Are Men More Vain Than Women?

So I ran across an article by a guy named David Zinczenko who keeps a blog about the “Mysteries of the Sexes” over on Yahoo, and he had a really interesting article about how men are just as concerned about how they look as women.  Check the snippage…

David Zinczenko writes:
But the truth is that men care almost as much about their appearance as Lindsay Lohan cares about New Year’s Eve. The survey I did for my book Men, Love & Sex showed that 9 in 10 men aren’t satisfied with their appearance — and that they’d jump at the chance at changing one particular part of their body if they could. Consider these truths about men and their appearance — and then ask yourself, Who’s really more vain, women…or men?

* Women may buy more shoes, but men drop the big bucks. When asked how much he’d pay for rock-hard abs (if it was only that easy), the average guy would invest $5,000 of his own money in himself. For movie-star looks in general, he’d drop $17,600. The scary fact: Although more women actually pay for cosmetic enhancements, men who seek medical help for their appearance are twice as likely to opt for an invasive cosmetic procedure like liposuction rather than a non-invasive appearance boost.

* Men care more about their boobs than you do. Check this out: Only 34 percent of women surveyed said they’d want bigger breasts, but 38 percent of men said they’d want larger pectoral muscles. (If you were wondering, the circumference of the average man’s chest is two inches larger than that of a woman’s.) Men either have the pecs that are strong enough to break knuckles, or we’re subjected to the ubiquitous man-boob barbs. And that hurts. Beating pecs as the top male body issue by the tiniest of jiggles: Just over 40 percent of guys say the gut is the No. 1 body part they’d like to change.

* $1.1 billion can buy a lot of hair gel. One of a man’s biggest frets comes when he looks down the shower drain and says goodbye to the mane that defines his manhood. American men spend more than $300 million on toupees annually. And $800 million on hair transplants (up to $20,000 for each procedure, which is performed on more than 24,000 men annually-and just 7,000 women).

Personally, I don’t think this is a vanity thing, I think it’s an INSECURITY thing.  I’d say that 99% of everything guys do is based around getting a hot chick to sleep with them, and because of our culture, we feel pressure to look a certain way.

I think most guys would be content to be fat, man-boobed, bald slobs if they could still get laid by a hot chick every night.

I’ll say this though – as if I haven’t said it a million times already – looks are NOT as important as many guys think.  It is important to look the best you possibly can, but fretting over your hair, chest size, or whatever is a poor waste of your time.  If you’re going bald, shave your head and be proud of it!  (Bald men are supposed to be extremely verile, after all, and baldness is a look.  Just grow some facial hair to offset it!) If you’re overweight, work to get in shape, but know that having a gut won’t be the end of the world.

I’m sure if you got rid of TV and Magazines telling us what we have to look like, a lot of this “vanity” stuff would go away.