The body politick.

Not really. No more politics. Honest. For a bit.

No, this is about something else. For the last...20? Yeah, we'll go with 20. For the last 20 years or so, we've seen an awful lot of research and commentary on body image. Specifically, women's body image. What a nightmare! I'm not going to recap the whole thing here, but let's just say thank God for Christina Hendricks, right?

What seems to have gone unnoticed, though, is male body image. My son has taken to watching Batman, Spiderman and the like--all cartoons. Well. Well! I used to watch Batman cartoons as a kid, too. Also Spiderman. And it seems our caped crusader (along with the Boy Wonder) and our web slinger have been hitting the gym pretty hard.

So my question for the day is this: Are we now presenting equally unobtainable ideals of physical proportions to our sons? It's not like watching a body builder or a strongman competition, which I'm not sure a four-year-old would really be into, unless it included some seriously big trucks or huge piles of dirt.

No...this is different. This is targeted at a younger audience.

Food for thought. Happy Friday, everyone.