Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Superhero in Training



In the blog by J. Bryan Lowder, he discusses the vigorous training Hollywood actors now must endure in order to stay employed. When the general public sees the body image created by Hollywood, they immediate view their self-image in a different way resulting in a negative consequence. Lowder alludes to the "extreme plastic surgery" men specifically take in order to look like their favorite heroes. 
To be able to have a chance at even making the cut to play a superhero role, actors must go through gruesome workouts, strict dieting, and subjective testosterone enhancers. For example, for Ryan Renolds to look extremely ripped on camera, his trainer keeps his water intake on a minimum a day before the shoot. On top of temporary dehydration, he is put onto low sodium and carb diet three or four days in advance. All of this preparation is done even before the final editing that you see in the movie. Lowder implements information from other sources like Logan Hill on his article about superhero training. Using information from outside sources, Lowder is able to successfully illustrate his belief of how Hollywood's male body ideals are an absolute disservice to society.
Lowder argues that Hollywood beauty ideals play a detrimental role on the self-image of normal human beings and I agree because Hollywood does undermine the principles of male beauty ideas by having actors look perfectly "chiseled" at all times. This post is interesting because it talks about the issues of male body images. Sometimes, men do indeed take these images conveyed by Hollywood seriously and they feel pressured to take matters into their own hands. In the picture above, Herbert Sanchez, age 35, went through nearly 2 decades of plastic surgery just to look like his favorite superhero. 

No comments:

Post a Comment