Your piece on the rise of impossible male beauty standards (‘There is no shame in being vain’: the relentless rise of impossible male beauty standards, 5 March) captures something bigger than vanity, that of a neoliberal moral economy which turns the body into a private “project” and then invoices the individual for failing it.
Mark Fisher called this magical voluntarism, the doctrine that we can will ourselves into any desired form, and that if we don’t, it’s because we didn’t want it enough. In that frame, a square jaw is “discipline”, hair loss is “laziness” and distress becomes personal inadequacy rather than a predictable response to platformed comparison, commercialised insecurity and precarious lives.
The most popular “help” often repeats the same spell of fixing yourself from the inside out, alone, quickly. But the pressures you describe are produced socially, by algorithms, markets, racism‑coded aesthetics and status anxiety, so the remedy can’t be individual grit. We need collective, material answers grounded in vulnerability, care and solidarity.
Dr Bruno De Oliveira
Hove, East Sussex
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