The fight for body positivity may have started with its focus centred on the female body, but the movement was in fact kicked off by a man standing up to say enough was enough. That man, Bill Fabrey, was so disgusted with how the people of the world were treating his beloved wife Joyce that he created an entire association called the National Association to Aid Fat Americans.
That same association still exists today, although it’s now called by a different name (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, or NAAFA). But increasingly, the role of men in the body positivity movement, and acceptance for fat men themselves, is being ignored.
Men are some of our most susceptible to body shaming, with a large portion of our young men and boys struggling with both their body type and their mental health. However, the body positivity movement has been strongly focussed on women and girls, often leaving the men by the wayside.
The body positivity movement isn’t finished by any means, and it’s about time that we pull men into the spotlight and confront the harm that’s being done to the self-worth of young men in the social media environments today.
So let’s dive into how men are affected from the fantasy of ideal body types, and explore how AI and services like Portrait Pal are affecting the movement.
How Are Men Harmed?
Just like women, men are harmed through the false portrayal of the ideal body type on their social media. Social media sites like Instagram and TikTok are full of influencers claiming to be the best person to follow to maximise gains to achieve the perfect body type.
This has led to the cultural phenomenon known as Bigorexia (officially a body dysmorphic disorder), where young men and teenage boys have felt ridiculous pressures to create musculature based on what they see on social media websites.
This is exacerbated by the body types shown on TV and in movies, where superheroes are always seen as buff and strong and where even celebrities are wearing muscle suits because the actual body type is impossible to pull off.
Many researchers have said that the increasing pressure from online sources to create muscle can lead to sources of anxiety, depression, and toxic self-esteem issues in young men.
In addition, the goal of creating this muscle can cause injury, or cause boys to eat improperly and become malnourished for the sake of hitting their workout goals. Nutritional information is often provided online from unverified sources and doesn’t take into account age or any additional medical information that may be important.
Even more, teenage boys are as likely to be the victims of casual online bullying, with a far less supportive network of friends, as the average teen girl. It’s almost allowed to comment unfairly on a man’s body, or at least such criticisms aren’t met with nearly the same sort of stigma as when commenting on a woman’s body.
Recently, cultural shifts have made parents and teenagers much more aware of the problems surrounding social media, but much of the effort has been to spread this message to girls to give them tools to protect themselves from those who might be cruel to them.
Even with this focused campaign on the spread of awareness for how damaging social media can be, teenagers of all genders can still be found falling prey to the damaging messages that are spread online.
Both male and female students have acknowledged that although they’re aware that social media can be damaging to body image, they’re still falling victim to body shaming and body dysmorphia by comparing their bodies to those of peers or of strangers online.
How Can AI Contribute?
Artificial intelligence may be a new technology, but it’s already showing its ability to create and adjust the social climate. It could be that AI technology and tools could be used to create a force for good within the body positivity movement for men.
Increasing the amount of positive body images on social media sites for men may help to combat some of the negative effects we’re currently seeing in men’s mental health as a result of their negative body image.
According to the team at PixelPose, artificial intelligence could also be used to create advertisements for men’s mental health, such as through campaigns to include more diverse body types in men’s modelling campaigns and images.
AI tools can be used to create documentation on what men are searching for on fashion websites and help to create designs that are more in line with what plus sized men are buying and actually like to wear.
This data can then be taken to the shareholders and retailers of menswear shops, which will help to prove that male body positivity should be an important focus for these huge entities in the male fashion spaces.
As many men also struggle with self esteem, AI tools can also help to curate men’s body image and help to increase their mental health. This can be done through tools like Portrait Pal, which uses AI generated images based off of real images of the men to create high quality headshots.
These headshots are great for a variety of purposes, but would be excellent for use in the workplace. Men often avoid having headshot photos taken, so having the ability to curate multiple high quality headshots themselves from which they can choose the best to represent them in their workplace may help to make them feel more positively about their body.
However, AI can also be used negatively. AI tools such as Deep Agency have already been found to create controversy by using biassed AI-generated models that don’t adequately show off all people of all sizes.
The intrusion of AI into the modelling spaces is also worrying for male models, who are far less common than female models and already have to fight for fewer roles. Removing the opportunity for these roles through the utilisation of AI may make it even less possible to see a full spectrum of male body types, which may cause the male body positivity movement to become even more narrow than it is today. Whether this technology will be predominantly used for good or for ill will be seen in the next few years.
