While creeping on AskMen.com I found this crazy interesting article about the male perspective on women’s bodies by writer Ian Lang. When any guy is chiming in on the “how women should look debate,” it’s only natural to be skeptical, and I was. Especially when the title of the article is, “Learning To Deal With Real Women.” Umm, what exactly is a real woman? What makes one woman more real than another?

What Lang is actually pointing out is the difference between fantasy and reality. He says, “We’re supposed to decry the entertainment industry’s penchant for models with unrealistic proportions, but we can’t deny that Marisa Miller is truly some grade-A boner material. The conundrum for us men is how to negotiate between reality and the media’s fantasies.”

Meaning, guys know that those Photoshopped models with genetics only .0001 percent of the population have cannot represent all women (or most), but they are still super duper hot. Which is true. They’re a special part of the human race who get glammed up to look even more pleasing than they already naturally do. Who isn’t attracted to Kate Upton or Gisele Bundchen? Models are meant to catch the eyes of both men and women. But what Lang is really talking about is how do guys deal with the fact that every single girl they see in TV, movies, porn and magazines is made to appear perfect when real women are not? If every signal and sign is telling you that all girls are supposed to be epically flawless how would a guy know to expect something else? And when he does see something else in a woman, how should he react? If he is made to believe all girls are perfect and sees one that is not, it’s only rational that he thinks she’s a freak, right?

Lang says, ” . . . first glimpses of bona fide nakedness . . . the results were . . . disappointing? I shouldn’t say that, because, let’s be honest, you were stoked. But, still, some things were apparent: not every girl has gigantic, perfect breasts, and the breasts they do have don’t usually stay perfectly heaped up like a couple of airbags. It turns out that, just like us, girls have moles, zits and blemishes. Making out in the back of a car or other teenage-approved locations often led to interesting positions that created lumps and rolls in even the fittest of bodies. And, boy, were we ever wrong about that “vagina” thing. We were all like, “OH GOD, WHAT IS THAT? There’s hair and lots of skin and what exactly am I supposed to be doing with it?”

When I first read this I was sort of offended. You think my body is gross? What’s so gross about some hair and a mole? Then I remembered . . . that’s kind of the whole point of the fight for better body image. All bodies are gross. As he says, girls are “just like us [guys]“, we all have flawed bodies. (The first time I saw a penis I was like gasp. LOL!) All of our bodies excrete waste, don’t look great in certain lighting, are tummies fold, our skin is scarred, we’re all human and no one is exempt from that. But that doesn’t mean we can’t turn each other on and be attractive to ourselves and others. Actors and models have special genes, but they also have budgets that are tens of thousands of dollars spent on the right makeup, clothing, photographers, setting, and technologies to capture the one single moment they look absolutely stunning. Bodies in real life, completely exposed, and in motion can never look so perfect all the time.

It’s not that our bodies aren’t beautiful the way they are. Yes, they are. It’s that the pressure to be perfect all the time is what makes many women deeply sad and it’s what confuses men into thinking that we’re supposed to be immaculate at every moment. Real women and men are not flawless. It’s really up to both genders to learn the difference between what is a fictional fantasy and an equally attractive reality.

What do you think about this male perspective on women’s bodies? Let us know in the comments!

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