Notice how it's never men doing stupidly risky stuff to try to look young and beautiful.
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.
> Notice how it's never men doing stupidly risky stuff to try to look young and beautiful.
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.
They also prescribe steroids to boost your immune system when you have nasty infections, so it's not cut and dried that "steroids = all downside and stupidity."
Unless you want to insist modern medicine has deep flaws and needs a major overhaul. Good luck getting taken seriously with such opinions.
"Steroids" [0] are a very broad category of organic compounds, and it is a mistake to assume that the effects of steroids used for performance enhancing and bodybuilding —anabolic steroids, themselves still a broad category [1]— have anything to do with steroids in general and the specific clinical use cases that each of them may have.
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.
You asserted that 'it's never men doing stupidly risky stuff to try to look young and beautiful', to which a commenter replied that 'steroid use is increasingly common among "hobby bodybuilders", a predominantly male demographic'.
Don't you think that is an example of men doing 'stupidly risky stuff' for cosmetic reasons?
To my mind, it's a little different because bodybuilding is a form of fitness when done right.
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.
I was of the impression that when talking about stupid things people do to themselves, it did not specifically need to be said that I am talking about anabolic steroid abuse without a prescription, for the purpose of performance enhancement.
I'm absolutely not trying to strawman your 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.
> The body doesn't care if you took steroids with a prescription or without one.
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.
I'm someone with a serious medical condition where the official medical position boils down to "Quit your bitching about how you want real help and stop bothering us with ridiculous demands to do something effective. Politely and quietly die your slow, torturous death while revering and appreciating the monsters not really caring about your welfare."
So my view of modern medicine is a tad more jaded than yours and I guess this is where we agree to disagree.
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!"
The existence of folks like Andrew Tate suggests otherwise. Aren't there dudes doing like infrared blasting off their balls or getting penile implants?
Both toxic masculinity and toxic femininity exist.
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.
It’s not societal pressure women do it do themselves. If a woman looks hot people will try please them for no reason and once they start losing that they cant handle being in a social status of nobody cares/irrelevant
Edit: hmm maybe that is societal pressure in a way
I agree with you that women do this to themselves and famous influential women actively promote it, not men. That doesn't mean there's no social pressure.
Jelqing runs a high risk of destroying your penile tissue. Feel free to Google it, but expect stories like "I quit when I started ejaculating blood."
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.
I'm the fool who made the original critique. The outcomes being disproportionate looks pertinent to me.
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.
Women get surgery to get bigger boobs, primarily as a looks thing.
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.)
Appologies, I glossed over the word "into" from your comment. Packers are not implanted. Penile implants exist but are typically done for medical reasons (like you've fucked up your junk by jelqing). The closest thing to female breast implants is male pec implants. I'd argue Synthol is similar too, though less invasive.
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 know one of the major risks of enlargement is impotence, and like with breast enlargement I can't imagine jamming a bunch of non-nerve things in there improving sexual pleasure.
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."
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.
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.