I was sitting in my Roosevelt Fellow office hours yesterday when I happened upon a mountain of junk food essential to alleviate the stress of any office throughout the day. As I stuffed my tired face with milk and cookies, a woman from the Registrar's office walked in, looked at me and said "Oh, you're a guy, you probably don't even know what a calorie is!"The truth is, Ms. Registrar's Office Lady, I do know what a calorie is, and as a guy, I'm probably more conscious of my weight than I'd like to admit.

A myth exists between men and women today that must be debunked, so repeat after me: Guys care about their weight.

They look in the mirror incessantly, go on diets, ask one another how they look, change three times before they go out, spend hours in the gym and eat health foods. Some guys even get their hair dyed, get pedicures, and get their eyebrows waxed. (Disclaimer: never have, never will.)

But where did this myth of male apathy relating to appearance begin?
Surely it did not originate in Hollywood. Guys are held to the same standards as their female counterparts. Sure, Britney, Christina and Mandy see miracles when they look in the mirror every morning. And yes, us guys got away with stars like Chris Farley, John Goodman and Jason Alexander. But then look at MTV's most recent top 10. If you walked down to Gosman, most guys you would see are working for 50-inch arms and Enrique's six pack. Ricky Martin needed to shake his "bon-bon" at dizzying speeds to get to the top of the charts.

The diet market is no reflection of such a fallacy either. The male diet drug industry is booming and is growing at a faster rate than ever. At my gym in New York this past summer, I used to see men flocking to exercise classes. Yet somehow, while Weight Watchers caters to men and women, it is only pictures of the latter that appear on their Web site.
Douglas Daft, Coca-Cola's Chairman and CEO who spoke in Sachar this week, told Brandeis students that "for the best indication of who you are, look at where your feet take you." In the spirit of true reporting, the last time I was in the gym I counted how many huffers and puffers I saw of each gender. Care for a guess? The numbers were fairly equal.

Whenever a myth exists, it is interesting to examine who is promulgating it. After polling a bunch of friends, my suspicions were confirmed: It's the men. Nine out of 10 guys I spoke to refused to admit that they personally, or males in general, cared much about their weight. After polling 10 girls, all 10 guessed that in general, males do in fact care about their weight a lot. In a sneaky way, guys have convinced girls to devote more attention to their own appearance.

Basically, the myth of girls caring more about their appearance than men seems to be a creation of the male imagination. It may just be the best pour homme scheme ever concocted as well. "If we tell girls that they care more, then they will," confessed one of my bellied roommates.

Before I end, I would like to address the seemingly superficial topic of investigation of my article. Before you throw your tomatoes at my shallow exterior-oriented analysis, consider the vast importance of this very subject. Whole books of ancient Greek philosophy are dedicated to the role of physical appearance, and indeed philosophers such as Aristotle believed that physical beauty was a prerequisite for true perfection.

So, in the spirit of Apollo, the Greek god of male beauty, let me proclaim that guys care. And they have nothing to be embarrassed about.