The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Becky Stone was the first of my friends to actually see one..." (more)
Key Phrases: butch phallus, male crashes, genetic celebrities, New York, Calvin Klein, Cary Grant (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 358 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T) (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374280657
• ISBN-13: 978-0374280659
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,408,624 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Male Body, July 18, 2005

By	T.A - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (Paperback)

About me: 21 year old male, university student. (sciences/pre med)

I picked up this book some time ago while searching for books on a completely unrelated topic. It's become one of my absolute favorites. I've let at least 5 of my friends borrow it. (Or should I say I pushed it on them.)

Obviously, I'm not as serious a reviewer as some seem to be, so bear with me.

I caught this book a little late, a few years after it was originally published, but feel her comments are still dead on. I thought it was written very professionally, yet casual at the same time. I did not feel like I was being condescended upon, it felt like something "we" were discussing over a coffee.

She starts off with a candid retrospective of sorts on her father, then changes direction entirely with the opening sentence in the following chapter: "Becky Stone was the first of my friends to actually see one."

Other topics include an analysis on media images, women's bodies, and of course, men's. A few of my favorite passages in the book include: the whole section on "Public Images", as well as "Gentleman or Beast? The Double Bind of Masculinity", "The Sexual Harasser Is a Bully, not a Sex Fiend" and "Beautiful Girls, From Both Sides Now."

Remarkably insightful, with theories and analysis that are hard to argue, her comments hit home and make you think whether you agree or not. I suspect even the most chauvinistic reader would have a hard time "debating" or "disproving" some of her thoughts and theories behind media images and the like, in my opinion. Sometimes I may not have wanted to "hear" some of things she had written but couldn't think of any retaliation.

At certain times in the book, it felt as if she was poking around in my head, most of her thoughts about the male body and men in general congruent with my thoughts about myself!

An exciting topic by itself, I highly recommend this book for anyone curious about the male body. You will finish this book smiling, perhaps even with a change in the way you look at yourself, or the culture around you. (I constantly find myself looking deeper into what is given and shown to us than I did previously.) There will undoubtedly be times during reading where you will stop, needing to discuss what you've read with your friends! At least I did. :)

I don't think there are any bad parts to this book, but some might find certain parts uninteresting. That's a given! To me, that doesn't qualify as bad. I think everyone who decides to buy this book will be talking after they put it down, regardless of how much you loved it. 5 stars!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Opened my Eyes, February 9, 2000

By	Sean P. Drummond (Richmond,VA) - See all my reviews

As a man who read this book, I'm already breaking the stereotype of manliness. Bordo correctly characterizes the male species as one who does not indulge in self-analysis. However, her analysis of the male body and character is surprisingly accurate, especially coming from the female perspective. After reading this book, I find myself analyzing the marketing of male hygene products in prime-time commercials. I was also enlightened as to the impact homosexual culture has had on opening the door to male exhibition. This book not only helped me to understand my own place as a 21st century male, but it also helped me to understand the female perspective on the male body. Men have been looking at an acquiescent female nude in pop culture for so long that we fail to see the double standard. The time has come for more books like this one that could possibly spawn a renaissance of the beauty of the male form.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical and compassionate., October 11, 2001

By	Bakari Chavanu (Elk Grove, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (Paperback)

This book is the male version of Jean Kilbourne's "Can't Buy My Love." Both look at media representions of gender and how they perpetuate stereotypical myths about males, females, and homosexuals. They also show how advertising and other image makers use the body to exploit consumer desires and insecurities about their own body. Thus, in Bordo's words, what we see in the twentieth century "is the recognition that when we look at bodies (including our own in the mirror), we don't just see biological nature at work, but values and ideals, differences and similarities that *culture* has 'written,' so to speak, on those bodies."

What is most compelling about Bordo's work is that she extends her analysis beyond the media and extends it to literature, history, and various institutions that influence our ideas about the male body. She shows overall how myths about the male use sexist images that have been used against women for years. She does this using very lucid, insightful, and humorous writing.