Susan Bordo: Beauty Rediscovers The Male Body (Analysis)

Susan Bordo Beauty (Re) Discovers the Male Body
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Bordo (1999) correctly observes that the male body is now for consumption in the media especially advertising unlike before where only female models were represented. This change has mostly been associated with the fashion industry that has shaped perceptions about accepting the male model body in the mainstream society. Consequently, advertisements depict men in poses that were considered female in the past. The fashion, film and television industry have challenged taboos and broken boundaries on what is acceptable with regards to the semi-naked males in the advertisement.
Changes in the society on representing the male body have occurred because of the naturalizing phenomenon, where certain values and ideas are considered acceptable. Hence, what becomes accepted appears natural, and in many cases what people do not like is depicted as unnatural or uncomfortable. Traditionally, positivity has been associated with feminine features while aggressiveness has been linked with masculinity. In marketing, the advertisements have challenged the standards of beauty. There is less stigma of being seen as gay in the media, as the society has become liberal and the mass media has depicted male models in erotic poses. Nonetheless, the view of linking aggressiveness with males is a macho bias, even as men learn to dodge attention to their bodies (Bordo, 1999).
The ramification of depicting men in certain poses in ads is that it challenges our notions about male attractiveness. Sex and beauty cannot be separated from the male body, but eroticism has long been applied to the female body. Hence representation of male lust is evident in showing male beauty when the models strike poses that objectivity their bodies. Nonetheless, objectification of women in the arts, literature and media in the west as occurred for long. Men are no longer immune from mass media representations of their bodies as sexua...