That's men for you: Are you an Adonis or a bear? Who cares?
Increasingly, it seems, men do. We men are used to the idea of women working hard on their looks. Behind all that work is the usually-mistaken conviction that they are unattractive. But now men are at it as well.
We look at the Adonises in the ads in the Saturday and Sunday magazines and we compare ourselves unfavourably to them. In the United States, the eating disorders orders anorexia and bulimia are spreading among men seeking to slim down to the dimensions of male models.
So too is overeating, to increase weight in men who believe they are way too slim. Ireland is rarely far behind the US in these matters. Indeed cosmetic surgery businesses offering to enhance the appearance of men as well as women already appear to be flourishing.
The 01 edition of the Golden Pages carries no fewer than 10 pages of advertising offering various surgical treatments to make men and women look better.
Similarly, gyms are flourishing. I sometimes think the gym has replaced Sunday Mass as the place which you must go to once a week or be damned forever. And the true devotee, like the daily communicant of old, will go more often than that.
This is all grand in itself. If you get a kick out of a spot of high-priced nip and tuck and if it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything, then go right ahead.
And the gym has the benefit, not only of building physical strength and fitness, but also of fighting depression. Exercise lifts the mood and some studies suggest it can be as beneficial as counselling.
What isn't helpful is going around thinking you look unattractive just because you're not like one of those guys whose bare torsos are put on display in the cosmetic ads.
The first reason why it isn't helpful is that thinking like that about yourself is quite a burden to carry through life.
The second reason is that hardly anybody looks like those magazine guys. They conform to some sort of ideal which probably goes back to Greek and Roman times. Even back then I bet most Greeks and Romans didn't look at all like Greeks and Romans: they were too busy surviving to worry about the body beautiful.
And although most men don't look at all like the Adonises in the ads, women still seem to be interested in most men. It is the general run of men with all their blemishes that women fall in love with, marry and have children with.
Could it be that there are not enough Adonises to go around or that the Adonises, as the joke says, have boyfriends already?
Not really. Research at Harvard suggests that what men think women want and what women really want are two different things. All right, you didn't need a Harvard research programme to tell you that but the findings were still interesting:
Men asked to guess what sort of bodies would appeal to women came up with a "ideal" chap who had 20-30 pounds more muscle than the average male. Yikes.
Fortunately women, bless 'em, choose bodies which were closer to the average man.
One explanation for the men's choices is that we increasingly take our physical standards from the world of advertising and the media.
Interestingly, when the test was given to male students in Taiwan they did not assume that women preferred Adonis types but opted for bodies closer to the average.
Researchers speculate that the relative absence of muscular images in Chinese media may account for this.
Other explanations for this more mellow approach include the fact that Chinese culture does not equate muscularity and masculinity.
So relax. Don't go hiding yourself just because you're not a male pin-up and will never appear in an after-shave advertisement. Step out there and let the women have a look at your ordinary self. They might just like what they see.