No difference in women’s and men’s self-esteem in youth and early adulthood

I can really relate to this issue. As a teenager, and a young adult, I felt very awkward about my body and had very low self-esteem. I have a condition called gynecomastia (enlarged male mammary glands) as well, which didn't help my confidence at all. At one point, I contemplated suicide because I hated my body so much. This was after I made tireless efforts working out to fix my body, to no avail. The rest of me looked ok, but the chest just would not budge. Thankfully, I eventually found a girlfriend who's a real sweetheart. She actually loves my body. Thus, I don't really worry about it, anymore.

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

I can empathise there. I have what is called "Pigeon Chest" - more correctly it's Pectus Carinatum - that I as a teen/young adult had trouble dealing with. I was never suicidal but my life was affected. My self confidence plumetted and worst of all my deformity only became really obvios around ages 14/15. Which of course is the worst time in anybody's life for something like that.

I still have it but since my doctor was able to reassure me it wouldn't severely affect me physically I don't worry about it. Of course going topless at the beach is off the agenda and finding tops/shirts that fit right is always a problem. But compared to many others out there who have worse to deal with I feel quite lucky.

I am the father of five kids, two girls and three boys. One boy is still a toddler, but the others are all aged 11 through to 17.

None of them have a particular condition that would affect their self-esteem, but I see all of them affected. The girls are constantly stressed by their size or shape, dieting or waxing or covering up with make-up. It's not vanity, it's embarrassment and pain at how they look. Society puts a lot of pressure on them as do their peers, and they constantly feel insufficient.

Once, perhaps, boys would have been excluded from this, but not now. My two older sons constantly stress about their body shape, try to lose weight and will skip meals if I don't watch them. They get highly embarrassed by how they look and desperately want the 'six pack' body.

To my eyes it is no different - society surrounds them with images of how they should look, from TV to magazines and movies. Everything is airbrushed and perfect, everything is unrealistic and plastic.

The only difference - and it is a HUGE difference - is how most of society treats them. At school girls are carefully watched for self-esteem issues, they are allowed to dress in private cubicles to avoid embarrassment and bullying, they have access to body counselling. Take a daughter to the doctors about a problem with acne or low self esteem, and you will be taken seriously and offered help.

Boys have to dress in one large room - and woe betide the boy who complains about that. There is no body counselling or help for boys self esteem, just punishment if they play up or refuse to take their shirt off for sport. Take a boy to the docs (as I have) re low self esteem, and the doc will send you home with zip.

The problems are the same, but as with so many issues we raise, the difference is in the treatment. As in, girls get help, boys get blamed and/or ignored.

"parents, teachers and counselors may overlook self-esteem problems in male adolescents and young men because of the widespread belief that men have higher self-esteem than women have.”

Male adolescents are almost 5 times more likely to kill themselves than their female counterparts. You'd think some of these so-called "educated" people might consider that just maybe boys' far higher suicide rate might give them some clue or indication that these boys' self-esteem isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Because if you are destroying yourself at that rate, my bet is you can't be too happy or content about things.

Good comments here.

I am skeptical on how the determination is made as to the level of male self esteem. The article mentions this:

"Researchers...looked at data from the Young Adults section of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a U.S. national probability survey..."

I am wondering if this is the survey given to school children starting around 6th grade and asked them all kinds of ridiculous questions and is considered by some to be an invasion of privacy. Most parents are not even aware their kids are being surveyed.

The survey asked students if they ever feel scared at home. If they feel their parents take them seriously, etc. It is a "fill-in the-bubble" type of questionnaire.

If this is all the research is then I am disappointed. I would like to see them dig deeper and have more reliable sources. Until male self esteem is taken seriously, there may not be much data to look over, and even when there is data such as suicide rates, it seems to be ignored.

We should put this near the top of the list of things to cover. There should be UN panels and committees looking into why the male suicide rate has skyrocketed since the early 70s the way they set up committees and panels for everything else: childhood obesity, violence against women, etc.

I seriously think we need to get people like Glenn Sacks behind this. We need to all look into what are the factors and condions that made this happen, that by the early 90s, the male suicide rate triples, and no one says a damn thing about it. At least until very recently...

where I come from in Canada there is a social worker trying to set up a council looking into why men are killing themselves so much more now than in the past, and so much more than women. I lost the goddamn name of the man doing it though and I can't seem to find in on the internet, because I wanted to help out. It was an article in the newspaper and I was meaning to post it here for you guys to see but I can't find it anywhere now.

Good luck to him anyway. And let's hope we all begin to look hard into this very serious men's rights issue.

I learned in sociology 100 that while women are more likely to attempt suicide than men, men are likelier to succeed in committing suicide. The textbook for that class referred to this difference in suicide rates as "the gender paradox." It was also dripping with feminist propaganda. It even had the nerve to suggest that women attempting suicide at greater rates than men might have to do with them feeling powerless in a male-dominated world.

I beg to differ! It's quite obvious that someone who will attempt suicide as opposed to go through with it, knows that somebody will respond to the cry for help and show them sympathy. Those who go through with it, however, realize there's no one to help them. That being said, it's pretty clear to see why men succeed at committing suicide at greater rates than women.

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!