The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private | 
 enlarge | Author: Susan Bordo
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 63158
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0374527326
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9780374527327
Publication Date: July 15, 2000
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: In stock - Immediate despatch from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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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
Product Description
An exciting new popular study of the male body--fresh, honest, and full of revelationsIn this surprising, candid cultural analysis, Susan Bordo begins with a frank, tender look at her own father's body and goes on to perceptively scrutinize the presentation of maleness in everyday life.Men's (and women's) ideas about men's bodies are heavily influenced by society's expectations, and Bordo helps us understand where those ideas come from. In chapters on the penis (in all its incarnations), fifties Hollywood, male beauty standards, and sexual harassment, and in discussions of topics ranging from Marlon Brando and Boogie Nights to Philip Roth and Lady Chatterley's Lover, Bordo offers fresh and unexpected insights. Always--whether she is examining Michael Jordan or Humbert Humbert, the butch phallus or her own grade-school experiences--she rejects rigid categories in favor of an honest, nuanced version of men as flesh-and-blood human beings.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 An insightful study of masculinity July 21, 1999
Jeff Abell (Chicago, IL USA)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
Susan Bordo has written insightfully about women's perceptions of their bodies, and she now focuses those perceptive skills on men. Anyone expecting a feminist to engage in male-bashing will be relieved to find that Bordo genuinely likes men, and she writes with clarity and humor about their bodies and how they are socially understood. Beginning with an emotion-rich eassay about her father, she then moves on to discuss how biology and society converge to create our views about how men should (and shouldn't) behave. The chapter called "Gentleman or Beast?" is of the most insightful essays I've ever encountered on the psychological pressures experienced by boys in our society. Leave behind the trite banalities of the "Men are from Mars" crowd: Bordo really gets to the meat of the issues. One of the best books on gender I've ever encountered.
The Male Body July 18, 2005
T.A
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
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!
Critical and compassionate. October 11, 2001
Bakari Chavanu (Elk Grove, CA USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Well-written and accessible intro. to gender representation May 1, 2003
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Bordo's effort is a perceptive and engaging overview of the convoluted representations of the male body active today and of their historical roots. She begins by tracing the evolution of representations of the body and of masculinity in film- with considerable insight and appreciation for the complexity of her subject- before moving on to a more polemical examination of "the double bind of masculinity" today: the incoherent standards that would have men be both 'primal' or 'brutal' and 'sensitive' or 'restrained', and the various reductionisms, biological or otherwise, that attempt to naturalize determinations of differences in gender roles. While her style is non-academic, her even-handed treatment and broad analysis make this book a good read for both gender theory buffs and general public consumption. I, personally, am considering buying a copy for my sixteen-year old brother, to help him make sense of the brutal tensions underlying the performance of masculinity in his public high school.
Focus on the MALE August 10, 2008
lisa
With all the focus on the female body it was nice to see a writer focusing on the male for a change. A good book.
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