- Hardcover: 358 pages
- Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre / Not Applicable (Feb 1 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0374280657
- ISBN-13: 978-0374280659
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 15.7 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 612 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#637,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #64 in Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Men
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Shock waves riveted the Mattel, Inc., boardroom in 1961 when female executives suggested that Barbie's boy-toy, Ken--in keeping with Barbie's own physiognomy--ought to be a little more anatomically correct. No one was suggesting 1.25-inch-to-1-inch-scale plastic genitalia, mind you, just a modest groin bulge. But male execs at the toy company were scandalized; the suggested modifications did not make Ken more "authentic" in their eyes--they made him pornographic.
My, how things have changed. In The Male Body, Susan Bordo (who snagged a Pulitzer nomination for 1993's Unbearable Weight) offers a frank, sprightly, and, yes, educational look at the male nude as an index to attitudes about sexuality in the broth of media and pop culture in which, like it or not, we all stew. While the Greeks were unafraid to celebrate masculine beauty, men have been strangely sexless throughout most of Western history--until Hollywood rediscovered the male body when Marlon Brando first shed his T-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire. It's only been in the '90s, however, that the male image has gone so far as to reclaim its penis. From de facto censorship to near idolatry, has ever an organ made such a journey in one brief decade? But it's not the penis alone that makes a man a man; perhaps, Bordo concludes, it's time for us to rethink our metaphors of manhood. --Patrizia DiLucchio
From Publishers Weekly
Equipped with wit and savvy, Bordo sets out to map the ambivalent attitudes that exist in the American cultural imagination toward male bodies and, in particular, to ward the penis and its "symbolic double," the phallus. Ranging from such topics as "Viagran science" to discussions of Long Dong Silver on the Senate floor, masculinity in the movies to Plato's Symposium, Nabokov to gay aesthetics, Bordo (Twilight Zones) deftly uses academic theories without straying into abstraction. Beginning and ending with memories of her father, her focus on the male body never wavers. Part One concerns the penis: size does matter, but it is "always a collaboration with the imagination, and therefore with culture." Bordo's discussion establishes a provocative context for her subsequent examination of the complex legacy of Marlon Brando's representations of masculinity. She convincingly explains how the "lean, fit body that virtually everyone, gay and straight, now aspires to" has resulted from the commercial triumph of the gay aesthetic first introduced to the mainstream by Calvin Klein. Bordo's theme is that men and women are not species alien to one another: "We're all earthlings, desperate for love, demolished by rejection." There is anger here, but it is directed at a culture "that has us all behaving like sexual robots." Part memoir, part elegy, this feminist guided tour of the male body concludes with real hope for improved relations between the sexes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Becky Stone was the first of my friends to actually see one. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Becky Stone was the first of my friends to actually see one. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
enjoying this book,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (Hardcover)
I am a graduate student in Gender Studies, focusing on masculinity for my thesis. I am thouroughly enjoying Bardo's wittiness and plain language. Often books about gender theory are written in high academic prose and very difficult to read for any length of time; this one, is fun and easily read.I think this is a must for any student of gender, or cultural studies -- and would be a good match to read with Natalie Angier's <Woman: An Intimate Geography> The language is plain and often times blunt -- so I would imagine that it might offend certain people, but I could see it as a good text for a gender theory or history class in upper levels.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Patronizing writing style diminishes this book,
By fml66 "fml66" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Male Body (Paperback)
Bordo makes some good points, and the subject matter is fascinating, but the breezy chattiness of her prose is off-putting, and there is a condescending "wink, nudge" tone to this book that is annoying. If you can look past that, this is an intriguing and well-considered book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Double Bubble Bind of Physique,
By Patricia B. Ross (Wellesley, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Male Body (Paperback)
The author has accurately characterized the perpetual dilemma of a nation at once embarrassed by its own sexual parts and unduly thrilled with having them revealed in pornography to the extent that neither males nor females are realistic about sex. Men are far more likely to be dependent upon the "ideal female sexuality" as exposed by media empires, at the not so subtle conditioning of Hefner and his Playboy editions over the years, while women are taking the "fast track" to the same attitudes, a unique opportunity to reveal sexual gender conditioning at work. While it might be possible to blame the Puritans for this "sordid affair," in reality, it has not been targeted so blatantly at men until recently, instead preferring to ignore their sexuality as evil and dirty owing to their own inability to exceed their inhibitions. All the while, women are challenged and encouraged to exceed theirs, the double bubble that fuels the taboo of pornography as well as realistic portrayals of gender differences. Sexless men often produce sexually aggressive women for some reason as women perhaps feel more comfortable to be revealing. Since there has never been a time when men were free to reference their sexuality or their sexual parts, it is as yet unknown whether a more accurate balance of propriety may eventually become the norm. Definitely it is a logical probability, however, based upon the attitudes of those in other countries who accept both their sexuality more easily, and are less brainwashed in their acceptance of the sexual diversity in gender as well as in the diverse physical characteristics of either gender that does not limit sexual ideals only to the plastic idealistic models of beauty so prevalent in the U.S., size wise, color wise, or in other aspects of appearance, certainly, a healthier approach to gender than defining beauty and sexual attraction only to the Kens and Barbies of the world. This would and does constitute sexual appearance selectivity and discrimination as presented and as applied.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Gender Studies > Men
- Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology > Men
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
