From height to receding hairlines.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed
Do a quick Google image search for "wedding weight loss," for example, and the results will be 99% female. The photos show women in lace wedding dresses with measuring tapes around their waists; before and after photos of ladies proudly showing off all the spare fabric their pre-wedding diets gave them.
Setting aside the pressure this puts on women who, I don't know, maybe just want to get married and be happy, it creates a vacuum for men who might be grappling with body image issues of their own.
When I put out a call for men to share via the BuzzFeed Community how they were affected by their their body insecurities before and during their weddings, I received dozens of responses. Men, it turns out, deal with a lot — weight, height, hair loss, too much hair, excess sweat — but rarely have the space to discuss it, or even feel that they're not alone.
Here are three of their stories.
Paul, 29, Berkley, Michigan
Paul and his wife, Nicole, got married in February 2015 after dating for five years. Paul hoped to lose weight before his wedding.
How has your weight affected you throughout your life?
I'm about 5'11" and I've always fluctuated around 250 pounds, plus or minus 20 pounds. It's only bothered me in the same way it'd bother anyone — you're much harder on yourself than anybody else is. Especially in high school and in early college, it affected my confidence in approaching any romantic interest. As you get older, you realize that weight isn't all that there is to people. Especially after I graduated from undergrad, I became more accepting of who I was at that time. It's good to strive for improvement, but you have to have self-respect and acceptance for yourself. I met my wife just after I finished my first year of law school.
How did your concerns about your weight affect you as you prepared for your wedding?
The joke after I got engaged was about me going on a wedding diet. Even when we went shopping for the engagement ring, the joke in the background was like, "When's the diet going to start?" When you get married, all you do is open yourself up to unsolicited advice from people about everything.
I guess it didn't bother me because as a guy, you're exposed to things like King of Queens — you know, the guy is a fat, funny slob with a hot, young wife. The trope that it doesn't matter what guys look like because no one cares is everywhere. Even the dadbod trend was about embracing that whole mentality. The whole thing is really, really strange.
It wasn't too worried about losing weight, but I wanted to look the best I could for my wedding day, because those are the pictures everyone looks at. I used apps like Fitbit to figure out what I was eating, what my target would be. By the wedding, I'd lost 5–7 pounds. As the wedding approached, the anxiety would increase that I wasn't making it a priority. At the three-month mark, I realized some massive change wasn't going to occur, so it became more about feeling good than hitting a number I thought would look good.
Andrew Richard / BuzzFeed