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Looking Good, The Adonis Complex, and The Vagina Monologues

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from: Erik Tarloff

Where's the Beefcake?

Posted Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001, at 3:32 PM ET

Dear Jodi and Chris,

My response to both these male body image books was, essentially, "Where's the beef?" They aren't quite identical, but they concern themselves with very similar issues and they share quite a few flaws, and neither has much to tell us.

Of the two, the Luciano is the one given to sweeping, not to say breathtaking, generalizations. "Until World War II, it is true," she tells us, "male attractiveness was derived from activity; how a man behaved and what he achieved were the true measures of his worth." Even leaving aside the question of whether attractiveness and the true measure of one's worth are actually identical concepts, I suspect the truth is rather more nuanced than this categorical statement suggests. A bit later she says, "In the 1970s, the obsession with youthfulness combined with the emphasis on self-expression and acquisitiveness to create an entirely new culture grounded in the importance of self-esteem." A little later, but on the same page, she says, "If the 1950s had been characterized by conformity, the 1970s were characterized by a sense of selfhood 'hopelessly dependent on the consumption of images' and consequently on relentless self-scrutiny." Later still, "Well into the 1960s, women bore most of the responsibility for sexual dysfunction. Impotence, though recognized, was almost always regarded as being the 'fault' of the woman." A few pages later, "As physical work was replaced with brain work, interpersonal dealings were suddenly crucial." And then, "Virtually overnight, after years of overcaution about the dangers of excessive exercise, doctors switched gears and campaigned to undo physical neglect."

I could go on (my copy of the book contains a great many highlighted passages of similar construction), but presumably you get the point. This is history, or social science, via cliché and bald assertion rather than data and analysis. Things happen suddenly or overnight, decades are exclusively about one sort of behavior or another, an entire society starts doing one thing whereas the day before it was doing the opposite. Not much evidence is adduced, but presumably not much is needed since everybody knows this stuff is true anyway.

Nevertheless, I suppose Luciano does more or less make a case that a) men have traditionally had concerns about their appearance; b) these concerns have deepened in recent years; c) technological resources to address such concerns have developed in the past couple of decades; and therefore, d) some resultant behaviors have grown more extreme. None of this seems like anything that would cause an editor to cry "Stop the presses!" and Luciano's glossy-magazine style of presentation doesn't exactly reinforce one's faith in her credibility. But still, if you ignore the heavy breathing and draw no conclusions beyond these four points, there isn't much profit in arguing with her.

The Adonis Complex takes a slightly different and rather more insidious tack. It first posits some sort of continuum between, say, the acts of worriedly weighing oneself after a Thanksgiving feast and habitually mainlining anabolic steroids and then proceeds to argue its case as if the existence of such a continuum implicitly demonstrates something approaching identity between the two extremes.

Of the two books, Adonis does at least contain a few bits of what to me qualified as hard news. Its analysis of the outer limits of muscle mass available to an adult male purely through exercise and its conclusion that therefore, pumped bodies that go beyond that point are almost invariably the result of steroids were not things I was aware of. (The inserted disclaimer, presumably put there at the insistence of publisher's counsel, that no individual bodybuilder is being accused of this practice is hilariously disingenuous.) Its report of clinical findings suggesting that various behaviors subsumed under the rubric "body dysmorphic disorder" (BDD) are at bottom manifestations of a more general obsessive-compulsive disorder is interesting and intuitively feels correct. The authors' further observation that such behaviors are susceptible to successful modification by the same pharmacological treatment as other obsessive-compulsive syndromes would seem to constitute persuasive supporting evidence for their thesis.

That said, my primary response to both books was one of deep annoyance. For decades we've been hectored about the prevalence of obesity in our culture and warned about its attendant health risks. Now we're also being told that concern about obesity is itself a sign of emotional disturbance.

To which the only sensible reply is, Fuck off.

This is a vast and variegated country, and I dare say there are few pathologies, regardless of how exotic, that aren't represented in the thousands at the very least. But still, how common is BDD? How seriously should we be worrying about it? Has the incidence of penile implantation reached epidemic proportions? Are those of us who watch our diet and exercise regularly well advised to regard ourselves as being at risk?

Well, I'm skeptical. I agree with Jodi that a certain minimal level of vanity, a nonobsessive awareness of one's own body--both of its health and its appearance--is on the whole a positive thing. No doubt there is a point at which such concern oozes over into the neurotic and obsessive, and no doubt there are many people, both men and women, who carry these concerns to unhealthy extremes. Some of them evidently need, and fortunately are able to benefit from, psychological treatment. But, as Jodi points out, their numbers are relatively small compared to those who ought to be worrying about their bodies. Any investigative field trip to an amusement park or fast food franchise will establish the truth of this assertion beyond a reasonable doubt.

Finally, I'm frankly flummoxed by the air of surprised discovery with which both books present their central finding, that men care about their own appearance as much as women care about theirs. Well, duh. Vain or dandified males are hardly an unprecedented historical phenomenon. We're primates, after all, and the social significance of appearance is common among most of the higher primates. Males want to impress other males, and they want to appeal sexually to females. Appearance is only one of several ways for the males of our species to accomplish these goals, but it is one of the ways and has always been one of the ways. Let's not forget the gender of the figure who gave a name to the whole business: Narcissus.

I'd love to continue, but there isn't time. I have to do something about my hair.

Erik

the book club
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from: Erik Tarloff

Where's the Beefcake?

Posted Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001, at 3:32 PM ET
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Looking Good, The Adonis Complex, and The Vagina MonologuesThis week, Chris Caldwell, Jodi Kantor, and Erik Tarloff examine three books about body image: Looking Good, The Adonis Complex, and The Vagina Monologues. Click here for a word on our format. To read this discussion from the beginning, click here.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: All right, calm down everyone. Let's just say, the Fray reflected the Book Club. Strong words, strong feelings, and a lot of comment on sex, relationships and vaginas. And on childbirth, some of it from those who are never going to experience it. Yes, that Natalie Angier post (below) did provoke comment. Yes, the views held were somewhat, but not wholly, gender-predictable. Yes, having an opinion on what women think during childbirth is apparently a valuable debating skill. Yes, we at the Fray keep remembering how much we enjoyed those tips on making grilled cheese sandwiches that came with the John Le Carre Book Club a few weeks back.

Some nice posts below. A good discussion on phallocentric writing started here. And it was a relief that all Goatgut wanted to tell us tell us was that it's Visa which is 'everywhere you want to be'; whereas Mastercard is 'priceless'.]


Chris Caldwell says:

"Or that poem about being in a room when a baby was born--which has nothing about a baby being born. The poem is all about the vagina--a really demented perspective, for anyone who has ever watched a delivery."

Demented perspective?!? Demented perspective??!! For the nearly two hours of delivering my kid, the only goddamn thing I thought about was my vagina, and my anus, too, because they felt like one and the same conduit throughout the ordeal. As Shulamith Firestone put it, childbirth is "like shitting a pumpkin," and for the average heaving vagina in labor, the baby counts for nothing until it has been expelled, ejected, dumped! Which takes forever! And then you still have to push out the placenta! Eve Ensler has it exactly right:

Childbirth is really about vaginas. Except when it's about assholes.

Chris Caldwell must have been watching a C-section

--Natalie Angier

(To reply, click here.)


I think the Adonis complex is lodged firmly (excuse the pun) in the upper-middle class. The upper class can woo and succeed on money and collections alone. The upwardly mobile, however, need an extra edge. Or perhaps I'm completely wrong, but has anyone ever studied whether non-college college-aged women are as susceptible to eating disorders as those in college?

Btw: what's the problem with the Vagina Monologues? They may not work as literature, but I don't know of anyone who's ever seen them (I haven't) and not enjoyed it. I also understand that a couple of rapists and Bob the Curious are the only males that show up, but isn't the whole point that it is not about men? I mean, who but the most cynical of Hollywood producers would insist that some vagina-loving men be inserted to counterbalance the vagina-hating ones?

--Fletch

(To reply, click here.)


Christopher Caldwell asks, "And what kind of sad person prefers power to romance?" Well, any person who has no power, or any person who has only a very indirect kind of power. Frankly, the power versus romance thing sort of smacks of the ethics versus a full stomach. Only the people who have the basics (and power is a basic for a human being, regardless of gender) have the time to focus on the nice things like romance. Is it sad that people lack these basics? You bet.

--Dea

(To reply, click here.)


Jodi Kantor and Katha Pollitt seem to see The Vagina Monologues as simply a female counterpart to something that men have always done--publicly exploring their sexuality and taking pride in their bodies. But where exactly do they see all this male celebration of male anatomy and male physiological functions? (That's why I've always thought Steinem's "If Men Could Menstruate" essay was the height of silliness. After all, men can masturbate, but it's hardly something that has been traditionally celebrated in our culture.)

Yes, one can find some passages in D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer exalting the generative and creative powers of male genitalia. (In Sexual Politics, Kate Millett cites a hilarious Lawrence passage on the mystical powers of balls.) Still, this is fairly marginal stuff. Kantor cites Portnoy's Complaint and There's Something About Mary as male parallels of sorts to Monologues. But these works, in facts, are expressions of sexual shame, not of "penis pride."

Since I haven't seen or even read The Vagina Monologues, I don't know whether or not it has a lot of male-bashing...I have to wonder, however: doesn't it bother Kantor and Pollitt that the play celebrates an adult woman's seduction of a 13-year-old girl? The girl is even shown saying, "if it was rape, it was a good rape." No need, I think, to ask anyone to imagine what the reaction would be if this was an adult male seducing a 13-year-old girl...

--Cathy Young

(To reply, click here.)


I take issue with the writers' assertion that women do not like the bodybuilder's body. The pictures to which the women so negatively reacted probably were of professional bodybuilders in full contest mode. Most men would never think that this level of size would attract many women. But show those same women pictures of professional fitness models, or Chippendale dancers, and the reaction would be quite different. These are men who are in reality very large and very defined, just not as much as the guys who do anabolic steroids for the whole off-season. Think Brad Pitt in Fight Club and you know what most men in the gym are trying to achieve. Please do not tell me that women do not find it attractive. Since I have been working out significantly, my dating prospects zoomed through the roof.

Oh, by the way, the female orgasm plays can play a role in impregnation: the woman is more likely to be inseminated after an orgasm, so don't say that it has no reproductive function

--Bruce Garrison

(To reply, click here.)





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