Have you seen the new David Beckham underwear ad for H&M?  It’s all flesh and muscles and tats( lots of tats) and ripples and all I can says is OH MY!

Geez! Doesn't anybody give a hoot about the self-image of little boys?  I presume not.

What about all those cute, chubby, little boys who see that ad and suddenly start thinking of themselves as inadequate?  I know, I'm stretching it.

But, if this ad had instead of Beckham, featured a young woman, let’s say Katy Perry, would the moms of little preteens be in an up roar about it?  Maybe. But I bet some of those same moms are googling — Beckham, ad, underwear — right now.

 I know one thing, moms certainly did get unnerved when they saw little Miley Sirus wrapped in a sheet, only a sheet.

 OK! That’s not fair. Miley was only 15 when that too-darn-sexual-for-a-little-girl picture was taken and posted on the cover of “Vanity Fair,” magazine. And, she was hot off the Disney channel _ of Hannah Montana fame.

Still, I mean Beckham is practically naked in the ad I saw on YouTube.

"Yes " (high five, fist pump, chest bump). He does look good.

I do appreciate the eye candy for women, for a change, especially after years of having to flip the channel to keep my boys from going goo goo eyed watching all those half-naked Victoria Secret models strutting across the television screen; with angel wings on no less.

 I have to say, my son, the oldest one, said he saw nothing wrong with the Beckham advertisement,

  Except that instead of cool boxers, the soccer stud, I mean star,  is wearing boring briefs, or as my sons call ‘em “whitie tighties.”  

He points out that none of the close up camera shots (with the Animal’s 1965 “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” playing in the background) are of his private part area, I think he used the word “junk.” 

Nice bum though;  Mom talking. 

And, the camera does show off the wrinkles around his eyes (mom thinks that is sexy.) Oh yeah, they do show a good shot of his gold wedding ring too.

 But then my son didn’t see anything wrong with the Victoria Secret ads either.  In fact, he said he thinks the Beckham ad it very “tastefully done. It’s tame.”

 What’s worse, he said, are all the condom, tampon, sexual lubricant, and the take a pill get an erection ads.   Yeah, I don’t like those ads either.

 Still I do wonder why it is we( the public) don’t seem to care as much when the half-naked person is a guy.

If we don’t care about what our little boys see, then what about how a half-naked Beckham in a Super Bowl ad looks to little girls; my 9-year-old niece for example. Is that appropriate? 

One of my colleagues who has young girls about the age of my niece said if it comes on while he is watching the Super Bowl and his girls are in the room he’ll change the channel.

“I just can’t imagine any advertiser doing a commercial like that with a female celebrity without some out cry about objectifying women,” he said.

For the sake of argument, why is it that we are quick to protect the self-image of our little girls but our boys are on their own.

As the mother of two boys I resent that.

I know my boys have definitely been affected by the male body images they see getting attention. They may not admit it now but it’s true. They are very conscious of what they eat and I hear them all the time talking about being careful not to get fat and worrying about not being muscular enough.  Just check out the Facebook page of any 14 or 15-year-old boy. I bet you see a picture of them posing without a shirt on and showing off a six-pack of ab muscles.

If our girls take a sexy posed picture (like the girl who wanted a posed picture used in her high school year book), it would be scandalous.

 So I asked my 15 year old why he thinks no one makes a fuss about how boys perceive themselves, why no noise is heard about boys’ self-imagine unless it has to do with saggy britches and being gangsta. You know what he said?

“Because, no one cares about us guys.”