Confidence Game

It’s fine if you don’t love your dad bod, height or bald spot, Lauren Larson writes. But you might want to fake it for a bit

I’ve always been a fount of body negativity in my relationships. I’ve fretted to my boyfriends about my Clydesdale legs, the bald peninsula on one side of my head, and my “old lady hands”, among many, many other things. For a long time, the men I dated seemed like unshakable pillars of confidence; they appeared to have limitless patience for my insecurities while being totally immune to their own. I remember one boyfriend, at uni, climbing out of my extra-long twin bed and doing some incredibly unself-conscious nude stretches in the morning light. I was awed by the confidence of that.

But now, as men dip a toe in the body-positivity movement, I’ve realised that my uni boyfriend was probably just feigning confidence. More men are talking publicly about their vulnerabilities, and more men in my life are airing their insecurities to me. “Sorry, I’ve kind of let myself go this year,” a guy told me last summer, mid-coitus; recently a friend shyly asked me if I thought his jeans were too snug in the thigh region. As a body-positivity acolyte, I’m thrilled. As a woman – particularly as a woman trying to figure out the right answer to, “Is my beard too patchy?” – I’m a little flustered.

Of course, men have had body anxieties all along. A heap of research indicates that exposure to impossible female bodies negatively affects women’s self-perception, but far fewer studies explore how men feel when faced with ads of a shirtless Cristiano Ronaldo, briefs straining against his chiseled soccer thighs. (At Men’s Health, we’re aware of this. Our cover stars’ bodies are inspiring, but that’s why we always focus on how hard our subjects work to look the way they do.)