Objectifying men has been sneaking around the edges of mainstream pop culture for a while now: Sex and the City, for one, made it an art form. (Think: the throwaway quality of the man-of-the-week for the first few years of the series, the lingering camera shots on Gilles Marini in the first Sex and the City movie.) Everything targeted at women, from Cosmo to Dancing With the Stars, has used shirtless men to lure hapless young women and housewives.
But we have rarely seen objectification of men as a main event on the order of Magic Mike, the Channing Tatum film about male strippers that opened this week to great media fanfare (thanks, New York Times, for reporting from the land of “duh” that many gay men are enjoying the film), reports of “girls night out” gone wild, and solid box-office receipts. We’re thrilled for any of our fellow ladies to get in touch with their sexuality, and even to appreciate the male form. We love hot men, too, and, yeah, drooling over guys is a good stress reliever. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with making a movie about the lives of strippers, male or female. But is there no way for us to just be a little more civilized here, girls? We wouldn’t want mags and websites reporting on a lady-stripper movie with giggly photo captions like, “Sorry—are we objectifying you, Channing?” But Glamour did, and they’re hardly alone. People did a “Hump Day” slide show of Magic Mike costar Joe Manganiello, complete with terrible pun. (“He’s real. And he’s pec-tacular.”) NextMovie gave us a gallery of “8 Guys We Want to See Strip in Magic Mike 2.” Women in screenings were yelling, “Take it all off, baby!” at the screen.
Interestingly enough, two recent GQ articles offer subtle portraits of what it feels like to be a guy valued more for your body than for your work, even when your work is as beautiful as your body. Namely, it feels as shitty for them as it does for us. The delectable, and supremely talented, Michael Fassbender talks about being known for his impressive full-frontal scene in Shame. He’s done nary an interview in which someone doesn’t make a penis joke. George Clooney gently mocked him at the Oscars. (“Michael, honestly, you can play golf … with your hands behind your back.”) He was asked to identify screen shots of famous movie penises twice, both times on MTV, for some reason. He’s handled it with good humor, but it’s also clear he’d rather not. “It’s fun to a point,” he told the magazine, “and after a certain point you worry that it kind-of detracts from the movie. But there’s nothing I can do. I just have to laugh it off. I can. Pretty much. Because I take my work seriously but I can’t take myself too seriously.” Sure, but should he have to endure what is, essentially, sexual harassment just to seem like he’s not taking himself too seriously? That sounds like shit guys used to say to women in the ’60s after telling them at the office that they had nice tits, and, hell, they oughta just smile and take the compliment.
R&B singer D’Angelo didn’t adjust quite as well to the drooling he induced with his muscled, naked, artful, and, yes, very sexy 2000 video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel?).” Once the video made him a mainstream star, however, his entire tour was overrun with women shouting “Take it off!” at him onstage. “We thought, okay, we’re going to build the perfect art machine, and people are going to love and appreciate it,” said Questlove, the tour’s bandleader. “And then by mid-tour it just became, what can we do to stop the ‘Take it off’ stuff?” D’Angelo started cracking under the pressure to give his fans what they wanted, often delaying shows to do stomach crunches. He hated taking his shirt off for shows, but he would. “One time I got mad when a female threw money at me onstage, and that made me feel fucked-up, and I threw the money back at her,” D’Angelo told the magazine. “I was like, ‘I’m not a stripper.’” He eventually fell into an emotional tailspin that led to addiction and a dozen-year break before he made his recent new album.
Let’s be better than the men who came before us — and show them we can appreciate a good-looking guy, even a fantastic body, without being gross. That doesn’t advance any cause, feminist or otherwise.
I’m glad you wrote this, because, wow, the media coverage as well as “civilian” reactions to this movie in my opinion definitely crossed a line. Sure, a part of me says, “Fine, OK, this is the first movie in ages where men are outwardly objectified, whereas us guys had every comedy from the mid-1980s — let the ladies let their hair down.” But I am surprised, as you are, that people were not a touch more civilized about it. The slideshows that pop culture blogs have done, as you noted, the lascivious lusting for the men in the cast….
Think about Joe Manganiello on NBC’s TODAY last week, where he was egged on to strip. Does that same segment happen with Demi Moore in 1996? Complete with a whooping-and-hollering crowd?
Again, I “get” it — MAGIC MIKE, at least as marketed (because I hear the movie is far less festive muck), is unadulterated man candy cotton candy. But the way the media and some women have consumed it has in essence awarded a big fat “Free Pass” to men everywhere the next time the tables are turned.
Thanks, Matt!
Yet another example of how feminism has taught women that its okay to demean men because they deserve it. The reactions, and comments of the vast majority of women on this movie have disgusted me. A real eye-opener into how women view men.
We don’t think it’s feminism’s fault (obviously, since we are feminists). But we agree that we should all be respectful and civil to each other, period.
If anything, one could argue that *men* taught women it was okay to demean men, since that’s how so many of them treat women.
But anyway.
I think this piece makes some great points, and it speaks to an interesting conflict I felt about the film. On the one hand, it *is* empowering to finally have the tables turned, to see and hear women talking about men in the way that men often talk about women. On the other hand, it was also a little disappointing. I think there’s a way to appreciate an attractive form (male or female) without demeaning its owner, and that isn’t what I’ve seen people doing.
But then, it’s a movie about strippers, who by their very definition are supposed to be objects of lust…
But outside the movie, don’t these men deserve our respect?
How do the men in Magic Mike feel about all this? Are they empowered by the attention (as so many men claim that women should be)? And even if they are, does it change how we should behave?
See, lots of questions and conflicting feelings.
What I will say is that the movie is *not* a one-note festival of man candy, and I appreciate the casual, comfortable attitude the movie took towards the human body and sexuality.
Objectifying men sexually is just as much fair as objectifying women sexually and when men get objectified just as much as women its not anymore an equality/feminist problem.
Just like we can make mandatory conscript military service equal by drafting women too.
So the question is: Do you want to keep your cake or do you wan’t to eat it?
One thing I am is a feminist. I am also a mother, an electrical engineer, very sexy, smart, and a remarkably nice person. I agree that this movie could appear to be “tit for tat” (pun intended), reversing the one-sided objectification issue that we women have long-hated, but, I believe that like in all other parts of life, when a pendulum has been swinging one way for soooo long, it needs to swing the other way in order for things to change. Period. We can be as “evolved” as we say we want to be, and continue to “insist” that men treat us with respect beyond our good looks, but in my years I have learned that this insisting is absoutely getting us nowhere. We simply must let the pendulum swing the other way. We need to live this out, watch how images like these make us feel, watch how they make men feel, and find out where it takes us. We have never allowed ourselves to really ask the question, “Do we like this? Is it exciting to look? Is it fun to evaluate these feelings it with our peers?” I say yes to it all. I have lived the other end of this objectification for so many years and I do not believe anything other than letting this pendulum swing back will move this needle at all. My belief is we, collectively, will eventually arrive at the answer of “No, objectification is not good for any of us,” but we have given men enough chances to fix it, and we have not been met with decency or respect. So I say, if we must, let’s enjoy the ride!
That theory won’t work in practice for the simple reason that there is no pendulum. Even if men are objectified more and more in movies and the media in general, it’s not like there will be a movement away from objectifying women. Yeah, Magic Mike is out right now, but so are countless other movies and TV shows that objectify women. All that would be achieved by objectifying men would be a world where objectifying people, man or woman, is the norm. The media’s attention to Magic Mike isn’t because a new era of male objectification is upon us. It’s just because a movie like Magic Mike hasn’t been around for a while. The question is how to stop objectification. For that I agree with some of the other comments and the author. It’s all about context. A movie about a stripper doesn’t have to be objectifying. Nudity doesn’t equal objectification. So anyone who’s scared that they’ll never see boobs or a six pack again on film doesn’t have to worry. Those things can stay, but seeing those things purely as objects to lust after shouldn’t.
Pics or STFU.
*bracing myself for the shitstorm of double standards*
The bad part is whenever women objectify men, they get treated harshly. No man is a sex object unfortunately.
Society objectifies men already as fathers, husbands, and “men” as providers, caretakers, and decisionmakers.
Do women really want to add “sexual object” to that list already?
Or perhaps mankind should work to release the human bondage of stereotyping for both sexes.
Basically I would LOVE IT if women saw ME as a ‘Sex Object’. However, with me being a Wheelchair User, it’s hardly likely, is it?.
(.
Good!! Women have been objectified for years – still are. When I have complained about it I’ve been branded a prude rather than listened to or understood. They can see how they like it!
*looks at Clare’s comment*
Okay, then, we’ll just go on objectivying women. I for one look forward to the triumphant return of the Man Show.
I guess what I find surprising about many of the women’s responses is the consistent concept of score-keeping, or even revenge, as a way of justifying their objectification. Of course, the current generation of men won’t experience this on a level anywhere close to women, but I don’t see how making the environment more hostile for men, because it has traditionally been much more hostile towards women is going to change our culture for the better, rather than just adding to the message that objectification is OK. It’s not just the current generation that will be affected by this, it’s all generations in the future. Do you really want our unborn sons to have to carry this baggage, for the sake of equality, when we’re frantically trying to take the disproportionately heavy load away from our unborn daughters? I understand that when you’ve been marginalized, that it feels really to have the roles reversed, and that’s certainly part of the reason that magic mike was so successful… But should we make an effort to outspokenly say that this is all ethical… rather, that objectify men is excusably unethical, as a result?
I guess I just hope that any white women here that think this sort of revenge-based judgement of ethics is alright, better expect done pretty serious marginalization from the immigrant, native, and non-white, especially black, portions of our society when we stop stomping them down and imprisoning them long enough to gain on us a little bit. What? *you* don’t have anything to do with that? Well you have the resultant cultural gains, and white people have always oppressed everybody else in our society, so you’re fair game… ethics be damned.
My-what a LOVELY apologia for bad behavior. MEN are constantly being attacked, accused and berated by women for “objectifying” them-even if the “objectification” consists of nothing more than GLANCING her way. Women HAPPILY video tape a man looking their way and then “shame” him to make him “stop his misogynistic behavior”.
Yet this feminist author then says “Let’s be better than the men who came before us — and show them we can appreciate a good-looking guy”….everything AFTER that is meaningless-because what was done was to JUSTIFY objectifying a “good looking guy” and then say “but not the gross way men do”. News flash-if you ENGAGE in the behavior yourself, but ATTACK it in others, you are a hypocrite. Period. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time that FEMINISTS either GROW UP and start ACTUALLY holding themselves to their OWN standards…or that they STOP hypocritically claiming that “looking at someone attractive is demeaning”.
And by the way, ladies, I have NO interest, zero, zilch in you sexually because I am a GAY man. But I am sick to DEATH of women ASSUMING that if I even look in their direction, or am courteous and hold a door, that I am some misogynistic beast and that they are free (as HAS happened) to publicly BERATE me based on their “feminist” ideology and hypocrisy.