no taboo on male breasts. I think about how I look, but I do not spend a lot of time on it: I choose clothes rather quickly, no cosmetic procedures. If I waste my time, then on my relatives and friends, on self-education and travel, and if I go to the gym, then not for a “beautiful body”, but to put muscles in order.
Recently, much attention has been paid not so much to style as to a healthy lifestyle. I don’t know who to thank for it, companies that produce sportswear, or people who have shaped the fashion for fitness and healthy eating, but now it’s somehow indecent to look like you do not care about weight, shortness of breath and a curved back.
I try to look neat, and I feel uncomfortable if, for example, I have dirty shoes or trousers. But these are such common things. I do not consider clothing, hairstyle, style of behavior as a way of identification in society. Appearance should not distract, create false ideas about you in people. Its appearance is much easier to declare its position and interests, so many people caring for themselves and their bodies, and many people trying to stand out with their appearance, but it is unlikely that past generations had a different look.
Dmitry Romanov
I have long got rid of the feeling of awkwardness about the fact that my body does not correspond to the ancient ideas of perfection. After 20 years, I stopped playing sports and turned from a slender youth into a slightly less streamlined entity. For some time I experienced it, but afterwards I thought: my body is the only object of the material world that I see every day, regardless of my own desires, from which it is extremely difficult to get rid of and with which I am almost identical. It turned out that my body lies outside the categories of love and hate.
Then I had the task of telling myself about my physical appearance. So, my body, as I then concluded, is in a certain sense a text, a story about a series of choices made. Yes, the narrative did not withstand the requirements of well-established high forms, but, damn it, we happened to live in the era of multidirectional movement of artistic meanings. I reconciled myself to this, and sometimes I even proudly secretly say that my story does not try to fill the factory molds, but pours with free Volga.
I like the term dad bod. It's about a healthy consensus in relation to your own body: you do not reflect on the subject of tasty carbohydrates, but at the same time you are able to lift an object that fell to the floor without bending your knees. There is also an important social aspect: liberties, for which you could previously get indulgence only after successful mating, are a common good in our eyes.
But I will be pretty and small. Let fashion designers take into account the existence of people of my proportions, and unfamiliar colleagues will stop carving out of themselves tasteless jokes about ryahu and mammon. We hope that we will restore the elegance of these words in the future.
Sergey Bogdanov
I think my appearance is quite average. I do a lot of sports, but more game, because it is interesting, but not for the exterior. Although it happens that I want to get rid of extra pounds, and then I force myself to run.
I devote a lot of time to my hair - every morning I am styling my hair. I try to dress more or less stylishly, although I don’t think I’m very good at it. But when I myself like the way I am dressed, what hair style I did, I even feel more confident. In general, I believe that you need to take care of yourself, regardless of gender. I do not think that there are big differences in the perception of male and female nudity.
I have never been particularly interested in issues of social perception of appearance - all that mattered to me was how I was perceived. It is clear that everyone behind him can be reproached and chuckled, such as "here is girobas" or "in what market he only managed to buy this horror." But I do not think that it is now generally accepted and encouraged personally by a person to reproach this. I, at least, did not come across this.
Dmitry Mafeen
I have love with this world, and I accept all forms of its existence in any form, as well as myself with all my jambs. For example, my body naturally got a birthmark on the shoulder, which also reddened in my youth, and I experienced terrible discomfort. But in the end I managed to figure out what seemed to be the injustice of nature, and the fear that this beauty of mine would frighten people on the beach. Now, from an anthropological point of view, so to speak, I am rather curious rather than scared how society will perceive me.
Any society needs conditional boundaries in order to develop in violation of them. This is the eternal struggle of society with fears on the threshold of development. Therefore, with my beard, I have a wide range of public perception: from Barmaley to Boniface, from Leo Tolstoy to the militant of forbidden states, from indifference to unconditional love.
I am curious about my appearance: when I watch, when I observe. For me, looks are the visible side of inner strength. Moisturizers are powerless here, we look like we feel. So I pay more attention not to looks, but to sensations.
Ivan Solomin
I look at many things from the point of view of aesthetics and unwittingly project this behavior on myself. Most of the time, everything suits me - I accepted myself as I am. But sometimes some little thing can spoil everything at once. Because of one pimple, I can feel insecure all day, although the rest of me is the same as I was yesterday.
Beauty is a purely aesthetic characteristic. She can be in a broken face, and in dirty clothes. And appearance is such a social signal that you send to your surroundings, and its perception strongly depends on the context. For example, in Korea, men do plastic surgery not less often than women, and in the Muji stores there are no separate women's or men's cosmetics - just the Cosmetics shelf. Therefore, it is possible to talk about global trends, but locally everything will be different.
Male appearance and all its characteristics are completely reduced to external attributes. According to my feelings, the accent is strongly shifted to its external decoration. Male appearance is a face, a haircut and everything that is worn around, and nobody cares what you have under your clothes if you are coolly dressed. I do not always feel free and open in Moscow. When I lived in Hong Kong, then a priori I was a stranger and did not feel my appearance as a tool for interacting with others, and in Moscow I feel very different contexts.
Albert Sharafutdinov
I calmly relate to my own appearance. I took myself for a long time as drishchom - although not so long ago I decided that it would be nice to work out with a trainer and gain some muscle mass. I do not have a goal to become a hero of films about antiquity, just enough taut and athletic form.
Strength exercises are very disciplined: you plan your dream, you plan how you will spend the weekend, you begin to consciously monitor nutrition. It brings up. Just because you will not go to a party, because the next day is training. So rocking is more about discipline. I started to grow hair, and I have to dry them for a long time after a shower - is this considered to be the time I devote to my appearance? I have a couple of German organic face creams, but this is because I have very dry skin.
I like the fact that today the trend for naturalness and naturalness is developing more and more in the culture, everyone began to accept themselves as they are. This has a certain therapeutic effect: adoption is the first step to change. I am for change. But I can't talk about everyone. One friend of mine recently held a focus group with men over 40, and the dudes really have problems with masculinity and self-identification. The old is no longer working, and the new is still socially unacceptable, and they do not know what to do.
Max Lyubimov
Down with bigotry! We all undress on the beach anyway, in the bath we show ourselves to each other and do not hesitate. With your nudity you need to find reconciliation. If a person lives in harmony with himself, then there is no reason to be ashamed of yourself.
I can’t say that I’m hyper-glorious and spend all my time to keep myself in perfect condition, but, of course, I try to be adequate to my own wishes. I am quite an average person. Although someone would probably say "metrosexual", but, in my opinion, this word for ten years is not as fashionable.
The dynamics of time is such that everything moves forward, and the perception of me, too, but does something change in society or in me? I think these are parallel processes. I have two earrings in my ear, which I have been wearing for more than thirty years, and earlier it caused a lot, a lot of talk, and there is still some opinion that the location of the earring in the right or left ear tells you something about the owner. This is all, of course, utter nonsense, but short-sighted people are beginning to see some kind of signals, and this, in particular, was the cause of injuries. Based on personal experience, I would not advise guys to wear open sandals with painted toenails in the summer. In our society there is a marked intolerance to everything that is different from the soldier's overcoat and waist belt.
Kolya Bitsadze
It seems to me that for girls the attractiveness of the male body is far from the first place, if otherwise the man is real, reliable, strong. Girls better peer into the essence of man. Men are as impressive to impress.
I have been engaged in martial arts for 15 years. Master of Sports in judo and sambo. Now just keep in shape. For looks, I wash my face and cut hair on my head. If I went in for sports for the sake of appearance, I would go to the gym from 11 years old, and not be killed on the mat.
I do not care about how I look. It seems to me that you should not dissolve yourself. But much to bother with his appearance peasant is contraindicated. Everything should be in moderation. For example, a man can shave his legs because he is swimming, or maybe because he likes his bare legs more than shaggy ones. This, in my opinion, is a problem. But this is my subjective opinion.
Of course, the perception of men has changed in recent years. In the two thousandth, for example, smooth-shaved men with flawless appearance were the ideal. Now a man with charisma and a pair of good costumes will not yield to a model with a perfect appearance.
Tim Marso
I don't really think about my appearance. I would like more, of course - everyone wants to look better and healthier - but not enough time. It happens that I do not look in the mirror for days, anywhere, just because I do photo processing - I am both a photographer and a model - and just sit and look at the monitor.
If I know that I will be photographed, I can not eat in the evening, drink less water, make a face mask and hair - to look fresh. But purposefully and daily ... It's a matter of habit. I have no such habit.
I used to be full, and most of the time I wore wide things, but now - although I have not lost weight on purpose, due to stressful situations - I try to choose something more fitting. I do not understand, for example, how I used to wear such wide jeans.
Recently, it seems to me, many have begun to follow. I sometimes paint my nails with firming varnish so that they look healthier, and before that it surprised people. I also always wanted to grow hair, but at school it was unacceptable.
