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in these metrosexy times, whilst men are the objects of many a picture, it is probably worth examining this subject matter closely. Because metrosexual imagery is often very bland and samey. To be considered ‘objects of desire’ men have to have big tits and nice hair and svelt figures – oh, pretty much like women then.
And, even in the 21st century, there are still not enough women working as photographers and film directors, making the images of men and women and people who identify as neither, that saturate our culture.
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‘As a female poet, I have noticed over the years that male poets are often described in terms of being the romantic hero, dark, handsome, wild, notoriously philandering and accompanied by beautiful (young) female muses to “inspire” his creativity; the same “rule” does not apply to women. So, what if one is a female creator? If desire, and the object of desire and beauty are creative catalysts, then why do we not see that same poetic stereotype?
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Instead, the woman poet tends to just have the “mad” bit stuck to her rather than bad or dangerous to know!
Authority takes many forms. The cash register is one, religious scripture is another. People take wholesale what is said in ancient texts without questioning what inputs had gone into those texts, and thus how better to assay the resulting lines we see today.
More insidiously, we fall back all too often on social conditioning. And then, when asked to justify our opinion or behaviour, we look around and say “but that’s how it is.” And so women are judged by appearances in ways that aren’t applied to men, and few stop to consider why we think like this. Where did we get this default mode of thinking? What’s wrong with it?
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Recent research indicates, however, that minds are perceived along two dimensions, not one... Agency and Experience. Agency is the capacity to act, plan and exert self-control, while Experience is the capacity to feel pain, pleasure and emotions... This two-dimensional structure of mind perception suggests that past work on objectification is incomplete, as this research has focused almost exclusively on Agency related traits such as competence, intelligence and ambition...
Rather than a conflict between a physical object and an immaterial soul, dualism may be a conflict between rational agency (“mind”) and the seething passions of experience (“body”). People may thus have a tendency to view someone as capable of either agency or experience, as either someone capable of thinking, or as someone capable of feeling... -
People seen as bodies are not seen as mindless objects but instead as experiencers – someone more capable of pain, pleasure, desire, sensation and emotion, but lacking in agency. In other words, focusing on the body does not lead to de-mentalization but to a redistribution of mind...
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men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’
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how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To aquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it. That part of a woman’s self which is the surveyor treats the part which is surveyed so as to demonstarte to others how her whole self would like to be treated. And this exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. Every woman’s presence regulates what is and is not ‘permissible’ within her presense. Every one of her actions – whatever its direct purpose or motivation – is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated. If a woman throws a glass on the floor, this is an example of how she treats her own emotions of anger and so of how she would wish it to be treated by others. If a man does the same, his action is only read as an expression of his anger. If a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-women would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake.
It’s great that New York Magazine has noticed (and welcomed) how Hollywood has objectified men, and how men have objectified themselves. Difficult to believe, I know, but there are still plenty of people who do their best not to. Or refuse to admit that they’ve noticed. Including some feminists who want to pretend that objectification is something only done by men to women.
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‘Objectification’ is also of course the hallmark of metrosexuality – men’s desire to be desired is necessarily the desire to be ‘objectified’. Though I have to say I think the ‘O’ word clunky and outmoded. ‘Tarty’ trips and skips off the tongue better.
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The image below is the jacket of the original Cassell edition of M.I., now out of print, sporting a classic 1950s Athletic Model Guild still. I chose it partly because it was a tad ‘overdetermined’ and camp – particularly the Grecian codpiece and the pedestal/butt-plug – and partly as an illustration of the kind of ‘objectification’ of the male that happened underground and illicitly in the past.
In contrast to today’s corporate kind, conducted on billboards and at the multiplex.
For decades, while film and television have gotten progressively racier, the objects of the camera's increasingly lurid gaze had largely been women. The reasons for this are so unofficially official they're like unwritten laws, habits that have been codified into "common sense" even if they don't make much sense: Hollywood's a boys' club and male audiences want sex and violence, while women want hearts and flowers. So women are lusted after by the cameras, while audiences looking for a little bit of dude to ogle had to be content with tame rom-coms, subtext, and the dreaded Comedy Penis (see: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Observe and Report, Bruno etc.).
But no more! The Summer of 2011 officially became the summer that the male gaze was reflected back at itself — and with enthusiasm! In the summer's superhero movies, a supremely buff body became part of what made these heroes so super. The Captain America trailer had Dominic Cooper doing the old look-over-the-top-of-my-sunglasses move to get a load of the newly pumped up Chris Evans. In Thor, Kat Dennings's audience-surrogate character spends half the movie talking about how nutso everything is and the other half pointing out that this blond god from the heavens is massively pumped. Fourteen years ago, America lost it when Batman's costume included rubber nipples. Now we've got a Spider-Man whose costume lifts and separates.
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As revolutions go, the movie industry learning to exploit their male movie stars is more a matter of fairness than real upheaval. It's not like women are suddenly not being objectified; now it's just objectification for all. But if the upshot is a slight widening of the traditional Hollywood gaze, a recognition that all sorts of audiences are looking for tawdry thrills at the movies — not to mention, more movies about male strippers with hearts, and asses, of gold — how is that not progress?
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An interesting article by Joe Reid in New York Times Magazine addresses this question.
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It’s worth noting that Susan Bordo made this exact argument over a decade ago in her book that includes the influential essay, “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” (read some excerpts).
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‘For decades, The Playboy Mansion has been a playground For Men where Playmates have entertained millions of guests with their bunny costumes, a genius concept perfectly executed by a once young and vivacious idealist. However, that once young man, along with his rabbit tricks, are now old, decrepit and stale. It is time for a new mansion, a new playground where women set the standard. The Hans F Hansen Mansion will be a place of Elegance and Mystery, where guests will reach a level of thorough entertainment not only through it’s intoxicating atmosphere, but also by the exotically beautiful, multitalented, and worldly Hans F Hansen Dames. Isn’t it time for change? We say YES.. It Is.’
The Hans F Hansen Mansion aims to provide an environment where women can be empowered, sexy and adored by… er…gentlemen. You know, like Spearmint Rhino, that famous ‘gentleman’s club’ that the feminists love so much.
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I don’t know about you, but it isn’t really my idea of emancipation to learn to be ‘poised, worldly, well-spoken and multi-talented’.
The clever, metrosexy thing about this idea is that it really just copies the Heffner Playboy empire, but adds in a language and an imagery that suits the postmodern, post-feminist, post-everything world we live in.
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And, just as Hugh is king of his castle ( a little bit deflated since his bride to be walked out on him), so will Hans be. This is all about Hans. And Hans making money. Of course, if it was really metrosexy, the mansion would not be full of dames at all, but of dudes. My idea of a metrosexy utopia/dystopia, is a mansion full of fit buff boys, being ‘empowered’ by their freedom to be on display and adored as true ‘gentlemen’.
But even in the Metrosexy 21st century, some old fashioned ideas remain. One of them is that when it comes to sex work, because that is what this is, women constitute the majority of the labour force. Because the ‘demand’ for sexual services still comes from men overall. And men who pay for sex with men, still have to do so in far more shadowy corners than the Hans Hansen Mansion.
Are you male and looking for a date? It might be a good idea to shave beforehand, our survey suggests, as we discover that two thirds of British women prefer the appearance of a man without a beard, compared to less than one in ten who like the more hirsute type.
Perhaps relatedly, our poll also discovered that nearly two thirds of men do not currently have facial hair, leaving just over a third of men a little on the hairy side. However, of those who do have facial hair, more than half describe it as stubble, while just three in ten hairy men have a full beard and moustache.
I read with interest this YouGov survey published this week which provides some confirming data on the fashionability of face fuzz and its accessorization by males today: ‘stubble’ is reportedly the most popular form of facial hair today – especially with 18-24 year olds (51% say they have facial hair and 80% of those describe it as ‘stubble’). Stubble of course being the most easily adopted and discarded form of facial hair.
But the survey – called ‘Let’s Face It’ — is much less interesting for what it reports than for what it doesn’t. What it’s not facing. At all. The assumptions behind it and the way that compulsory heterosexuality is used to deprive all men of a voice, even about their own bodies.
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I read with interest this YouGov survey published this week which provides some confirming data on the fashionability of face fuzz and its accessorization by males today: ‘stubble’ is reportedly the most popular form of facial hair today – especially with 18-24 year olds (51% say they have facial hair and 80% of those describe it as ‘stubble’). Stubble of course being the most easily adopted and discarded form of facial hair.
But the survey – called ‘Let’s Face It’ — is much less interesting for what it reports than for what it doesn’t. What it’s not facing. At all. The assumptions behind it and the way that compulsory heterosexuality is used to deprive all men of a voice, even about their own bodies.
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The first assumption of course is that the date a male is looking for is necessarily with a woman.
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You've almost certainly heard feminist rants about impossible cultural ideals of femininity: how standards of femininity are so narrow and rigid they're literally unattainable; how, to avoid being seen as unfeminine, women are expected to navigate an increasingly narrow window between slut and prude, between capable and docile, between moral enforcer and empathetic helpmeet.
Here's what you may not know: It works that way for men as well.
A recent article about male fitness models has made me vividly conscious of how the expectations of masculinity aren't just rigid or narrow. They are impossible. They are, quite literally, unattainable.
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According to journalist Peta Bee in the Express UK (the article was originally published in the Sunday Times [London], but they put it behind a paywall), in order to make their bodies more photogenic and more in keeping with the masculine "fitness" ideal, top male fitness models routinely put themselves through an extreme regimen in the days and weeks before a photo shoot. Not a regimen of intense exercise and rigorously healthy diet, mind you... but a regimen that involves starvation, dehydration, excessive consumption of alcohol and sugar right before a shoot, and more.
This routine is entirely unrelated to any concept of "fitness." In fact, it leaves the models in a state of serious hypoglycemia: dizzy, exhausted, disoriented, and (ironically) unable to exercise, and indeed barely able to walk. But the routine makes their muscles look big, and tightens their skin to make their muscles "pop" on camera. And even then, the magazines use lighting tricks, posture tricks, flat-out deceptions, even Photoshop, to exaggerate this illusion of masculinity even further.
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The image being sold is clearly not one of "fitness" -- i.e. athletic ability and physical health. The image being sold is an exaggerated, idealized, impossible extreme of hyper-masculinity.
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You've almost certainly heard feminist rants about impossible cultural ideals of femininity: how standards of femininity are so narrow and rigid they're literally unattainable; how, to avoid being seen as unfeminine, women are expected to navigate an increasingly narrow window between slut and prude, between capable and docile, between moral enforcer and empathetic helpmeet.
Here's what you may not know: It works that way for men as well.
A recent article about male fitness models has made me vividly conscious of how the expectations of masculinity aren't just rigid or narrow. They are impossible. They are, quite literally, unattainable.
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According to journalist Peta Bee in the Express UK (the article was originally published in the Sunday Times [London], but they put it behind a paywall), in order to make their bodies more photogenic and more in keeping with the masculine "fitness" ideal, top male fitness models routinely put themselves through an extreme regimen in the days and weeks before a photo shoot. Not a regimen of intense exercise and rigorously healthy diet, mind you... but a regimen that involves starvation, dehydration, excessive consumption of alcohol and sugar right before a shoot, and more.
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This routine is entirely unrelated to any concept of "fitness." In fact, it leaves the models in a state of serious hypoglycemia: dizzy, exhausted, disoriented, and (ironically) unable to exercise, and indeed barely able to walk. But the routine makes their muscles look big, and tightens their skin to make their muscles "pop" on camera. And even then, the magazines use lighting tricks, posture tricks, flat-out deceptions, even Photoshop, to exaggerate this illusion of masculinity even further.
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women’s ‘sporno’ is presented, sold and critiqued so differently from men’s. The Times newspaper England printed a very moralising article about the Playboy shoot, suggesting the women were distracting from their duties as sportswomen by posing for ‘raunchy’ photos. The article made no mention of the endless stream of photos we see of men sports stars with their kit off. It is almost as if nobody wants to acknowledge that objectified men are …. sex objects. But women are assumed to be sex objects, even before they have taken their kit off or posed in front of a camera.
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Self-objectification is an integral part of female heterosexuality. Whether it be shopping for underwear or dancing at a club, most of us get a thrill at the thought of being desired by men. Taking it a step further, how many of us have fantasised about being strippers or whores?...
The notion that a sexualised woman is degrading to women derives from the assumption that she is being sexualised by men, for men...
In recent years, women have begun to reclaim their sexualisation. From women making their own porn films to the growing number of feminist strippers who freely admit they get a kick out of displaying their bodies, we are slowly beginning to show that sexualisation can be just as fun and empowering for the ones being watched as for the ones watching. We are even beginning to reclaim sexist insults... Anti-porn advocates'... cries of ‘degrading to women’ are merely adding to the common assumption that any woman who enjoys the male gaze must be either a victim or a slut... -
While this is a refreshing change from much of feminism (for example, questioning that objectification is always a bad thing), the logic here seems to be that it is okay for women to objectify other women, or for women to objectify themselves, but not for men to do so (or to act on the implications of such objectification).
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