Search results for sex

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Last year in a post about the truism “sex sells,” I asked:

But whose sex is sold?  And to who?

“If it was simply that sex sold,” I continued…

…we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture.  Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men.  So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”?

I argued that what was really being sold was men’s (presumably heterosexual) sexual subjectivity, the experience of being a person in the world who was presented with images that were for his titillation. Women do not live in the world this way. They are not exposed everyday to images that legitimize their lust; instead, the images teach women that they are the object of that lust.

In light of this, Sociologist Beth Eck did a series of interviews attempting to tap into what it felt like for men and women to look at male and female nudes.  Her findings were pretty fascinating.

First, she asked men and women to look at naked images of women, including this one of Cindy Crawford:

Women viewing images of female nudes almost inevitably compared themselves to the figure and felt inadequate.   Said one women:

…the portrayal of these thin models and I just get depressed… I’m very hard on myself, wanting to be that way.

Women ended up feeling bad whether the model conformed to conventional norms of attractiveness or not.  When looking at a heavy set woman, they often responded like this:

I am disgusted by it because she is fat, but I’m also… I need to lose about 10 pounds.

I don’t necessarily find her body that attractive… Her stomach looks like mine.

Men, in contrast, clearly felt pandered to as holders of a heterosexual male gaze.  They knew that the image was for them and offered praise (for a job well done) or criticism (for failure to live up to their expectations).  About Crawford they said:

Personally I think she is attractive.

I like that.

Both men and women, then, knew exactly how to respond to female nudes: women had internalized their object status and men had internalized their subject status.

Eck then showed them male nudes, including this one of Sylvester Stallone:

Interestingly, both men and women felt uncomfortable looking at male nudes.

Men responded by either expressing extreme disinterest, re-asserting their heterosexuality, or both.  They did not compare themselves to the male nudes (like women did with female nudes), except to say that they were both male and, therefore, there was “nothing to see.”  Meanwhile, because men have been trained to be a lustful sexual subject, seeing male nudity tended to raise the specter of homosexuality.  They couldn’t see the bodies as anything but sexual objects for them to gaze upon.

In contrast, the specter of homosexuality didn’t arise for women because they weren’t used to being positioned as lustful.  Eck explains:

When women view the seductive pose of the female nude, they do not believe she is ‘coming on to’ them.  They know she is there to arouse men.  Thus, they do not have to work at rejecting an unwanted advance.  It is not for them.

Many women also did not feel lustful when looking at male nudes and those that did often experienced lust mixed with guilt or shame.  Eck suggest that this may be, in part, a reaction to taking on the active, consuming, masculine role, something they’re not supposed to do.

Summarizing responses to the male nudes, she writes:

Men, over and over again, reject the seductive advance [of a male nude].  While some women welcome the advance, most feel a combination of shame, guilt, or repulsion in interacting with the image…

This is what it means to live in a world in which desire is structured by a gendered sexual subject/object binary.  It’s not just “out there,” it’s “in us” too.

Source: Eck, Beth. 2003. Men are Much Harder: Gendered Viewing of Nude Images.  Gender & Society 17, 5: 691-710.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Consumption:

• The Sweet Smell of Environmental Degradation
• Measuring Love with $$$ (pictured)

Heteronormativity

• Have a Very Straight Valentine’s Day

Cross-Cultures

• Valentine’s Day in Japan

Gender

• The Feminization of Love
• Men are Loved and Women are Property
• The Sexes are “Opposite”
• Steak and a BlowJob Day (for men)

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Following up on our cartoon poking fun at the skimpiness of battle gear for women, Lindsey V. sent in a considerably-humorous skit in which two great sports are dressed in the sexy outfits of two genuine-video-game-characters and set to battle.  Hijinks and wardrobe malfunctions insue:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Sent in by Liz Yockey, who signed it for GroupOn, it is kind of interesting that all the site thinks it needs to know about you is your sex and your age to send you local coupons that suit you.

Are you just like every other n-something f or m you know?  Are we so predictable?  Perhaps marketers know better than we.  What do you think?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Adios Barbie.

Today I had the pleasure of reading a 1978 essay by Susan Sontag titled The Double Standard of Aging.  I was struck by how plainly and convincingly she described the role of attractiveness in men’s and women’s lives:

[For women, o]nly one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl.

The great advantage men have is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man. The beauty of a boy resembles the beauty of a girl. In both sexes it is a fragile kind of beauty and flourishes naturally only in the early part of the life-cycle. Happily, men are able to accept themselves under another standard of good looks — heavier, rougher, more thickly built. A man does not grieve when he loses the smooth, unlined, hairless skin of a boy. For he has only exchanged one form of attractiveness for another: the darker skin of a man’s face, roughened by daily shaving, showing the marks of emotion and the normal lines of age.

There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every gray hair, is a defeat.  No wonder that no boy minds becoming a man, while even the passage from girlhood to early womanhood is experienced by many women as their downfall, for all women are trained to continue wanting to look like girls.

These words reminded me of an idea for a post submitted by Tom Hudson.  Tom was searching for faces to help him draw and was struck by the differences in the results for “woman face” and “man face”:

The wide variety of men’s faces, compared to the overwhelming homogeneity of the women’s faces, nicely illustrates Sontag’s point. Women’s faces are important and valorized for only one thing: girlish beauty. Men’s faces, on the other hand, are notable for being interesting, weird, wizened, humorous, and more.

On another note, the invisible but near total dominance of whiteness is worth acknowledging.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Valerie A. sent along a short video by Chris Muther, at the Boston Globe.  He offers a humorous history of changing bodily ideals for both men and women.   He explains the shifts as rebellion against our parents and what they found sexy. I find this explanation uncompelling, though. You?

See also our recent post on bodily diversity among Olympic athletes and our fashion fantasy in which everyone emphasized whatever (weird) bodies they were born with.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

We have posted previously about how desserts, particularly chocolate ones, are often advertised to women as indulgences they can use to overcome romantic disappointments, or even as substitute sources of love. L. Ellis sent in an example of this, an ad found in Bon Appetit for Sugar in the Raw that tells women to make brownies to deal with breakup:

Indeed, you can calculate how much dessert you’re going to need by how much time you invested in the guy (“Count the years you dated. If it exceeds 5, double the recipe.”). The ad is also a great example of the contradictory messages women get to be thin but also indulge — today you can “devour that pan of chocolaty goodness,” full of butter and sugar, while you cry over your lost love, but it’s a short-lived reprieve. Inevitably, you now being single and all, the “diet starts tomorrow.”

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Kelsey C. sent in a graph from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that highlights the gender wage gap. Among full-time workers during the last three months of 2010, men made more per week than women in each of these occupational categories:

In terms of dollars, the gap is largest for the highest-paid workers — $330 — and smallest for those in sales/office, at $130. By percent, it’s worst for service (women make 72% as much as men in that sector) and again smallest for sales/office (women make 82% as much as men in that area).

And if we extrapolate this out, it adds up to a significant difference in annual earnings. If these income levels persisted for, say, 50 weeks, men in management would make $16,500 more than women; in sales, they’d make $6,500 more.

This is the only image the BLS provides, but if you’re interested in the topic, the full report has wages broken down by age and race/ethnicity (and sex within those categories) as well.