From My friend Bill Harryman
Over at The Masculine Heart Bog
The Male Body: Repulsive or Beautiful
By Hugo Schwyzer
Like countless American children, I grew up hearing the nursery rhyme that claimed that little boys were made of “snips and snails and puppy-dog tails” while girls were “sugar and spice and everything nice.” Attached as I was as a small boy to our pet dachshund, I thought puppy-dog tails were a fine thing indeed, but the point of the rhyme wasn’t lost on me. Boys were dirty, girls were clean and pure.
We’re raised in a culture that both celebrates and pathologizes male “dirtiness.” On the one hand, boys were and are given license to be louder, rowdier, and aggressive. We’re expected to get our hands dirty, to rip our pants and get covered in stains. We enjoy a freedom to be dirty that even now, our sisters often do not. No mistake, that’s male privilege.
But growing up with the right to be dirty goes hand-in-hand with the realization that many people find the male body repulsive. In sixth grade, the same year that puberty hit me with irrevocable force, I had an art teacher, Mr. Blake. (This dates me: few public middle schools have art teachers anymore.) I’ll never forget his solemn declaration that great artists all acknowledged that the female form was more beautiful than the male. He made a passing crack that “no one wants to see naked men, anyway”—and the whole class laughed. “Ewwww,” a girl sitting next to me said, evidently disgusted at the thought of a naked boy.
Read the entire article here.
Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College since 1993, where he developed the college's first courses on Men and Masculinity and Beauty and Body Image. He was for many years the leader of the high school youth program for the largest Episcopal parish in the Western United States. A writer and public speaker as well as a professor, Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and seven chinchillas in Los Angeles. Hugo blogs at his eponymous website and at Sir Richard's Condom Company
1 comment:
Very good article! I for one do my best to make my boyfriends feel beautiful. This is another example of why we need a more empowered female gaze indeed.
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