I understand this might get downvoted and while I agree with the parent I also blame the contraceptive pill, dysregulation of hormone systems (various reasons), environmental toxins and the general malleability of people when it comes to sexuality at very young ages and for reasons we don’t understand. In my father’s generation the vast majority of men by the time they were 25 years old could grown thick beards now I’d say it’s a minority. We should be more curious about where these changes have come from.
There seemingly are some environmental factors out there diluting testosterone levels (certain plastic seem like a risk, for instance), but pubescent boys are not taking contraceptive. That's a weird specific bogeyman to call out.
Don't downplay the influence of interracial mixing in the Americas, where I will perhaps incorrectly assume you live. Large amounts of body hair are not a universal male trait. Europeans and Mediterraneans are much hairier than Native Americans. If your ancestors were mostly on one side of that, then sure, they were hairier. Many of my more distant ancestors had no body hair at all.
You may notice a tradeoff here, as the same sensitivity to DHT in your hair follicles that causes facial hair to proliferate also causes male pattern baldness, and Europeans go bald much more often.
Nope, what you’re doing is totally misrepresenting what I’ve said. I’m saying if there are more effeminate men you’ll have on average more people who are transgender. Myself I can barely grow a beard and have man boobs that I’m trying to get rid of and hardly any body hair (yet my Dad has a full beard and hairy chest, I’m asking why is there this big difference in just one generation) but hopefully I still count as a first class citizen!
Be aware that men are coming under the same pressure on appearance that women have had for decades.
I'm in my 50's, and can remember a time when there wasn't this awareness of men's bodies. While it was admirable to be fit, and women certainly appreciated muscles and a lack of a beer gut, it wasn't seen as that important. Men could be flabby and still seen as physically attractive.
Moobs are normal. Not being able to grow a thick beard is normal. Body hair, or any hair, or not, is normal (I could count the number of hairs on my chest in my 20's and never once considered this to be unusual or in any way affecting my masculinity). I have friends who were balding in their mid-20's and that was normal.
The difference between 30 years ago and now is not in men's bodies. It's in our attitudes to men's bodies.
Men (and women, as always) are being taught to hate our bodies because businesses can profit from that emotion. We are being told that no-one will love us unless we're taller, stronger, hairier. We're being fed images of "perfect" men as aspirational targets that we should aspire to match (and to get there we need to buy a bunch of products, obviously).
We need to learn that all bodies are different, and all are acceptable. It's normal to have flabby bits. If you have to hate something, don't hate your body, hate the people telling you that your body is not good enough.
No, actually testosterone levels have been dropping, sperm counts have been dropping, and American men are vastly more obese and overweight than they were even 50 years ago. That is a change.
Just watch one of those old “Berlin in the 1920s” or “NYC in the 1970s” videos. You’ll quickly notice the almost complete lack of overweight people.
I have never had my testosterone checked. I knew one guy who had has checked, and it was by a female doctor who put him on pills.
I've always wondered where that testosterone level database is?
Maybe they test in the military? I don't know, but would like to know.
I just found a study, but didn't dig into it:
"Travison and his team analyzed data from the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, a long-term investigation of aging in about 1,700 Boston-area men. Data from the men were collected for three time intervals: 1987-1989, 1995-1997, and 2002-2004."
I am guessing it is mostly exercise and diet related.
People 50-70 years ago on average lived a very different life style in the US. The fear was that people weren’t getting enough food in the United States and the modern food industry was born and kind of over corrected and now obesity is the problem we are trying to solve.
On top of that I am shocked by how little the average American exercises, and I just don’t mean going to the gym and running, I mean basic, walking and doing something, anything physical.
It’s likely something environmental. Wild animals and even lab animals on strict diets are fatter now than they were in the 70s. A recent article discussed on HN proposed plastics and lithium contamination as two possible culprits.
Diet, sedentary jobs, lack of walkable cities, and (for better or worse) removal of shame culture. If you’ve spent any time in east Asia, you’ll notice that being overweight is strongly looked down upon by society at large. This shaming doesn’t exist in America.
As to shaming, I suspect causation goes the other direction, fat shaming has decreased because the number of fat people has increased.
Looking at the time frame, I don’t think the other things you mention fit either. They just haven’t changed that much since the 70s. And they don’t explain wild and lab animals also being fatter now.
I think you’re right. What about general propensity to obesity (as in genetically, or whatever) being more prevalent?
I know people that eat far worse than me, and do far less than me, but are still far skinnier than me.
>Just watch one of those old “Berlin in the 1920s” or “NYC in the 1970s” videos. You’ll quickly notice the almost complete lack of overweight people.
Being fat in the 80s is being skinny today. It's uncanny rewatching movies where the fat kid everyone picked on then would be on the average to skinny side today.
Whenever I bring that up I get someone popping out of the wood work saying that the 80s had heroin chik, unrealistic body expectations and on and on.
But the fattest state in 2000 (Mississippi) is skinnier than the skinniest state today (Colorado) [0]. And in 1990 the fattest state (again Mississippi) was half as fat as Colorado is today.
Forget being transgendered the majority of the US would look barely human to anyone from the 80s.
> It's uncanny rewatching movies where the fat kid everyone picked on then would be on the average to skinny side today.
The distribution of body types in film (in the 1980s and otherwise) represents the fashions of the motion picture industry, not (except coincidentally) broader society. The relation of that fashion to broader society is very much not consistent.
> Forget being transgendered the majority of the US would look barely human to anyone from the 80s.
Being an actual person from the 1980s (70s, in fact) I can say with some confidence that this is not true.
So obesity rates haven’t increased dramatically? If that’s your argument, I’m afraid you’re simply misinformed.
And no, there are plenty of videos of normal people that have nothing to do with “the fashions of the motion picture industry.” Millions of video clips are available right now online.
>The distribution of body types in film (in the 1980s and otherwise) represents the fashions of the motion picture industry, not (except coincidentally) broader society. The relation of that fashion to broader society is very much not consistent.
>>Whenever I bring that up I get someone popping out of the wood work saying that the 80s had heroin chik, unrealistic body expectations and on and on.
>>But the fattest state in 2000 (Mississippi) is skinnier than the skinniest state today (Colorado) [0]. And in 1990 the fattest state (again Mississippi) was half as fat as Colorado is today.
Dear god you can at least read the part of the post where I already answered that point.
Interestingly, the Forbes article you're referencing is partially based on this paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26126... which confirms a link between advertising and voluntary testosterone testing (entirely supporting my point). Men are being targeted by advertising that encourages them to think about their bodies differently.
While I do not disagree with anything you say, you also completely ignore that chemical pollution in our drinking water and food has been shown to cause changes in us.
Instead of completely ignoring their point and just telling them to accept themselves as they are, why should we not also be looking at our environment and asking if it is impacting us?
> Myself I can barely grow a beard and have man boobs that I’m trying to get rid of and hardly any body hair
Do you by chance sit around at a PC all day and get less exercise than you really should? I'm not sure I'd pin this on a biology thing just yet, there's so many things that could cause that
Losing weight and getting exercise gave me all sorts of "manly" traits. Turns out sitting around letting your muscles go to goo can mess with your systems a bunch. I have to shave too often now if anything haha
However if we wanted to turn this into a hypothesis our first stumble is that not all gender dysphoric people are overweight, so it's probably not that
> However if we wanted to turn this into a hypothesis our first stumble is that not all gender dysphoric people are overweight, so it's probably not that
Like all the “why are people gay‽”-type nonsense, I also think it's not that – but people are complicated. There is not going to be a single factor for anything, so I don't think that's a valid reason to discard the hypothesis. “There is no real correlation in the first place” would be.
I do four hard weight focused workouts per week of 1.5h each so 6h of exercise. I probably need to address diet, but even so, lots of fresh home cooked meals in there. Maybe need to do more cardio but that tends to set off my SVT. Thanks for asking.
I'm not saying that you said it, I'm saying we can probably rule it out as a hypothesis because there's no correlation that I know of. Admittedly I have never looked into it so only know the people I know
It came up as a thought because you mentioned manboobs, which I have personal experience with hence the rest of my comment, but aside from that my words are my own
I don’t think you’re trying to discuss these things honestly. Are you really saying sexual characteristics aren’t controlled by hormones and these sexual characteristics don’t have any effect on how humans think about their gender?
We all start off genderless until testosterone washes over the male unborn foetus starting some of the gender characteristics like penises and brain changes. I think (it’s hard to tell as you’re so muddled in your thinking) you’re taking the bell curve of differences and how those differences manifest and attempting to make up concrete rules. Statistics doesn’t work that way.
If testosterone is the defining characteristic of being male, I have no idea why trans people born male need take hormones to reduce testosterone levels.
I really don’t get your argument at all. Testosterone and other androgens can increase masculine features. In a purely statistical sense gender and sexual apparatus are heavily correlated, but then I see gender as being more of a spectrum than a binary anyway. I think these things can be influenced by the environment a lot, if you believe you’re a bunch of chemical reactions happening in a biological system how can what we be anything apart from hormones, genetics and culture interacting to express a gender?
If you've never been fit enough to do something like a muscle up then you have no idea what having testosterone feels like.
I'm saying this as a former blob who got fit during covid by accident. You are your body and your body happens to have a mind, not the other way around.
It is equally dangerous to ignore environmental factors. We also know that male fertility is on a sharp decline but don't know why, this may be related and should be investigated.
And we know biphenol/phthalate chemicals mimic estrogen in the body and have been in just about everything for the last couple generations. At least it has to be considered. Hormones
