Tom Ford comments on the lack of male nudity

I stumbled on this New York Magazine article via Ms. Naughty's blog, and I am truly intrigued. Not because I think that one (or even 100) pictorials of nude men will change the way male and female bodies are/not produced as 'sexual.' As with many many gender and sexuality issues, the problem is not (only) with correcting misrepresentations by merely adding to the ones we have, just like more women as corporate CEO's is not all that is needed to change the way business and economics are centered around the worker as male. It's a start, but it's not the whole story, not even close.

I'm more interested in what Ford said.

[...] the male nude is one of our last taboos. There's a double standard at play here: magazines that are happy to fund ads featuring an artfully lit female nude will balk at an image of her male counterpart.

Bodies themselves may be, for the most part, natural raw material. But the value societies gives to bodies, what we see those bodies as useful for, what uses are appropriate for which bodies, how bodily qualities (i.e. beauty, strength) are defined, are all socio-cultural and ideological, thus also political.

To Ford's point, women's bodies have been constructed as inherently sexual, beautiful, and visually appealing. The sexualization of women's bodies in advertising, "erotic art," and a slew of forms of entertainment are symptoms of gender hierarchies that objectify women, and they also reproduce and reiterate their objectification in defining the 'inherent' sexuality of the female body. In our culture, women's bodies are for being looked at; they are for someone other than themselves. While these representations are a symptom of inequality and don't directly cause it, the system of representation is circular and feeds itself.

Men's bodies presented as sexual is considered an anomaly, and often is scandalous. Men's bodies are constructed as useful, instrumental things-- men's bodies do. They do work, (they 'do' women! or men!), they perform feats of strength, athleticism, agility; for most men they are means to an end-- they are incidental. The only real eroticization of male bodies is in the sex act itself, only in front of lovers. Their bodies are typically not something to be looked at and criticized publicly, causing a self-policing among men about their own physical appearance. Ford asks,

Why, he asks, is it "gay" for another man to comment on another man's figure, when women can freely tell other women their boobs look great?

The beauty of male bodies, in our culture, is supposed to be limited to sexual intimacy, whereas the beauty of female bodies is for public consumption and commentary. The femininity (sex appeal) of the female body is tied to women's identities, and complementing a woman's body (in the appropriate context) has the effect of reinforcing and praising her feminine identity. Further, when women's bodies are posited as the inherently sexual ones, we are used to women's bodies being desired by both sexes: they are the ones men desire to have and women desire to be. In our cultural context, for what purpose would a het man comment on a man's body? Visually possessing women through the gaze is part of the production of masculinity and is a privilege of it; looking at bodies is tied to sexual desire. Under such a limiting construction of sexuality and "the look", what other explanation can we provide to men looking at men's bodies but an assumption of gayness?

Alanis Morisette said, " I like to think of my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament." I don't think the idea of body-as-ornament is close to the top of the list of things men are concerned with regarding their masculinity.

Because these ideas are reinforced throughout various arenas (sport, film, art, fashion, 'sexuality' as represented in pornography, etc.), and are linked to ideological power structures (gender dominance, or patriarchy), this isn't just a matter of representation. Sexual asymmetry is one of the last acceptable gendered power differentials in western society. And it's also not a matter of prudishness. My critique sexualized images of women objects to the fact that the only valued social space available for women in the realm of sexuality is being the object on display. Thus simply adding some naked men here and there does not change the structure of how sexuality is produced through particularly gendered bodies and the resulting sexual assumptions and sexual possibilities. It's lip service and a way to say, "see, they do it to men too." But in the presence of social norms and expectations that define sexual gender roles in a way that reproduces patriarchal power hierarchies, images of nude men and women are not equivalent in meaning. This is oh so apparent in comments I've heard from guys saying:

"girls [sic] are so lucky they can get paid so much to take their clothes off," or
"if I was a girl [sic] I'd love it that everyone would want to see me naked," or my favorite,
"I don't get the big deal about rape-I wish girls would force themselves on me."

Sexualization of bodies does not mean the same thing for women as for men. And since what 'sexy' looks like is also something we learn, and since we are not taught how to see men's bodies as sexual nor is it easy to find representations of eroticized male bodies (it's no surprise that lots of het women watch gay porn!), for the most part, viewing men's and women's bodies is also a different process, signifying differently to different genders.

Representations of the body as sexual are not plopped into an otherwise neutral social context, and therefore are loaded with meaning from the get-go. This quote of Ford's is rather indicative of contextual difference I have been trying to elaborate:

Imagine … if our suits were entirely designed to show off our penises. Imagine if contemporary fashion demanded that you left your cock hanging outside your trousers, with perhaps just the head trussed up in a tiny pouch like a dick bra. Everyone would see our cocks all the time, in the same way that fashion features women's breasts.

Part of the problem is that women want to look...and have little to look at. Meanwhile, women's bodies are exponentially increasing in availability at the click of a mouse. And the cultural policing of women's bodies as properly sexual is undeniably inescapable. This isn't an issue of adding more naked men to the mix. I'm not sure even having an equal number of visually sexually available men and women on the internet and in film and advertising would necessarily "fix" things is the values and meanings attached to sexed bodies remains static.

Lastly, how unfortunate that this is in Britain's GQ, and not the U.S.'s.

**also, I understand that I am speaking of these issues in terms of heterosexuality, as sexuality is constructed through heteronormative culture.

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On Becoming a Sexual Female, via Miley Cyrus

I tend to agree* with this analysis of the photos of Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair that we've seen so far from Vanity Fair, that they're not "that bad."

*sidenote: Except that the bare skin and sultry looks are for your prom friends, not the American Celebritocrical Gaze. And typically you go to the prom at 17-18, not the age of 15. Mir Kamin makes the distinction quite well between these images and simply wearing a backless dress:

For me, my problem lies with the fact that she's underage and I find the picture intentionally sexual. It's not her naked back -- it's her tousled hair, her come-hither look, and the bed-sheet-esque cover; all of those things together combine to portray a post-coital vixen.

(end of side-note)

But the whole thing still troubles me for a few reasons I know, and probably some I can't articulate yet. And I think the question of whether the images themselves are "that bad" isn't the real issue here.

And I've really become disappointed in Annie Leibovitz who, back in the day, took this amazing image of Yoko Ono and John Lennon that surprised our gender expectations. She has recently become more known for replicating racist images of the recent past, and now this. And while, as I said "they're not that bad" (isn't is sad we have a world of sexualized teen girls to compare this image to that we can make the judgment, 'it's not that bad'? Ugh)

This comment on Female Impersonators is quite striking and right-on, and I think it sums up what was really giving me anxiety:

a fifteen year old girl should be beginning to discover her sexuality. She should understand how her body works and why. She should appreciate her body's feelings and responses, but she should not be doing it in front of the world. To sell magazine covers.

That's exactly it. In a world where women's desirability matters more than her desire or that she desires at all, this is sad yet unsurprising. This 15 year-old girl is learning the very real and 'truth' of our modern culture that posing and being socially stamped as 'sexy' is an important (if not the important) part of women's 'sexuality'. That her being sexy is defined through, well, this. I'm not denying that a 15 year-old can be a sexual being. But the problem is that our culture perpetually defines sexuality and sexiness in terms of public validation of public sexual display. And hers being a sexuality-in-process...sigh. And what were you saying about 'The Sexual Revolution'?

And Gawker's provocative take on the photos is pretty interesting: grooming for pedophilia. I would never argue that's what is consciously and absolutely going on, but it's a compelling suggestion.

And it also makes me think about how our culture "grooms" women to become public sex objects, to desire the validation it provides, to justify it to themselves until it's "no big deal." We don't live in a vacuum, and women (or girls) don't one day jump out of bed and say "I think I'd like to show my tits to strangers while I'm drunk next spring break."

I think I'm just going to leave this here for right now. Thoughts?

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Sexualized Ads Become "Obscene" When Guys are the Objects

So this video and news issue is a wee bit old, but the idea it raises isn't at all.

Apparently an in-store Abercrombie ad campaign (see video below) received complaints for being too sexual/obscene. Abercrombie has been doing this for years, for example, depicting cartoons of topless girls (yeah, they looked awful young) in pools and having threesomes in their catalog back when I worked in the mall 10 years ago. And in this day and age of hypersexualization of women's bodies and the general pornification of everyday life, you would think these ads must be awfully revealing to be so scandalous.

The thing is, the ads aren't that revealing. Not by far, and especially not compared to most ads we see everywhere. we. look.

Except that most sexualized ads we see are of women's bodies (I said most-I am well aware of the sexual and homoerotic tones of several cologne ads). However, the Abercrombie campaign includes some sexy images...of guys. And the marketing target is upper-middle class, heterosexual teens, both female and male.

via msnbc.com:

This is the part that struck me most:

"there's half naked guys running around--it's obscenity--is Playboy able to hang naked pictures in their store?"

Um, sorry dude, but the half naked men shown in Abercrombie ads is not the same as fully naked Playboy pictures. Like, at all. It's more like Victoria's Secret ads (and even then not quite the same there either)...and oh yeah, they are able to show those, and not only in their stores, but on billboards, the sides of buses, every f*cking magazine you pick up, not to mention, the goddamn TV!!

The ads are only 'scandalous' because guys are being (mildly) depicted as erotic objects of heterosexual desire. And this just doesn't happen. Even when there's male (frontal) nudity in movies, it's typically either goofy or is not eroticized. Women as sexual objects, as seen as serving a sexual function for men (being sexually desirable rather than having sexual desire) have functioned in a particular way in western patriarchy, along with wife/mother, to produce female ideals whose value relies on seeing women in terms of how they function for men's benefit. This is the very definition of objectification--defining (a person) in terms of how you already see them to be, in how they're useful for you, rather than seeing them on their own terms. Men are really only able to objectify women in this way because such narrow and all-defining judgment is never returned to them; they are rarely, if ever, made the objects of female-centered desire. It's awfully hard to objectify someone when you recognize they have their own desire--and that you might not be up to their standard.

I'm getting a bit off track, and I'll continue to blog about that in the future, but getting back to the anxious guy...his comments are screaming male privilege. The fact that these images bother him so much can be attributed to him rarely having to be faced with the eroticization of his own body, even in the mild Abercrombie images of guys in jeans showing a little buttcrack. What's fascinating is that he is so bothered by it. I'd like to say that he's finally getting a small taste of what women go through, but that's not even close to the truth: he has the luxury of being able to avoid dealing with the images by walking out of the store. These kinds of images (and so much more) are simply unavoidable for women--we can never just walk away, because they're there whenever we turn around.

Another fascinating thing about his comment was his analogy of these images to Playboy images. On an obvious level, he's so wrong, because, um, come on, they're nowhere near close: they're not the same degree of nudity, not the same degree of sexualization (there's little about the Abercrombie poses that are seductive or vulnerable), and not the same intent. On another level, they are similar, because sexualized women's bodies are so commonplace these days, that we wouldn't even blink an eye if we were to replace the guy in the Abercrombie ad with a woman. We probably wouldn't even think it was racy, or even that sexual. So his analogy, in a way, speaks very much to the ubiquitous sexualized female body and the rarely eroticized male body.

Finally, what I'm also quite interested in regarding this video news story, is that the campaign included images of girls, depicted in much the same way as the guys are...yet he never mentioned being bothered by the "obscenity" of those! When we take this reaction, and think about the male anxiety around male nudity in general, and especially gay male sexuality (but of course, not lesbian sexuality), it it very clear that, in popular culture, sexuality becomes 'obscene' when it does not reinforce heteronormative masculinity. Images are only seen as improperly sexualized when it's the male body on display for a (presumed) het female audience.

(Cross-posted to The Reaction)

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Some comment-worthy articles about sexuality and body image

The British Daily Mail reported that men--especially single men--who read "lad mags" (the mags for (hetero) Men that equally objectify the newest babe in lingerie alongside the latest in electronic gear) are more obsessed with their own body image.

"The message in typical lads' magazines is that you need to develop a muscular physique in order to attract a quality mate," said Dr Giles.

"Readers internalise this message, which creates anxieties about their actual bodies and leads to increasingly desperate attempts to modify them.

"Some of the most worrying findings were that heavy consumers of lads' mags think about taking anabolic steroids or use protein or energy supplements as part of their diet and exercise regimes to improve the way they look."

Forgive me if I'm slightly amused by this, but, um, DUH! These magazines have the same kind of effect on women (not to mention on men's expectation of what a particularly beautiful woman is). At least the men who read these mags don't have the have the message that body=worth thrown at them from every which way like women do. While body image can be one aspect of success, men have many more valued ways to be successful than women do.

I also find it interesting that the researchers thought the men were internalizing the ideal images of men found in the mags--maybe the British versions are significantly different than the U.S. ones, but I don't recall any real emphasis on male bodies; the male physique seemed to be just one aspect of men's lives they covered (as opposed to the portrayal of the women which are presented as eye-candy first--ya know, the important function of women in a man's life--then maybe the reader gets to see others aspects of her life). My guess? Men who consistently objectify women, and see their worth first in terms of their value to the guy as an object of sexual desire, tend to start to see themselves in the same light, despite that women's mags don't tend to portray guys in that way.

______________________________

These men shouldn't worry to much, however, because what consists of "sex" and "good sex" is still measured in terms of PIV sex (aka intercourse). A new study has concluded that how long good sex should last:

1) is measured in terms of time the penis is inside the vagina;
2) doesn't include foreplay (which, for women, is much of what they consider "sex");
3) can relieve most men that their lasting time is "satisfactory."

What's interesting about this is that "how long is optimal intercourse?" gets translated into "how long does it take to satisfy a woman?" For most women I know, these are not the same question. My equating these two ideas, the assumption is reinforced that a woman's satisfaction comes from sex defined as PIV intercourse.

And while it's nice that men get to feel all "normal" and stuff, that women's pleasures actually contradict conventional wisdom and representations in porn (while women still seem to be held to ridiculous standards of what their sexual pleasure should be and should look like), it would be nice for a study to come out (and receive as much press as this one has!) that actually talks bout what women's sexual pleasure consists of. My guess is if one did come out, it's findings would make the findings of this study a lot less relevant. Check out this too on Slow Sex Movement (part of the Slow Movement).

______________________________

I am really delighted that Babeland employee (a women and queer-oriented sex shop) has been hired by Cosmo to dole out sex advice. Maybe her presence can help work against the cult of sexuality that Cosmo espouses that thinks good sex advice is primarily about how to please your man, do a striptease, perform like a porn star, fulfill his ultimate fantasies. Perhaps instead we'll see a little more about experimenting to find your own pleasures, how to communicate what you want and ask him what he wants, how to use sex toys in couple sex. I mean, totally revolutionary stuff!

______________________________

Lastly, in late March an 18-year-old high school senior died after elective breast surgery from an albeit rare surgical complication. Two things from the MSNBC story stand out to me:

Stephanie Kuleba’s friends called her “Sunshine” because that was the perfect nickname for the outgoing and bubbly girl who was everybody’s friend, the cheerleader with the near-perfect grade-point average who was too nice and too perfect for anybody to resent.

This is all too typical--that women can be accomplished in all sorts of ways, but they are never "good enough" unless our bodies "match up" (according to cultural expectations) with the beautiful person we truly are. She wasn't getting implants, but rather "corrective surgery," which many feminists who loathe implants might be willing to overlook. But in reality, breasts come in all shapes and sizes, and they're all normal. The image we see in film, magazines, and porn is a result of some intense photoshopping (not to mention all the implants), even when they purport a "natural" look. Check out this great site that shows what actual breasts, in all their variety, look like. (site isn't porn, but it's also NSFW)

The death has focused attention on elective breast augmentation surgery, a procedure that 347,500 women of all ages chose to have in 2007 alone. That number is 6 percent higher than in 2006 and 64 percent higher than in 2000.
...
D’Amico repeated the FDA recommendation that no one under 18 undergo breast augmentation surgery. Despite its popularity, the procedure does have a high rate of complications and often requires additional surgery within five to 10 years of the original surgery.

The point is, that women are getting elective breast surgeries, which, like all surgeries, have significant risks (not to mention the risks related to the material in implants) in droves. It isn't that these women are stupid and don't understand the risks. It's that they overwhelmingly do, and the potential complications of the surgery outweigh the social risk of a "failed"' feminine body and the risk of not being deemed appropriately sexually worthy. Of course, the health risks to women in surgery is coupled with the risks to a woman's sexual pleasure through decreased nipple sensitivity from the augmentation.

Do think that men would submit themselves in significant numbers to a surgery meant primarily to please actual and potential sexual partners, while risking decreasing their own sexual pleasure? Do men submit themselves in huge numbers to penis enlargement surgery and other procedures that could increase staying power? Then answer is, no, they don't. But they don't need to, because we've already squashed the "size matters" and "lasting longer is better" myths about female sexual pleasure. When will start acknowledging our unhealthy obsession with bigger or "perfect" (whatever that means) breasts, and show that an awful lot of guys are happy with many kinds of breasts, and those who aren't need some reeducation, and there are a lot of ways they can be pleasurable to a partner. But ultimately, we need to remember that the primary sexual function of breasts (or we could be talking about vaginas, for that matter) is for the person they belong to--the woman. And you can't enjoy them if you have few nerves left, or worse, if you're dead.

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Another "music video" worth watching

I feel like I'm on a roll with more positive stuff, and I want to take a minute to say how important it is that we acknowledge media, representation, cultural production that "does good." For one thing, it's important for being balanced, and another thing, I tend to get down in the dumps when sexism and inequality seems to be so depressingly pervasive. We all need to see, cheer for, and encourage moments of positivity, resistance, and humor wherever we might find them.

So check out this video (after the jump), which presents a more honest version of those crazy love/romance songs, but is also a commentary on the difference between how our culture represents ideal sex and romance and how it more usually happens.

(One song/video disclaimer: not that its "realism" is an acceptable excuse for men not investing the time to be lovers who aim to please and not just be pleased, but take it for the humorous commentary that it is).



via Kinsey Confidential

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R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe "Outs" His Bandmates as "Heterosexual"

This is brilliant, and nothing less than I would expect from Stipe and R.E.M., who recently stated he's a "queer artist." This seems to me to be a response to his frustration over needing to "come out"; his lack of doing so had been read as "cowardly" rather than about one's sexual and intimate life being irrelevant and no one's damn business.

The coming-out parody that he performs is not with the point of criticizing "coming out," which for may queers is an important act, especially considering the history of queer invisibility. Rather, this parody reveals culture as heteronormative in that heterosexuality is assumed unless said otherwise and unless marked properly. It operates in a similar fashion that following up the question, "When did you first realize you were gay?" with "When did you first realize you were straight?" does.


In our culture we have a compulsion to know one's sexuality identity, which we presume tells us the "truth" about an individual, the "truth" of their sex acts, and allows us to render people's action, speech, and beliefs more meaningful due to the centrality that sexuality plays in how we conceive identity. Sexual identity becomes the way we can be explained and understood. (See Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality vol. 1, summary here)

This was especially evident in the J.K. Rowling/Dumbledore is gay incident this past fall. The announcement upset people because his sexual identity as gay was not made explicit in the text. Rowling's after-the-fact "revelation" of Dumbledore's sexuality operated less like a "coming out." Instead it underscored the cultural assumption of heterosexuality as the "default" sexuality, showing it to be normalized and exnominated. The personal lives of the book's adult characters were almost never discussed, yet this only became an issue because Dumbledore happened to be gay and therefore his personal life became of the utmost importance in making sense of his character. In the books, there was no lover, no obsession with musical theatre, no use of the word "fabulous!" I'm exaggerating of course, but what I'm indicating is that there was no overt way that the text produced him as gay. There was also no "coming out" moment in the text and he was not introduced as "gay" in the character's initial introduction (to the dismay of some gay activists). Of course, after the "revelation" people went through the texts and tried to re-read his character, with this "truth" in mind, and could thus "produce" him as gay.

I mean, look at the photo used to illustrate the BBC story, the caption "R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe in performance":



If that isn't an example of imposing a system of interpretation onto bodily acts that produce and understanding of gender and sexual identity, I don't know what does.

This complusion to know and distinguish genders and sexualities by making meaning of bodily acts really reflects back onto heteronormative culture and how fragile and vulnerable its own construction is.

This isn't to deny the value of "coming out"-clearly visibility of queer individuals as successful and caring people, present in every aspect of society is part of what is needed to disrupt social stigmas and assumptions. But I also think what Stipe is doing here is important too, and provokes a much-needed conversation about recent centrality and importance of sexuality to/as individual identity.

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A comment on "the best" sex EVER!

In "The 'best' is an enemy of the 'good'" Dr. Charlie Glickman at the Good Vibrations blog writes what I've thought. We should strive for pleasure, not achievement.

It's also important to remember that having good sex is not the same as a) looking "good" having sex, or b) looking like you're having good sex. Said otherwise, what looks good isn't always what is good.

I think a significant aspect of sexual displeasure is in the conjunction of 2 assumptions: that people in porn are having the best sex and that "I don't have sex like that". This is evident in the way we say "fu-k like a porn star" or the periodical Maxim article "How to date a porn star/stripper". The assumption is the actors who are paid to "look like" (whatever that means) they are are having the best sex ever actually are. I'm sure they are sometimes and sometimes they're probably planning the week's dinner menu's while they're continuously and monotonously moaning. The other assumption comes from the first: if they look like they're having the best sex and I don't have sex like that then maybe I'm not having the "best" sex.

And lo and behold, we have magazines that tell us how, in stories recycled on a quarterly basis, to have this "best" sex. And the cycle of culture continues.

What the article doesn't go into are the gender-variations on this theme in magazines. I have been meaning to do research on this by purchasing a year subscription to Maxim and Cosmopolitan (anyone want to fund me?!) and comparing the cover stories and analyzing the ads. Unfortunately, I really need to write my Master's Thesis first. I don't have the statistical proof, so we'll leave it at my observation: women's magazines articles around sex tend to focus on sex that "your man" wants, "your man's" secret desires, how to please "your man"; men's magazines tend to focus on how to get "your girl" (not woman!) to do ---", how to get a hottie to sleep with you, how to convince your girlfriend to let you go to strip clubs. Notice a trend? I'm not saying articles that focus on women's own sexual pleasure don't appear in Cosmo or that Maxim doesn't ever have a story about pleasing your girlfriend, but these are significantly disproportionate to the ones that focus on pleasing men.

Of course, these articles are unproductive besides-they assume everyone's sexual responses are the same and are articulated with heteronormative assumptions about sexual pleasure among heterosexual couples.

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