The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures serves as an
indispensable and fascinating source of knowledge about the male
sex at a time when media attention to manhood has increased and
when studies of masculinity have become a significant part of the
academic curriculum as well as a popular topic of academic
research. Subjects include the historical sources of the American
body, adolescent and midlife bodies, bodybuilding, the bodies of
popular icons such as rock stars and athletes, AIDS, the black
body, and the variety of sexual identities endorsed and disdained
by our culture. It may or may not be true, as Margaret Atwood
asserts, that "Men's bodies are the most dangerous things on
earth." But all of these texts affirm the necessity of knowing more
about the status of masculinity at a time when feminist authors
have made gender and power central themes in our understanding of
ourselves and our society. Like its popular predecessor, The Female
Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, this volume gathers together a
remarkable range of voices and perspectives on this always-timely
topic. The collection begins with essays by Margaret Atwood and
John Updike that define the precarious situation of manhood at the
end of this millennium and concludes with Susan Bordo's essay
examining the discourse of "manhood" in best-selling books, film,
advertising, and political commentary. The book's contributors
argue that the male body is not just an anatomical fact but a
cultural sign or site that people seek to construct, deconstruct,
and reconstruct to fit their values. How this process of shaping
occurs can be observed in Joyce Carol Oates's story about a
frightened girl and a nude photograph, in Cathy Song's regretful
poem about vasectomy, in Philip Lopate's self-portrait as he
regards and evaluates the parts of his body, in Margaret Morganroth
Gullette's polemical report on the commercial exploitation of
midlife bodies, in Rudolf Arnheim's admiring description of an
ancient Greek statue that preserves "a god's perfection." The
anthology also brings examples from "body history" to bear on the
present day: for instance, David R. Slavitt's new translation of
Ovid's tale of Narcissus and sociologist Michael S. Kimmel's study
of the obsession with physical vitality at the turn of this century
both resonate with unsettling immediacy in the context of the
values, issues, and obsessions of our own postmodern era. Work and
play, anxiety and self-confidence, youth and aging, health and
sickness-all of these contesting conditions are examined in the
course of this rich collection of materials. General readers and
specialists alike will find abundant new information and insights,
and much to argue with as well as much to agree with, in the
contents of this engrossing volume.
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