Perfect female cover models make men feel insecure

A University of Missouri study shows that men find impossibly perfect, airbrushed women on the covers of men's magazines to be emasculating, intimidating and hard to live up to, says a story in Folio:

While female readers may respond to photos of skinny, flawless models with negative feelings about their own bodies, the study’s lead researcher, Jennifer Aubrey, said, “Men make inferences that in order to be sexual and romantic with women of the caliber they see in Maxim magazine, they also need to be attractive.”

Pictures of hot women, the study found, were more disturbing to a guy’s body image than were pictures of men with rippling abs and bulging biceps.

Who would have guessed that Maxim’s Edyta Sliwinska’s sultry look could be more intimidating than Taye Digg’s ripped thorax? Feeling insecure about our bodies, it appears, is equal opportunity.