The societal pressure on women to look young and beautiful is ridiculous. And influential women actively promoting such garbage is part of the problem.
Men get former Mr. Universe's modeling "eat right and exercise." (Arnold in case you aren't getting the reference.) Women get this kind of crap.
Steroid use is increasingly common among "hobby bodybuilders", a predominantly male demographic, which has all sorts of nasty side effects. Now there are apparently also procedures where young men break their bones to gain a few centimeters in height.
While cosmetic procedures aren't as common among men as they are in women, they're getting increasingly popular. So saying its "never" men is a huuuuuuuugeeee stretch.
Unless you want to insist modern medicine has deep flaws and needs a major overhaul. Good luck getting taken seriously with such opinions.
No need to strawman my comment
There is no clear cut, bright line between life and health. The body doesn't care if you took steroids with a prescription or without one.
As noted in another comment, Arnold Schwarzenegger has a heart condition. I have read it might have killed him at a young age if he hadn't been a devoted fitness nut.
He admits to using steroids. He's still alive.
The body doesn't, but the person who prescribes the medication does. With any medication there are tradeoffs to be made. A doctor is usually able to make a more qualified assessment of said tradeoffs than the average patient.
After all, the tradeoffs of taking anabolic steroids are plenty, especially when taken over longer periods of time.
And not to mention the fact that the stuff people source illegaly is rarely chemically as safe as the stuff used as medication.
> He's still alive.
He is, many other high profile bodybuilders aren't. While that's not a medically meaningful statistic, these are the people whose aesthetics young men strive for.
So my view of modern medicine is a tad more jaded than yours and I guess this is where we agree to disagree.
Furthermore, the steroids that you are referring to are most likely corticosteroids [2], which are most certainly not prescribed to "boost your immune system" but rather to reduce the immune response when it is excessive, or even suppress it to treat autoimmune diseases.
Please don't assume that off-label anabolic steroid usage is somehow safe and healthy only because modern medicine uses completely different compounds which happen to share a portion of their chemical structure for treating specific medical issues.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid
I'm not assuming it's safe. I'm merely asserting it's not as cut and dried as "steroids: bad."
Don't you think that is an example of men doing 'stupidly risky stuff' for cosmetic reasons?
Injecting blood into the skin on your face is purely cosmetic.
And I have a lot of experience with doing things that helped my health in the face of not having a proper diagnosis for nearly 36 years that other people were highly critical of, so I'm a tad skeptical that young men using steroids are all 100 percent merely being stupid and self destructive.
No doubt that some are. But I feel it's more complicated than the kinds of cosmetic crap women tend to do.
He also apparently has a heart condition that might have killed him had he not been a fitness nut. Instead, he had heart surgery and called someone in Hollywood from his hospital bed to be emotionally supportive when their movie was doing poorly which just made the guy go something like "Oh. He's hospitalized and calling me to cheer me up. It's worse than I feared!"
Both toxic masculinity and toxic femininity exist.
I had to look him up. Never heard of him.
In contrast, Arnold is pretty darn famous.
So is Kim Kardashian.
Toxic femininity seems more mainstream than toxic masculinity and, in fact, this is the first time I've heard anyone use that expression. Most people think this cult of youth and beauty is fine and critics like me are weirdos.
Edit: hmm maybe that is societal pressure in a way
But it's not this shit in the name of youth and beauty.
Yeah its shit in the name of a bigger biceps and a bigger junk, I don't see how that is any better?
Are we at the stage of inserting silicone in your junk so your jock strap looks better?
(Please note you can just pad your bra if you want to look busty fully clothed. And it leaves scars, so I'm skeptical of the value it has for looking good naked or in teeny, tiny bikinis.)
Yes. Packers exist. Also Synthol is oil injected into your muscles to make them look better.
Searching "packers for your junk" or "penile implants" doesn't get me anything that sounds like it's what this comment is referring to.
Please and thank you.
Yes? People do get penis enlargement surgery, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_enlargement#Surgical_met... or phalloplasty which has a Wikipedia page I'd rather not link here.
Not really a fair comparison to breast augmentation though, which is more similar to the plastic surgery muscles some people get. Or hair plugs.
While I think it's much worse for women, acting like it only affects women is disingenuous.
My general understanding is that phallus enlargement is intended to enhance sexual pleasure whereas breast enlargement has no such function and from what I gather likely reduces sexual pleasure for the woman.
But I don't have a phallus, haven't seen one in ages and I'm perfectly happy to be educated on the topic by actual penis-having peoples more in the know than little ole me.
I'm no expert on the subject, but I've always thought people primarily got them to look better with maybe some hope of performing better for their partner. I've never thought they were for their pleasure, except in the same way as breast enlargement where you enjoy pleasing your partner.
Still, I think a better comparison is "men get hair treatments, primarily as a looks thing."
It might be useless, but I wouldn't tell someone with a useless habit that it's dangerous.
Stupidity is everywhere. Saying some things are moderately stupid in x thing, so face-palming about egregious stupidity in y thing is an overreaction is essentially dismissive of valid concerns.
PRP injections are a relatively safe procedure, and should not give you HIV. The risk of HIV comes from using unsafe medical practices like sharing needles, and this exact same risk exists when injecting other substances like Synthol.
> Side effects of PRP injections are very limited because the injections are created from your own blood, and your body should not reject them or react in any negative way. As with any injection, there is a remote risk of infection. Otherwise, there are no significant risks apart from the variability and unpredictability of how effective the treatment will be for a particular patient.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-t...
Vampire Facials are used on balding men -
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2764957/One-Kim-K...
This is not stupidly risky stuff. It was the unlicensed clinic at fault.
There is nothing wrong about wanting to look good. There is nothing wrong with working to achieve something. There is also nothing wrong with doing risky things.
I feel like solving the worlds issues isn't needed when talking about vampire facials. It's been used medically as well. It's an interesting tech.
It's more interesting to try and understand does it actually work.
I'm a woman on an overwhelmingly male forum giving my take. As a demographic outlier for this forum, my take tends to not be what most people here would say.
Sometimes, people find that insightful, thought provoking and valuable.
Sometimes it looks like this.
I have zero ability to predict beforehand which it will be.