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In fact, the flashiest African American male styles have partaken both
of the African legacy and European notions of "class." Although the origin of the zoot suit-broad shoulders, long coats, ballooning, peg-legged
trousers, usually worn with a wide-brimmed hat-is debated, one widely
believed account says it was based on a style of suit worn by the Duke of
Windsor. Another claims Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind was the inspiration for the zoot suit (if so, it is a "deep irony," as the authors of Stylin'
comment). But whatever its origins, the zoot suit, worn during the forties
when cloth conservation orders ruled the use of that much fabric illegal,
was a highly visible and dramatic statement in disunity and defiance of
"American Democracy," a refusal to accede to the requirements of patriotism . Even more so than the slave's Sunday promenade, the zoot-suiter
used "style" aggressively to assert opposition to the culture that had made
him marginal to begin with-without his assent.
The use of high style for conspicuous display or defiance is still a big
part of male street culture, as sociologist Richard Majors notes: "Whether
it's your car, your clothes, your young body, your new hairdo, your jewelry, you style it. The word 'style' in [African American] vernacular usage
means to show off what you've got. And for teenagers with little money
and few actual possessions, showing off what you do have takes on increased importance. As one youth puts it, 'It's identity. It's a big ego trip.'"
What's changed since Majors wrote these words in the early nineties is
the increasing commercial popularity of hip-hop music and culture, which
has turned the rebellious stylings of street youth into an empire of images
Two versions of "style": "Style point" and "life, unity, peace."
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and products, often promoted (and sometimes designed) by big-name
stars. With postmodern sensibilities (grab what you like) ruling the fashion
world, moreover, what once were signature elements of black street style
have been incorporated-as gay styles have also been incorporated-in the
fashions of other worlds, both "high" (designer clothing) and "low" (white
high school boys with their pants slung low, trying to look so cool).
Despite the aggressive visibility of hip-hop culture, "showing off what
you've got" has not been the only influential definition of style among
African Americans. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, several etiquette books were published, written by middle-class blacks, promoting a very different fashion ideal. The National Capital Code of Etiquette,
published in 1889, warned young men to "avoid colors that do not blend
with the remainder of your wearing apparel, and above all things shun the
so-called 'loud' ties with colors that fairly shriek unto Heaven . . ." The
young black men should also avoid "bright reds, yellows and light greens
as you would the plague" and never, ever strut or swagger. Hortense Powderrnaker, who studied black life in Indianola, Mississippi, in the late
1930s, noted that better-off African Americans "deliberately avoided bright
colors" and were offended when clerks, on the basis of "the Negroe's reputation for wearing gaudy clothes," assumed they wanted something
"loud ." Those who advocated a less ostentatious style were dismayed by
the lower-class practice of adorning healthy front teeth with gold, while
leaving bad back teeth unattended.
A recent Essence list of fashion "do's and don'ts" emphasizes this deliberately understated-and in today's world, "professional"---eonception
of black male style. "Yes" to well-groomed hands, well-fitting suit and
a "definite sense of self." "No" to "glossy polished nails," "cologne that
arrives before he does," "Mr. T jewelry (the T stands for tacky)," and
"saggy jeans on anyone old enough to remember when 'Killing Me Softly'
was first released." Even in their most muted variations, African American
styles have done a great deal to add color, playfulness, and unexpected,
sexy little fillips to "tasteful," professional male clothing: whimsical ties,
internationally inspired shirts and sweaters, and, in general, permission to
be slightly dramatic, flirtatious, and ironic with one's clothes. The rule of
always matching patterns, too, no longer holds in the world of high fashion, the result of a collaboration (not necessarily conscious, of course) between postmodern sensibilities and the slave legacy of bricolage.
Superstar Michael Jordan (his masculine credentials impeccable, his
reputation as a family man solidly established over the years), a very effective spokesperson for style, has done a great deal to make fashionableness,
even "feminine" decorativeness, congruous with masculinity. This year, he
Was named GQ's "Most Stylish Man." "How stylish is Michael Jordan?"
GQ asks. "Answer: So stylish he can get away with wearing five rings!" Of
COurse, the fact that Jordan can "get away" with wearing five rings reveals
GQ's cultural biases. For the magazine, Jordan's stylishness resides in the
"drape of his suits, in the plain gold hoop in his left ear, in the tempered,
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ton ed-down body language of his late car eer." For GQ, subtle ty eq ual s
sty le. For Jordan too. But of course that plain go ld hoop would no t have
been v iew ed as so tastefully sub tle had Jordan not made it an acce p tab le
item of ma le d ecorativeness.
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Jordan, God bless him, is also unabashed in admitting that he shops mo re
than his wife, and that he gets his inspiration from women 's maga zines. The
night before he goes on the road, he tries on every outfit he's going to wear. He
describes himself as a "peti te-type person" who tries to hide th.is with overs ize
clothes and fabrics that dra pe . When questioned abou t the con tradiction between the "manliness" of spor ts and his "feminine" love of fashion, Jordan
replies that "that's the fun part-I can get away from the stigma of being an
athlete." Saved by fashion from the "stigma" of being a swea ty brute-that's
something, probably, that only an African American man can fully appreciate.
The fact that it's being an athlete and not "femininity" that' s the "stigma" to be
avoided by jord an-that's some thing a woman's got to love.
The ultimate a ffro n t to Dockers masculinit y, however , is und oubtedly
the Rockp ort ad on the previous page, wi th d rag superstar RuPaul in a
beautifully tai lored su it. Hi s fee t and h is star e ar e plant ed- vitually identically to Michael Jor d an's posture in the featu re I've just discu ssed-in
that unmistakable (and here, ironic) gramma r of face-off ad masculinity.
"I'm comfortab le being a MAN," de clares RuP aul. "I' m com fortable bein g
a woman too," of cour se, is the unw ritten subte xt. Man, woma n, what's
the d ifferen ce so lon g as one is " uncomp ro m ising " abo u t sty le?
My World ... and Welcome to It?
Despite ever ything I' ve sa id thus far, I feel de cidedly am bivalent abou t
consumer culture's inroa ds int o the male body. I do find it wonderful-as
I've made abundantly clear-that the male form, both clothed and unclothed, is being mad e so wi de ly ava ilable for sexu al fan tas y and aesthe tic
admiration. I like the fact that more and more heterosexual white guys are
feeling permission to play with fashion, se lf-decora tion, sensual presentation of the sel f. Even Docker s has become a litt le less "me a guy ... d uh !"
in its ads and spreads for khakis, which now include spaced-out women
as w ell as men.
But I also kn ow what it's like to be on the other side of the gaze. I
know its pleasu res, and I know its ago nies- intima tely. Even in the second ha lf of the tw entieth cen tury, beauty remains a pr erequ isite for fem ale
success. In fact, in an era characterize d by some as "postfem inist," beauty
seems to count mor e than it eve r did before, and the standa rds for achieving it have become more stringent, more rigorous, than ever. We live in an
empire ruled not by kin gs or eve n presidents, but by im ages. The tight
buns, the perfect skin, the firm breasts, the long, muscled legs, the bulgeless, sagless bodies ar e eve ryw he re. Beautiful women, ev erywhere, tellin g
the rest of us how to stand, how to sw ing our ha ir, how slim we must be.
Actually, all this flawle ss beau ty is the product of illusi on, generated
with body doubles, com p u ters, artful retouching. "Stea l this look!" the
lifestyles magazines ur ge wome n; it's clear fro m the ph oto that great new
haircut of Sharon Stone's could cha ng e a w oman's life. But in this era of
di git al retouching not even Sharon Stone looks like Sharon Stone. (Isabella
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Rossellini, w ho used to be the Lancome girl before she go t too old, has said
tha t he r photos are so enhanced that when people meet her they tell her ,
" Your sister is so beau tiful.") Still, we try to acco mplish the im possible, and
often ge t into trouble. Illusions se t the standard for rea l women , and they
sp aw n special d isorders and ad dicti ons: in trying to beco me as fat-free and
poreless as the ads, one's fleshl y body is pu shed to achieve the impossible.
I had a st uden t who ad mitted to me in her journ al that she had a
mak eup ad d iction. This young woman was unable to leav e the housenot eve n to walk d ow n to the corner mai lbox-without a full face and
body cov er-u p that took he r over an hour and a ha lf to apply. In her journal, she described having escalated over a year or so from minimal
"touching- up " to a vir tua l ma sk of found ati on, powder, eyeb row pen cil,
eye sha dow, eye line r, mascara, lip liner, lipstick-a mask so thorough, so
su ccessful in its illu sionary reality that her own naked face now looked
grotesque to her, mottled , pasty, featur eless. She d read ed ha ving sex wi th
her boyfriend, for fear some of the mask might com e off and he wo uld see
w ha t she looked like un dernea th. As soon as they we re done, she would
race to the bathroom to reapply; when he stayed ove r, sh e wo uld make
sure to sleep lightly, in order to wa ke up earlier than he. It's funny-and
not really funny. My student's disorder may be one ge nerated by a superficial, even insa ne cultu re, a di sorder befitting the Oprah show rather than
a PBS document ary . But a dis ord er nonetheless . Real. Painful. Deforming
of her life.
So, too, for the ea tin g di sorders that ru n ram pant am on g girl s an d
wom en. In much of my w riting on the fem ale bod y, I've chronicled how
these disord ers ha ve spread across race, class, and ethnic d ifferences in
this culture. Today, serious problems w ith food, weight, and body image
are no longer (if the y ever were) the p rovince of pampered, narcissistic,
het erose xual w hite girls . To imagine th at they are is to view black, Asian ,
Latin , lesbian , and working-class women as ou tsid e the loop of the dominant culture and untou ched by its messages ab out what is beautifu l- a
mistake that has left many women feelin g abando ne d and alone with a
disorder they weren' t "supposed" to have. Today, eating problems are
virtuall y the no rm among hig h school an d college women- and eve n
younger gi rls. Yes, of cour se there ar e far greater tragedies in life than
gaining five po unds. But try to rea ssure a fifteen-year-old girl that her success in life do esn 't require a slender body, and she w ill thin k yo u d rop ped
from another planet. She knows what's de mande d; she' s learned it from
the movies, the ma ga zin es, the soa p op eras.
There, the "p rogressive" message conveyed by giv ing the girls and
wo men dep icted great careers or excitin g ad vent ur es is overpowered, I
think, by the more potent example of their perfect bodies. The plots may
say: "The wo rld is you rs ." The bodies caution: "But only if you aren't fat. "
Wha t cou nt s as "fa t" today? Well, Alicia Silve rstone was taunted by the
pr ess when she appeared at the Academy Awards barely ten pounds
heavier than her (extr emely) svelte self in Clueless. Janeane Garofalo was
Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body
207
the "fat one" in The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Reviews of Titanic described Kate Winslett as plump, overri pe, mu ch too hefty for eth ereal
Leonardo DiCaprio. Any anger you detect here is persona l too. I ironed
my hair in the sixties, ha ve d ieted all my life, con tin ue to be dee ply
ashamed of those pa rts of my body-like my peasant legs and za ftig
behi nd-that our culture ha s coded as ethnic excess. I s uspect it's on ly an
accident of genera tional tim ing or a slig ht warp in the fabric of my cul tur al environment that prevented me from developing an ea ting disorder.
I'm no t a make up junky like my student, but I am becoming somewha t
ad dicted nowadays to alpha -hydroxies, ski n drenchers, quenchers, and
other "age -de fying" potions.
No, I d on't think the business of beauty is wi tho ut its pleas ur es. It offers a daily ritual of trans form a tion, renewal. Of "putting oneself together"
and wal king out in to the world, more confiden t than yo u were, anticipating attraction, flirtati on, sexu al play. I love shopping for makeup with my
friends . (Despite wha t Rush Lim ba ugh tells yo u, feminism-certainly no t
feminism in the nine ties-is no t synon ymous wi th unshaved legs.) Women
bond over sha red makeup, shared beauty tips. It's fun. Too often, thou gh,
our bond is over shared pain-over "bad " skin, "bad " hair, "bad" legs.
There's always tha t cons tan t judgment and eva luation-not only by actual,
living men but by an ever-present, watchful cultur al gaze which always
has its eye on our thighs-no matter how much else we acco mp lish . We
judge each other that way too, some times mu ch more nasti ly than men .
Some of the bitchiest comments about Marcia Clark's hair and Hilla ry Clinton's calves have com e from wo men. But if w e are sometimes our "ow n
worst enem ies," it' s us ua lly because we see in each oth er no t so m uch
comp etition as a reflection of o ur fears and anxie ties about ourselves. In
this culture, all women suffer ove r their bodies. A demon is loose in our
Conscious ness and can' t easily be cont rolled . We see the devil, fat calves,
liVing on Hillary 'S body. We point our fingers, like the accusers at Salem .
Root him ou t, kill her!
And now men are sud de nly finding that de vil living in their flesh . If
someo ne had told me in 1977 that in 1997 men wo uld comprise ove r a
quarter of cosmetic-surgery patients, I would have been asto unded . I
never dr eam ed that "equality" would move in the direction of men worrYing more about their looks ra the r than wo me n wo rry ing less. I first suspected that something major was goi ng on when the gu ys in my gender
classes stop pe d yawnin g and passing snide not es whe n we d iscussed body
issues, and instead began to protest when the wo men talked as thou gh
they were the only ones "oppressed " by standards of beauty. After my boo k
Unbearable Weight ap pea red, I received seve ral letters from male an orexics,
reminding me that the inciden ce of such d isorde rs among me n wa s on the
rise. Today, as many as a milli on men-and eigh t million wo men-have
an eating disorder.
Then I began noticing all the new men's "hea lth " magazines on the
newsstands, dispensing diet and exercise advice ("ABetter Body in Half
S USAN B ORDO
208
the Time, " "50 Snacks Tha t Won 't Make You Fat ") in the sa me cheerleaderis h mode that Betty Friedan had once chas tised the women 's ma gazi nes
for: "It' s Chinese New Year, so m ake a resolu tion to custom-orde r yo ur
next tak eout. Ask that they substitute wanton soup for oil. Try the soba
noodl es instead of plain noodles. They'r e richer in nutrient s and contain
mu ch less fat." I guess the worl d d oesn 't belong to the meat-eaters an ymore, Mr. Ben Qui ck.
It used to be a truism among those of us fami liar w ith the research on
bod y-im age pr oblem s that mos t men (that is, most straigh t me n, on who m
the stu d ies were based ) we re lar gely immune. Women, research sho wed,
were ch ronically di ssatisfied with them selves. But men tended , if anything,
to see them selv es as better-looking than they (per hap s) actually were. Peter
Richmond, in a 1987 piece in Glamour, describes his "wonderful male trick"
for seeing what he wants to see w hen he looks in the mirror:
I edi t out the flaws. Recentl y, und er the influence of too many
Heinekens in a strange hotel room, I stood in fron t of a wrap around full-length mirror and saw, in a moment of nauseous
clarity, how unshapely my stomach and butt have become. The
next morn ing, looking aga in in the same mirror, ready to begin
another business day , I simply d idn't see these offend ing areas.
Notice all the codes for mal e "action" that Richmond ha s decorated his
self-rev elation with. "Too many Heineken s," "another bu siness day"-aU
reassuran ces that other thin gs matter more to him than his appearan ce. But
a decade later, it's no lon ger so easy for men to perform these little tricks.
Getting read y for the business day is ap t to exace rbate rather than di vert
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Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body
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male anxieties ab out the bod y, as men compete with fitter, younger men
and fitter, mor e self-sufficien t wom en . In a 1994 survey , 6,000 men ages
eighteen to fifty-five wer e asked how they wo uld like to see them selves.
Three of men 's top six answers we re about loo ks: attractive to wome n,
sexy, goo d-loo king . Male "action" q uali ties- asser tiveness , decisiven esstrailed at numbers eight and nin e.
" Back w hen bad bodies wer e the norm," cla ims Fortune w riter Alan
Farnh a m (agai n, ope ra ting wi th the presump tion of he tero sexua lity),
"money disting uish ed male from male. No w mus cles have devalu ed
money," and the mark et for products and p rocedures "catering to male
vanity" (as Fortune pu ts it) is $9.5 billion or so a yea r. "It's a Face-Lifted,
Tumm y-Tu cked Jungle O ut The re," re ports The New York Times. To compete, a man
could buy Rogaine to thicken his hair. He could invest in BodySlimmers underwear for men, by the designer Nancy Ganz, with
built-in sup port to suck in the waist. Or he could skip the aloe
skin cream and go on to a more drastic measure, new to the male
market: alpha-hyd roxy prod ucts that slough off dead skin . Or he
could rub on some belly- and thigh-shrinking creams .. . If rubbing cream seems too strenuous, [he] can just don an und ershirt
from Mountainville House, to "shape up and pull in loose stomachs and sagging chests," with a d iamond-shaped insert at the
gut for "extra control." . . . Plastic surgery offers pectoral implan ts to make the chest app ear more muscular, and calf muscle
implan ts to give the leg a bodybuilder shape. There is liposuction to counter thickening midd les and accumulating breast and
fatty tissue in the chest .. . and a half-dozen surgical methods for
tightening skin .
Some wri ters blam e all th is on sex ual equality in the wo rkplace.
Anthropologist Lion el Tiger offers this explanati on: "O nce," he says,
"me n could fairl y well contro l their destiny th rou gh providing resources
to wom en , but now that the fem a le is obliged to ea rn a liv in g, he himsel f
becomes a resour ce. He becom es his ow n prod uct: Is he goo d -loo king?
Does he smell good? Before, w hen he had to provide for the female, he
coul d have a potb elly. Now he has to appear attractive in the wa y the
female had to be." Some evidence does su ppo rt this. A PSycl1OlogtJ Today
survey found that the more finan cially secure the woman , the more
imp ortant a man 's looks were to her.
I, howeve r, ten d to see con sumer cap italism ra the r than wom en's expect ati ons or p roclivities as the true mo tor d riving male con cern with
appearan ce. Calvin gav e us th ose muscled men in underwear. The n the
Cosmetics, diet, exercise, and su rger y industri es elbow ed in, p roviding the
means for everyo ne to develop that grea t Soloflex body. After all, w hy
should they restri ct themelves to female markets if they can convince men
that their looks need constant improvement too? The management and enhancem ent of the bod y is a gold min e for con sumer ism, an d on e whose
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treasures are inexhau stible, as women know . Dieting and staving off
ag ing are nev er-end ing processes. Idea ls of beauty can be endlessly tinkered with by fash ion designers and cosmetic manufacturers, rem ainin g
continually elusive, requiring con stant new purchases, new kinds of wo rk
on the bod y.
John Berger's opposi tion of "acting" and "ap pearing," this body wo rk
reveals, is something of a false d uali ty- and alw ays has been . "Femini ne"
attention to appearance is hardly the absence of activity, as men are learning. It takes time , en ergy, creativity, dedication . It can hurt. Nowadays, the
"ac t/a ppear " dua lity is even less meaningful, as the cu ltivation of the
suitably fit appearance has become not just a matter of sexual allure but
also a demonstration that one has the "right stuff" : will , discipline, the
ability to stop whining and "ju st do it." Wh en I was growing up in the sixties, a mu scular male bod y me ant beefy but dumb jock; a midd le-class girl
could d rool over him but p rob ably wouldn't want to mar ry him . Tod ay,
with a booming "gymn asium cultu re" exist ing (as in ancient Gr eece) for
profession al men and w ith it a rev ival of the Greek idea that a good mind
and a good bod y ar e not mutuall y exclu sive, even Jeff Goldblum has got
muscles, an d the only type of jock he pla ys is a comp u ter jock.
All of this, as physicians ha ve begun to note, is landing more and more
men straight into the for merly female territory of body-image dy sfunction , ea ting disorders , and exercise compulsio ns. Last year, I read a survey
that rep orted that 90 percent of ma le under grad uates believe that they are
not muscul ar enough . That sent warning bells clanging in my mind, and
sure en ou gh , there's now a medic al category for "muscle d ysmorphia" (or
"bigo rexia ." as it's actua lly sometimes called!), a kind of reverse an or exia
in w hich the su fferer sees his muscles as never massive eno ugh . Researchers are "exp laining" bigo rexia in the same dumb way they've
tended to approach women's disorders- as a combination of bad biochem istry and "triggering events," such as being p icked on . The y just
don 't see m to fully ap preciate the fact that bigo rexia-like anorexia-only
blooms in a very particular cultura l soil. Not even the ancient Gre ekswho rev ered athletic bodies and scorned weaklings, but also ad vised
mod er ation in all things-produced "m uscle dysmorphics." (Or at least,
none of the avail able med ical texts mention an yth ing like it.) Anorexia
and bigorexia, like so many contemporary d isorders, are diseases of a culture that doesn't know when to stop .
Those beautiful bod ies of Greek statues may be the h istorical inspiration for the mu scled men in un de rw ear of the Cal vin Klein ads. But the
fact is that stud yin g the anci ent Greeks reveals a di fferent set of attitud es
toward beauty and the body than our contemporary ideals, both homosexual and heterosexu al. As is well known by now (although undiscussed
w he n I stud ied philosophy as an undergraduate), Plato wa s not abo ve appreciating a beautiful young bod y. In Symposium, he de scr ibes the beauty
of the body as evidence of the presence of the divine on earth, and the
original spur to all "higher" human endeavors (as well as earthly, sexual
Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body
211
love). We see some one da zzling, and he or she aw akens the soul to its natural h unger to be lifted abov e the mundane, tra nsit or y, mortal world .
Some people seek that transcendence through ordina ry h uma n inte rcourse, and achieve the only immortalit y they w ill know through the
begetting of human offspring and the continuation of the human race. For
oth ers, the beautiful body of an other becomes the inspi ration for a lifelon g
sea rch for bea uty in all its forms, the crea tion of beautiful a rt, beautiful
word s, beautiful ideals, beautiful cities. They will achieve their immortality through communion with something beyond the body-the idea of
Beauty itself.
So human bea uty is a pret ty far-r an ging and po we rful thing for Plato,
cap ab le of evoking worl ds beyond itself, even recalling a previous life
wh en we dwelt among timel ess, perfect forms. But human beauty, significantl y (in fact, all earthly beauty), can only offer a glimpse of heavenly
perfection. It's our nature to be imperfect, after all, and anyone w ho tries
to ove rcome that lim ita tion on earth is guilty of h ubris-according to the
Greeks. Our ow n culture, in contrast, is one without " limits" (a frequent
them e of advertisements and commerci als) and see mingly without any
fear of hubris. No t only do we expect perfection in the bodi es of others
(ju st take a gande r at some personal ads), we are cons tantly encouraged to
achieve it ourselves, with the help of science and technology and the products and services they mak e available to us. "Thi s body could be yours, "
the chiseled Greek statu e in the Soloflex comm ercial tells us (and for onl y
twenty minutes thr ee times a week-g ive me a break '). "Timeless Beauty
Is Within Your Reach, " read s an ad for cosmetic surgery. Plat o is rolling
over in his gr ave.
For Plato (unlike Descartes) there are no "m ere" physical bodi es; bodies are lit w ith meaning, wi th memory. O ur culture is more Cartes ian; we
like to think of our bodies as so much stuff, whi ch can be tin kered wi th
without any con sequences for our soul. We bob our "family noses," lift
Our ag ing faces, suction extr a fat, rem ove min or "flaws" with seemingly
little concern for any "deep " mean ing that our bod ies might ha ve, as
repo sitories of ou r histories, our ethnic and racial and famil y lineage, our
personalities. Actually, mu ch of the time our intenti ons are to deliberately
shed those me anings: to ge t rid of that Jewish nose, to erase the yea rs from
our faces. Unl ike the Platonic philoso pher, we aren 't con ten t to experience
timelessness in philosop hy, art, or even the beautiful bodies of others; we
want to stop time on our own bodies too. In the pr ocess, we s ubstitute indi Vidualized beauty-the distinctive faces of the generation of beautiful
actresses of my own age, for example-for generic, very often racia lized,
reproducible code s of yo uth.
The fact is that we're not only Cartesian but Puritan in our attitudes toward the body. The Gre eks went for muscles, sure, but they would ha ve
regarded our exercise compulsions as evidence of a system out of control.
They thought it unseemly-and a failure of w ill- to get too self-obs essed
with anything. They were into the judicious "management" of the body
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SUSAN BORDo
(as French philosopher Michel Foucault has put it), not its utter subjugation. We, on the other hand, can become what our culture considers to be
sexually alluring only if we're willing to regard our flesh as recalcitrant
metal, to be pummeled, burned, and tempered into steel, day in and day
out. No pain, no gain. Obsessively pursuing these ideals has deprived
both men and women of the playful eros of beauty, turned it all into constant, hard work. I love gay and black body cultures for their flirtatiousness, their tongue-in-cheekness, their irony, their "let's dress up and have
some fun" attitudes. Consumer culture, unfortunately, can even grind
playfulness into a commodity, a required item for this year's wardrobe.
For all its idealization of the beauty of the body, Greek culture also understood that beauty could be "inner." In the Symposium, a group of elite
Greeks discourse on the nature of love. Everyone except for Socrates and
Aristophanes is in love with someone else at the party, and they're madly
flirting, advancing their own romantic agendas through their speeches.
Among the participants are the most beautiful young men of their crowd.
Socrates himself is over fifty at the time, and not a pretty man to look at (to
put it generously). Yet as we're told at the beginning (and this seems to
have been historically true), nearly everyone has at one time or another
been "obsessed" with him, "transported, completely possessed"-by his
cleverness, his irony, his ability to weave a spell with words and ideas.
Even the most dazzling Athenian of them all-soldier superhero Alicibiades, generally regarded as one of the sexiest, handsomest men in town,
who joins the party late (and drunk) with a beautiful wreath of violets and
ivy and ribbons in his hair-is totally, madly smitten with Socrates.
Alcibiades' love for Socrates is not "Platonic" in the sense in which we
have come to understand that term. In fact, Alcibiades is insulted because
Socrates has refused to have sex with him. "The moment he starts to
speak," he tells the crowd of his feelings for Socrates, "I am beside myself:
my heart starts leaping in my chest, the tears come streaming down my
face ." This is not the way it usually goes. In the more normal Greek
scheme of things, it's the beautiful young man-like Alcibiades-who is
supposed to start the heart of the older man thumping, and who flirtatiously withholds his favors while the older lover does his best to win
him. Alcibiades is in a state about this role reversal, but he understands
why it has happened. He compares Socrates to a popular kind of satyr
statue, which (like the little lacquered Russian dolls we're more familiar
with) could be opened to reveal another figure within. Socrates may be
ugly as a satyr on the outside, but "once I had a glimpse of the figures
within-they were so godlike, so bright and beautiful, so utterly amazing,
that I no longer had a choice-I just had to do whatever he told me."
We pay constant lip service to beauty that is more than skin-deep. The
talk shows frequently parade extreme May-December matings for our
ogling too. But the fact is that the idea of a glamorous young man being
romantically, sexually obsessed with someone old and "ugly"-same-sex
or other-sex and no matter what other sterling qualities he or she may
Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body
:.-.----
213
have-is pretty much beyond us. Historically, men have benefited from a
double standard which culturally codes their gray hair, middle-age
paunches, facial lines, as signs of wisdom and experience rather than advancing decrepitude. My older gay male friends lament that those days
are over for them. And if those new polls about women's attitudes are to
be believed, the clock is ticking on that double standard for heterosexual
men, too-no matter how hard Hollywood tries to preserve it. With more
and more expectation that men be as physically well-tended as women,
those celluloid pairings of Woody Allen and women half as old and fortysix times as good-looking are becoming more of a hoot every day.
There is something anti-sensual to me about current aesthetics. There's
so much that my younger friends go "uggh" over. Fat-yecch l Wrinklesyuck! They live in a constant state of squeamishness about the flesh. I find
that finely muscled young Calvin Klein model beautiful and sexy, sure.
But I also was moved by Clint Eastwood's aging chest in The Bridges of
Madison County. Deflated, skin loose around the waistband of his pants,
not a washboard ridge in sight-for me, they signaled that Eastwood (at
least for this role) had put Dirty Harry away for good, become a real, warm,
penetrable, vulnerable human being instead of a make-my-day machine.
Call me old-fashioned, but I find that very sexy. For a culture obsessed with
youth and fitness, in contrast, sagging flesh is almost the ultimate signifier
of decay and disorder. We prefer the clean machine-and are given it, in
spades. Purified of "flaws," all loose skin tightened, armored with implants,
digitally enhanced, the bodies of most movie stars and models are fully
dressed even when naked .
In Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta had been trim, but (by contemporary standards) a bit "soft." Six years later, Travolta re-created Tony
Manero in the sequel, Staying Alive. This time, however, the film was directed by Sylvester Stallone, who showed Travolta a statue of a discus
thrower and asked, "How would you like to look like that?" "Terrific,"
Travolta replied, and embarked on a seven-month program of fitness training that literally redesigned his body into a carbon copy of Sly's. In the
film, his body was "perfect": gleaming and muscular, without an ounce of
fat. He was nice to look at. But if I had to choose between the Tony Manero
of Fever and the Tony Manero of Staying Alive, it'd be no contest. I'd rather
spend time (and have sex) with a dancing man with love handles than with
a Greek statue who gets in a nasty mood if he misses a workout.
NOTE
I Not that women's beauty was dispensable. Concern for her looks symbolized that
although she worked as hard as a man, a woman's mind was still on the real men who
Were fighting for her freedom. (An ad for Tangee lipstick describes "a woman's lipstick
[as) an instrument of personal morale that helps her to conceal heartbreak or sorrow;
gives her self-confidence when it's badly needed ... It symbolizes one of the reasons
Why we are fighting ... the precious right of women to be feminine and lovely-under
any circumstances.") The woman of this period was a creature of both "appearance" and
"action"-a kind of forerunner to today's superwoman.
214
SUSAN BORDO
BIBLIOGRAPH Y
Beauvoir, Simon e de. (1952). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books.
Berger, John . (1972). Ways uf Seeing. Great Britain: Penguin Books.
Blum, Debor ah . (1997). Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and
Women. New York: Viking Penguin.
Boyd , He rber t, and Rober t Allen (eds.). (1995). Broiherman. New York: Ballan tine.
Clark, Danae. (1995). "Commodity Lesbianism." In Kate Meuh uro n and Gary Persecute
(eds.). Free Spirits. Englew ood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice H all, pp. 82-94.
Clarkson, Wensley. (1997). John Travolta: Back in Character. Woodstock: Overloo k Press .
Ellenzweig. Allen. (1992). The Homoerotic Photograph. New York: Columbia Lniversity
Press.
Farnh am, Alan. (1996). "You' re So Vain," Fortune, Sep tember 9, pp. 66--82.
Foucau lt, Miche l. (1985). The Use of Pleasure. New York: Vintage Books.
Friday , Nancy. (1996). The Power of Bea uty. "lew York: Ha rp erC ollins.
Gaines, Steven, and Sharon Churcher. (1994). Obsession: The Lives and Times of Calvin
Klein. New York: Avon Books .
Gilmore, David. (1990). Manhood il1 the Making. "lew Haven : Yale un iversi ty Press.
Gladwell , Malco lm. (1997). "Listening to Khakis," The New Yorker, July 28, pp . 54-58 .
Hollander, Anne. (1994). Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modem Dress. New York: Kodansha Internati onal.
Long, Ro n. (1997). "The Fitness of the Gym," Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Vol. IV,
No.3, Summer, pp. 20-22 .
Majors, Richa rd , and Jane t Mancini Billson. (1992). Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America. New York: Lexington Books.
Peiss, Kathy. (1998). Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. New York:
Metropol itan Books.
Pieter se, Jan Nederv een. (1990). White 011 Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Plato. (1989). Symposium. Trans. Alexander Neharna. Indi anapolis: Hackett Publi shing.
Richmond, Peter. (1987). "How Do Men Feel About Their Bodies ?" Glamour, April,
pp . 312-13,369- 72.
Rotundo, E. Anthony. (1993). American Manh ood: Transformations in Masculinity from the
Revolution to the Modem Era. New York: Basic Books.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1966). Being and Nothingness. "l ew Yo rk: Washing ton Sq uare Pres s.
Shaw, Dan. (1994). "Mirror, Mirror," New YorkTimes, May 29, Section 9, pp . 1, 6.
Sheets-johnstone, Maxine . (1994). The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Cendered Bodies.
Chicago: Open Cour t.
Spindler, Amy . (1996). "I t's a Face-Lifted Tum my-Tucke d Jun gle Ou t There ," New York
Times, June 9,
Taylor, John. (1995). "The Long Hard Days of Dr. Dick," Esquire, September, pp . 120-30.
White, Shane, an d Graham Whi te. (1998) Stylin'. Itha ca: Corn e ll Unive rsity Press.
QUESTIO NS FOR A SECO ND READ ING
1. This is a long essay. The wri ting opera tes un der a se t of expecta tions that
do es not valu e efficiency. The wri ting says, "It is better to take time wi th
this, better to take time rather than h urry, ra the r than rushing to say what
must be said, rather than pushing to be done. Slow d own, relax, take your
Beaut~d iscovers
the Male Body
215
time. Th is can be fun." While there is attention to a "thesis ," the orga nizing princip le of th is essay is s uch that the real work and the real p leasure
lie elsewh ere. Wo rk and p leasure. As you reread, pa y particular atten tion
to how Bordo con tro ls the pace an d d irection of the essay, where she prolongs the dis cussion and w here and when sh e shifts d irection. Th ink of
this as a way for her (and you) to ge t work done. And th ink abo ut it as a
way of organizing the pleasure of the text. Be p re pared to d escr ibe how
she does th is and whether it wor ks for you (or d oesn't ). An d to tal k abo u t
the possibilities of adap ting th is stra tegy (a stra tegy of more ra ther than
less) in yo ur own wri ting.
2. This is a long essay divided in to subsectio ns. Th e subsections mark stages
in the presen ta tion. The subsections allow you to thin k about form in re lation to units lar ger than the par agraph but sm aller tha n the essay. As yo u
re read, pay at tention to these secti ons. How are they orga n ized intern ally?
How are they arranged? How d o they d etermine the p ace or rhy thm of
your read ing, the tona lity or ph rasing of the text? Whic h is the slowest, for
exam ple? Which is the loudes t? And w hy ? And where are the y p laced?
What do they do to the argument?
3. Bord o is a dis tinc tive and stylis h w riter. She is also one of many w ri ters
wh o are thin king abou t vis ua l culture and popular culture (about mo vies,
TV, and advertisemen ts) in relation to (what Bordo refers to as) "consumer cap italism. " For those who kn ow this work, she makes use of
some terms an d s tra tegies com mon to cultural studies. One is to th ink
about "s ubject position." Bord o says that when she saw the Calvin Klein
ad , " . .. I had m y firs t rea l tas te of what it's like to inhabit this visual
culture as a ma n. " Another related strategy is to think about how and
where one is pos ition ed , as s ubject or object, in the moment of vision, a
moment of look ing, w hen you are de fine d by the "gaze" of another or
when your "ga ze" is the so urce of defini tion. She says, for example, "For
ma ny men , bot h ga y and s traight , to be so passively dependent on the
gaze of ano ther pe rso n for one's sense of self-worth is incom p atible wi th
bein g a real man. " She works this ou t in the section w here she talks abou t
Jean-Paul Sartre an d Simone de Bea uvoir (p p. 171-72). As yo u reread the
cha pter, pay par ticula r attention to where and how Bordo in vok es an d /o r
inhabits the "subject position" of people differen t from hers elf. H ow are
these differences d efined ? (You m ight make a list.) Where is she mos t con vinci ng? Least convincing? And, fina lly, be prepared to speak back to the
text from what you take to be yo ur own "subject position." How does it
look to yo u?
4. At one po in t, Bordo speaks directly to yo u and invi tes yo u in to her project:
"So the next time you see a Dockers or a Haggar ad, think of it not onl y as
an advertisement for khakis but also as an advertisemen t for a certain notion of w hat it mean s to be a ma n." You do n' t ha ve to be limited to Dockers, Haggar, or kh aki , bu t as yo u reread the essay, keep your eye out for
ad vertisements that com e yo ur way, advertise ments that seem perfect for
thinking alo ng w ith Bordo , for thinkin g her th ou ghts but also for thinking
about how things have cha nged or mi ght be seen differently. Clip these or
cop y them an d bring them to clas s.
216
S USAN B ORD()
ASSI GNMENTS FO R WRI TI NG
1. Bordo looks back to the history of advertising (the "c ultur al ge nealogy of
the ad s I've been d iscuss ing") an d she works di rectly with the ads that
promp ted and served this cha p ter in her book. Th ese images are a key
part of the writing.
Bord o also spea ks d irectly to yo u and invites yo u int o her proj ect: "So
the next time yo u see a Dockers o r a Hagga r ad , thin k of it not only as an
ad vertise ment for khakis but also as an ad verti sem ent for a certain noti on
of wha t it means to be a ma n ." You d on't have to be limit ed to Dockers,
Ha ggar, or khaki, but as you rerea d the essay and prepa re for this wr iting
assignme nt, keep your eye out for adv ertisem en ts that com e your way,
advertisemen ts that seem pe rfect for thinking along wit h Bord o (or ad vertisem ents that seem like interest ing coun ter-example s). Clip these or copy
them so that yo u can use them, as she does, as material for wri ting .
Writ e an essay in wh ich you take up Bordo's invitation. You sh ould
ass ume an audien ce that has not read Bordo (or not read her wo rk recen tly), so you will need to tak e time to present the terms an d direction of
her argument. Your go al, however, is to extend her project to your momen t in time, w here ad vertising ma y very well ha ve moved on to di fferen t i m ages or men and strategies of p resentati on . Bordo is qu ite specific
about her age and experience, her point of view . You should be equ ally
sp ecific. You, too, should establish you r point of view . You are placed at a
di fferent mome n t in time, yo ur experience is di fferent, your expos ure to
images has prep ared you differentl y. You wr ite from a diff erent s ubject
position. You r job, then , is not simply to rep roduce Bord o's pro ject but to
extend it, to refine it, to pu t it to the test.
2. The first two "Q uestions for a Second Reading" (pp . 214-15) po int
atten tion to the length of the essay an d to its org anization. Here, in effect,
is wha t they say:
"Bea uty (Re)di scovers the Male Bod y" is a long essay. The writin g opera tes un de r a set of exp ecta tions that does not va lue efficiency. The
wr iting sa ys, " It is bett er to tak e time wi th thi s, bett er to ta ke time
rather than hurr y, ra ther than ru shing to say wha t mu st be said, ra ther
than pushing to be done. Slow dow n, relax, tak e your time. This can be
fun ." Wh ile there is attenti on to a " thesis," the orga nizing pr incip le of
this essay is such that the rea l work a nd the real pleasure lie elsewh ere.
Wor k and pleasure. As yo u rer ead, pay part icular a ttention to how
Bord o con trols the pace and direction of the essay, wh ere she prolongs
the di scussion an d w he re and w hen s he shi fts d irection. Think of this
as a way for her (and you) to get wor k do ne. And th in k about it as a
way of organizing the pleas ur e of the text .
TI1is is a lon g essa y d ivided into s ubsections . The s ubsections ma rk
stages in the presentation. The subsections allow yo u to think a bo ut
for m in relation to units la rger tha n the paragraph but smaller than the
ess ay. As you reread , pay a tten tion to these sections. How a re they organi zed in ternally? H ow are they ar ranged? How do they deter mine
the pace or rh yt hm of your readi ng, the ton ali ty or phrasing of the text?
Whi ch is the slow est, for exa mp le? Which is the loudest? And w hy?
And where a re they placed ? Wh at d o the y do to the argument?
Beauty (Reidiscouers the Male Body
217
Take time to reread and to thin k the se questions through. It has become
common for scho la rs and teach ers to thin k abo ut the pleas ur e, even the
"erotics" o f the text. This is not , to be sure, the usu al lan guage of the compositi on class ro om. Writ e an essay in wh ich you d escrib e the ple asur es
(and, if you choose, the p roblems) of Bord o's writing . Describe how it is
org ani zed, and how it organizes you r time and attention. Descr ibe how it
works (or do esn 't) for yo u as a read er, ho w it works (or do esn 't) for her as
a wr iter an d thinker. You can, to be sure, ma ke referen ce to other things
you are reading or have read or to the writing you are d oing (and have
done) in scho ol.
3. Bordo assumes , alw ays, that the repr esentation s of men's bod ies are generally read (or viewed) in the con text of the similar use of wome n's bod iesin art, in adverti sing, in visual popular culture (including film and television ). For this assig nment, cho ose two sources-one ad directed, you feel,
primar ily to men and another ad d irected p rimarily to women-or you
might look more genera lly at all of the ads in two mag azines, one directed
(yo u feel) primarily to me n an d ano ther to women . Wr ite an essa y in wh ich
you use Bord o's essa y, and its claims, to think thro ugh your examples. You
will need to take time to present yo ur examples (includ ing, id eally, the images) and Bordo's understanding of the role of gen der in the ways images
of the bod y are design ed, p resented , and rea d. How , that is, can you both
pre sent and extend Bordo' s work on gender and advertising?
4. Bordo says that when she sa w the Calvin Klein ad , "... I had my first real
taste of wh at it's like to inha bit this vis ual culture as a man ." Thro ughout
the essa y she makes reference to her "subject position " and to the su bject
positi on of other viewers, both real and imagined-viewe rs younger or
old er, viewers of an other race or ethn icity, men, viewers who are gay
rath er than stra ight. As yo u pr epare to wr ite this essay reread the chapter
(see the "Questions for a Second Reading," p . 214), and pay particular attention to those momen ts whe re she sp eaks to the effects of particular ads,
and where she speaks from her or from ano ther subje ct pos ition. Think
carefull y about how she is "reading" and resp on d ing to these images.
Thin k with equa l care abou t what you see and how you res pond; think,
that is, about how yo u might ar ticulate the reactions from yo ur "s ubject
pos ition" or from those that Bordo has not yet been ab le to imagine.
Cho ose one or tw o of her exam ples and write about them as she sees and
understands them , but also as you see or understand them . How do these
im ages look to you and at you? Ho w migh t you spea k back to Bordo?
Take care to develop bot h positions with care and d etail. And, at the end,
thin k abo ut how you might best exp lain the differences.
M AKIN G CONNECTIONS
1. In "Beauty (Re)discovers the Mal e Body," Bordo refers to John Berger and
his work in Ways of Seeing (p. 134), al tho ug h she refers to a d ifferent chapter
than the one included here. In general, however, bo th Berger and Bord o are
concerned w ith how w e see and read images; both are conce rned to cor rect
218
the ways images are used and read; both trace the ways images serve
in terests of money and pow er; both are written to teach read ers how an,
why they sh ould pa y a di fferent kind of attention to the ima ges aro
them.
For this ass ign men t, use Bord o's work to recon sider Berger 's . Write
essay in whi ch you consi der the tw o chapters as examp les of an ongoin,
project. Berger's essay precedes Bordo's by about a qua rter of a century.
yo u look closely at on e or two of their examples, and if yo u look at the
larger conc erns of their arg umen ts, are the y saying the same things?
Doi.ng the same work? If so, how? An d why is such work still necessary?
If not, how d o their proj ects differ? And how might you explain those differences?
MICHEL
FOUCAULT
2. Earl y in "Grief and a He adhunter's Rage (p. 588)," Rena to Rosaldo tells US
that "Only after bein g rep osi tioned th rou gh a de vast ating loss of my own
could I better grasp that Ilongot old er men mean pr ecisely what they say
wh en they describe the an ger in bereavem ent as the so urce of their desire
to cut off human heads" (p. 589 ). "Posit ion " is a key word for Rosaldo . He
is "p ositioned " as an ethnog rapher; he is positioned as Chi cano; he is positione d as one w ho has expe rien ced a de vastating loss . And aw areness of
one' s position, as suggested above (in the third "Questions for a Second
Reading"), is a key intellectual strategy for Susan Bordo in "Beauty (Rejdiscovers the Male Body ." In a se nse, both are in vol ved in the same process
of cultura l ana lysis. Rosaldo works to make a forei gn culture "familiar"
and available for reflection; Bordo wo rks to make our own popular culture "foreign" and available for reflection .
Write an essay in which you think abo ut how the concept of "positioning" fun ctions in the work of Rosaldo and Bord o. Wha t do they do? How
d o they do what they do? What ap plicati on might thei r work ha ve in your
life and in yo ur stud ies? Imagine that you are writing for someone who
has not read these essays and imagine that your point is to provide some
insight into how academ ic researchers d o their wo rk. It would be useful,
also, to highlight so me of the key terms, including technic al terms, that
they share and that the y don 't share. And, finally, how might you understand the diff erences in their research proj ects and how might you trace
these to their different fields? (Jane Tompkins's essay " Tndians'" (pp. 654-70)
might provide an altern ative source for this assignment, even though both
Tompkins and Bord o belon g to English departments.)
MiCHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984) standsat the beginning of the twenty-first century as one of the world's
leading intellectuals. He was trained as a philosopher, but
much of his work, like that presented in Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), traces the presence of certain ideas across European history. So he could
also be thought of as a historian, but a historian whose
goal is to revise the usual understanding of history-not
as a progressive sequence but as a series of repetitions
governed by powerful ideas, terms, and f igures. Foucault
also a public intellectual, involved in such prominent issues as prison re. . He wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews. His death from
DS was front-page news in Le Mende, the French equivalent of the New
Ork Times. He taught at several French universitiesand in 1970 was appointed
a professorship at the College de France, the highest position in the French sys. He traveled widely, lecturing and visiting at universities throughout the
ld,
Foucault's work is central to much current work in the humanities and the
illl sciences. In fact, it is hard to imagine any area of the academy that has not
influenced by hiswriting. There is a certain irony in all this, since Foucault