Author Topic: how do I bring this up with my husband?  (Read 17214 times)

Offline Alchemist

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My main reason for those sayings like "standing in a garage don't make you a car", are for those young men that have those tiny little bumps on their chest that think that everyone looks at their chest and lose all their self confidence and self esteem because of a little extra fat, breast tissue and skin!

To me, it's no different then if you were to start going bald! Growing breast, going bald (or other changes in life) does not change who you are no more then standing in the garage will make (or turn you) into a car!

Bob

Hi Bob,

Do you remember Mike Royko (columnist in Chicago) and his Dr Kookie collections of writings?  He started the "GUN OWNER OF THE YEAR AWARDS" for people who managed to do things like shoot their penis off in bed. Being bald (of which your mention provided the inspiration for all that follows) as Royko pointed out is a sign of the mature man and therefore imitated by the football helmets to make their players look like more mature men rather than immature young men hardly grown up. 

So now we have another marker for the more mature men, more matured breasts.  Trying to get on TV with doctors making it a medical situation, but not playing it out as body dysmorphic disorder, just terrible psychological anguish and shame from a very normal and common breast growth that over time includes more than 50% of boys and men, without really delving into it. 

Maybe that whole approach is just not going to get something done.  What is it we, part of the eventual majority with larger than non-existent male breasts want out of publicity and TV shows?   Ultimately I think that what we want is a society in which we can be comfortable with our bodies.  Taking the medical show approach is that there is something medically wrong with being of the greater than 50% majority.  Promoting it as

My ex-wife and now my partner both never got why basically junior high teenage boy BS was so traumatic.  Society doesn't get it at all either.  Most of the men, and even most of the men with gyne, don't get the intense shame for a normal occurrence for which they have no causal responsibility that some feel.

So, from a different viewpoint, Dr Kookie perhaps, maybe we need to take control of the mythology, of the societal story about gynecomastia.  Being taboo to talk about makes it so that NOBODY even in the family understands.  My mother was fat phobic anorexic and on me breasts were clearly more fat and completely unacceptable. So what we need is a societal story of normality and acceptance.  Even a mythology that the smaller percentage of men that don't grow normal male breasts can get help doing so and becoming normal(controversy to keep them entertained and not noticing the real messages) which seems much easier than keeping them from growing. 

So all the noise is to get the stories to allow the breast deprived men to develop "normal" male breasts, for clothing styles to take them into account and expect them in their design.  So soon we would see ads for men's bras on prime time shows and male breasts with or without bras become normal and acceptable.  Then when the protest is that is taking correction way too far, then when the dust  settles acceptance and normalization will be established.  It's the type of commotion that will get all sorts of publicity and inspire TV shows and such with "true stories" that can't get done as "poor man, he has boobs" because that is a story that goes nowhere. 

And here we have two guys who didn't go through junior high hell with the biggest breasts in the school or whatever.  Generally older men who develop breasts ignore them as far as I can tell.  Where is the societal messaging coming from? 

And just because the ambulance chasers are promoting surgery for all the side effect cases they can around gynecomastia, remember that is for the benefit of the attorneys as they work on the percentage and want the bills to be as big as possible.  I don't think we want a situation were amputation becomes automatic and essentially mandatory upon appearance.  If we want to avoid some kinds of futures we need to take control of our own stories, of the stories of the 50% plus of men who have more developed male breasts.

We definitely should not be supporting mythology that makes us inferior and only acceptable with surgery to change our bodies or wearing ridiculously oversize hot uncomfortable multi-layered clothing.  So perhaps in a new mythology of our growing maturity,  one goes out and look around and see more than half the men have noticeable breasts, nobody is having to announce their problems with "hiding clothes" and look like they are dressed for the dead of winter in the heat of summer.  People are wearing clothing that fits and is comfortable. 

So the real question is, being in the majority, why is it on us to feel bad about our bodies, hide them from "decent" sight and even pay a bunch of money for surgery.  Why are we letting society do this to us?

What does this mean for the new guys here?   I don't know.  I do know that the problem is far more complicated.  To do surgery on all the new cases in a year in USA would cost about $10,500,000,000 at an average of $7000 apiece.  The "premium" per household tax unit per year would be $105 per year, call it $9/month forever to pay for all that surgery and that makes ho headway into the other 75,000,000+ men with it. 

What each person wants to do is up to them, sort of, except that it is acting out part of the societal mythology that gets the short end of the stick.  I have no idea how often the surgery is a psychological failure despite being "surgically correct".  That hasn't been discussed here.

Good luck. 


 

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