From "'VANITY IS A VIRTUE'/Chasing the perfect abs, men flock to plastic surgery" (WaPo)(that's a free-access link, because it's the last day of the month, and I still have 3 gift links left and because you've got to see all the carved-out-of-fat abs).
Now, I understand the photos I've been seeing of men with protruding bellies that somehow have what looks like ab definition. It's bumps of relocated fat! There is a renouncement of a pleasure of life: the pleasure of authenticity. If you see something that you perceive as beautiful because it represents health and fitness, but then learn or feel that it is something else, that is a loss of pleasure. This entire procedure is a testament to the desire to be looked at but not touched and not understood. That is the renouncement of pleasure, other than the pleasure of being admired from a distance.
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If you see something that you perceive as beautiful because it represents health and fitness, but then learn or feel that it is something else, that is a loss of pleasure.
Now do makeup.
"Now do makeup."
I was going to "do" breast implants. It's obvious that the same point applies. Same thing with makeup too. We're confronted with so much falseness, and we should find it distasteful. But people are oriented to photographs seen on line these days. And some idiots don't seem to know the difference or have actually entered the benighted state where they are disgusted by what is real.
We're confronted with so much falseness, and we should find it distasteful.
Agreed. See also: politicians who can only read someone else’s words off a teleprompter.
The good news is there just aren't enough horribly disfigured burn victims to go around.
As with tattoos, let’s see what these fake muscles look like in 20 or 30 years.
More work of the Dark Force of the universe trying to convince us that one particular vice is actually a virtue. Hard pass.
I drink beer with my friends. Sometimes I have too many beers. I like beer. I still like beer…
There are some important differences. Women are pressured to wear make-up and it can be taken off (as with many men, I’m a less-is-more kind of guy).
Men’s ab implants are deceptive in a way make-up is not and I could never take a man seriously once I know that he’s such a distasteful combination of vain and lazy that he needs them but refuses to get them the natural way. He won’t earn them.
That is, ab implants reflect on a man’s character in a way make-up does not reflect on a woman’s.
It's the Liver King look.
The excessive hunger for social desirability is at the root of much evil.
men flock? how many? 10's? 100's? 0.00001%?
sounds like a Brazilian Butt Liff is the female version
Makeup washes off. Tattoos would be the more apt analogy.
Also barbies... fetuses, and they are temporary implants with a natural remedy.
WaPo is known to advertise for diverse causes. Reader beware.
"Oh, what rippling muscles."
If you are talking about actual body builders with bloated muscular bellies, that is actual a side effect of abusing insulin and human growth hormone. They call it bubble belly.
How many of the men seeking this surgery are gay? See your post under this same tag from Aug 11.
“Then they yelled at the ones that had stars at the start. We’re exactly like you! You can’t tell us apart. We’re all just the same, now, you snooty old smarties! And now we can go to your frankfurter parties.”
If they need abdominal fat donors, I'm available for a fee.
This is like those Eastern European dopes that inject that oil into their arm muscles to make them swell up, so their arms look cartoonishly big, like Popeye. Then they totter around on matchstick legs because they haven't ever really worked out. So not only are they not strong; they've ruined their ability to extend their arms normally, because they're all swollen up.
I'm generally against breast enhancement surgery. Although (probably like nearly all men) I love boobs, I really think much more of the natural ones. I do know women that have had corrective breast surgery (for cancer, or reduction, or just to make them bilaterally similar), and of course this would never have become as sophisticated and perfected as it is, without the world of boob jobs to fund all that learning.
I knew a man in Florida who tried so hard for that look that his flesh was sunken in around his eye sockets.
"This entire procedure is a testament to the desire to be looked at but not touched and not understood."
Everybody wants to be Schrodinger's cat for 15 minutes... or something.
“ There is a renouncement of a pleasure of life: the pleasure of authenticity.”
I’m tempted to compare it with fake videos getting more attention than a genuine one. I would go so far as to say the value of authenticity is tanking before our eyes. Could be helpful in explaining why the best woman basketball player has a tough time getting the respect of her peers. I don’t know. I’m only trying to explain what I’m seeing.
I've been a gym rat for like 35 years and never had visible abs except twice: One Summer riding my bike to two jobs, one of which was over the dinner hour; and in Egypt when I had food poisoning and didn't eat for 2 days. Nowadays, the upper ones are okay, but the forever-inner tube is still there. I joke that I have GREAT abs......they're just covered up by fat. Which is true, I do inclined situps holding a plate, among other things. They're strong. But it doesn't really matter, I'm in better shape than I've ever been, functionally, and that's what matters to me. Not being in the dating pool also helps.
"I was going to "do" breast implants. It's obvious that the same point applies."
Well, no. Not at all. For one thing, a woman can't enlarge her breasts by exercising. It's implants or little bitty titties.
But the more important point is that fake tits "work". They work for the woman, and they work for her man. They make her feel sexy, and they make him feel sexual attraction. I guess I don't really know how women feel about male abdominal definition. Is it sexy?
In a world where "authenticity", with all its implications, was valued, the current press could not continue to function as it does.
Wonder if your body attacks the fat when you get hungry and tries to eat it.
"... we're not really voting for Kamala, we're voting for the apparatus."
All WaPo readers. Not that many.
I agree with Althouse on fake boobs. They don't really "work." Do women with fake boobs who lose all sensation in their chest really enjoy intimacy as much as they did before? Or do they just like the extra attention they receive from men? And how they look?
That's just strange and disturbing.
An acquaintance I know looks great after having 3 kids. I admit I was a little jealous. But then she told me she had the full mommy make over and I realized my stomach could be just as flat if I spent the money. I didn't care after that. I'll keep running with my imperfect body.
Hit the gym every day. Get your body fat down to single digits. Oh, and hit the gym. The hard part isn’t building the muscle. The hard part is losing that natural layer of fat that hides it.
Hit the gym every day. Get your body fat down to single digits. Oh, and hit the gym. The hard part isn’t building the muscle. The hard part is losing that natural layer of fat that hides it.
I think the person looking at those fake abs the most is the man who got them.
If a man thinks he needs ripped abs to find a woman he’s attracted to the wrong woman.
I was thinking: The man who got them, for another man.
It's an "augmentation".
Dehydration helps.
When my brother was in the army he had those but was eating essentially all vegetables and doing p.t. three times a day. He decided it wasn't what he needed.
"that's a free-access link"
Not really. They require my email address.
I could give them a fake one, I guess, but I'm hopelessly honest.
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