What’s wrong with men’s bodies? Too often we’re taught that men are revolting and women are flawless.
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.
In time, I discovered that Mr. Blake was wrong about this so-called artistic consensus. But it took me a lot longer to unlearn the damage done by remarks like his and by the conventional wisdom of my childhood. I came into puberty convinced both that my male body was repulsive and that the girls for whom I longed were flawless. (I still remember how floored I was at 16, when the lovely classmate on whom I had a crush farted while I was sitting next to her in German class. I had sincerely believed until that moment that women didn’t pass gas.)
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A year later, in my first sexual relationship, I was convinced that my girlfriend found my body physically repellent. I could accept that girls liked and wanted sex, but I figured that what my girlfriend liked was how I made her feel in spite of how my body must have appeared to her. Though I trusted that she loved me, the idea that she—or any other woman—could want this sweaty, smelly, fumbling flesh was still unthinkable.
Not long after that first relationship broke up, I had a series of fleeting sexual encounters with both men and women. I knew I wasn’t gay, but I was bi-curious. I was never as sexually attracted to my male partners as I was to women—but I was powerfully attracted to their attraction to me.
I remember one night when I was still in high school that I had sex with a much older man. He was maybe 40, and I couldn’t get enough of the way he looked at me. I felt a rush of elation and relief so great it made me cry. The sex I had with him was not based on my desire for him; rather, I wanted to make him feel good out of my own colossal gratitude for how he had made me feel with his words and his gaze. As we lay on a motel bed, this man ran his fingers across every inch of my body, murmuring flattery of the kind I had never heard from a woman’s lips.
“You’re so hot, you make me want to come.”
I was floored. How different those words were from my ex-girlfriend’s “Hugo, you make me feel so good.” While she had praised my technique, this stranger praised my body’s desirability. And I realized how hungry I was for exactly that kind of affirmation. I needed something to counter that old certainty that my male body was disgusting.
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I don’t want to suggest that straight women don’t lust, and that only gay or bi men are vocal about their strong sexual craving for male bodies. In time, I’d meet women who were more confident about expressing desire, and discover that it wasn’t only from men that I could get that kind of validation. I came to see that our cultural myths about desire hurt everyone. We shame women for wanting, and we shame men for wanting to be wanted. We still have too many Mr. Blakes out there, giving that same destructive message that no one wants (or should want) the dirty, disgusting male body.
Though our culture often teaches women that their bodies are also dirty (particularly because of menstruation), we also make it clear that men “naturally” crave and desire them. That creates a huge problem for women who have to navigate their way through a world that teaches them that their bodies have great power over men. By teaching women to focus on managing male desire, women are taught to ignore or suppress their own desires. That’s a loss for women, and it’s a loss for men.
So many straight men have no experience of being wanted. So many straight men have no experience of sensing a gaze of outright longing. Even many men who are wise in the world and in relationships, who know that their wives or girlfriends love them, do not know what it is to be admired for their bodies and their looks. They may know what it is to be relied upon, they may know what it is to bring another to ecstasy with their touch, but they don’t know what it is to be found not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but worthy of longing.
The very real hurt and rage that men often feel as a result of having no sense of their own attractiveness has very real and destructive consequences. It’s not women’s problem to solve; it’s not as if it’s women’s job to start stroking yet another aspect of the male ego.
The answer lies in creating a new vocabulary for desire, in empowering women as well as men to gaze, and in expanding our own sense of what is good and beautiful, aesthetically and erotically pleasing. That’s hard stuff, but it’s worth the effort. I know what it is to believe myself repulsive, and what it was to hear that not only was I wanted, but that I was desirable for how I appeared as well as how I acted. That was precious indeed, and far too few men have known it.
—Photo by Jurvetson/Flickr
About Hugo Schwyzer
Superb article!!
There are a lot of layers here and I wish I could cover them all with my comment (it would be ridiculously long if I did though)! Thank you for sharing such personal story about your high school days, first off, and secondly, thanks for bringing this to a broader attention. I can see, now, how it is easy to get wrapped up in the stories that portray men as an unfeeling lot, the kind that just want a wham-bam-thank-you-mam kind of interaction. I love reading/hearing real stories about men, well and people in general.
I also really wanted to say that I think men’s bodies are beautiful!
Thanks for another great article, GMP!
Dude’s bodies are awesome—-athletic, skinny, manly and hairy, cute and chubby, or even androgynous. Most of the people I know who think men’s bodies are gross are either lesbians (understandable) or men (I’ve had so many arguments about why there isn’t more male nudity in movies—Dude: “Guys don’t want to see some dude’s junk!” Me: “You do realize that women watch movies too, right? And that we watch movies that have naked women in them all. The. Time?”)
I have always hated when people—usually men—launch into a mansplaining monologue about how men are visual and women are not. I am bisexual, so I stare at hot girls as well as hot dudes. I definitely appreciate the male physique, in many forms, not just chiseled Adonis. I always make sure to tell my husband how sexy he is to me, physically, and what it is I love about his body, because I totally understand the need to be desired.
Only young men (teens, twenties, and thirties) are repulsive. We 50/60 year olds are hott!!
Especially when we have “resources.”
I wouldn’t exactly say that’s totally true Henry.
Yeh, Erin. I was trying to be funny. (Someone did nominate me for “world’s hottest professors” once, and I did have to tell her that I’d just received my Medicare card in the mail.) Seriously though, one of my girlfriends told me she just thought older men looked better. To me, women in their thirties probably look best. Their bodies are ripe, and not aribrished or plastic looking. Their faces have developed some character. Forties the same way.
I’m an art student, and in my figure drawing classes we have yet to have a male model. I’d love to draw one – I’ve become incredibly adept at drawing many different kinds of female figures, from young woman to very old woman, but for the most part I’ve had to teach myself how to draw men. I’ve sat in public and drawn them, I’ve looked up reference photos, and one of my friends even suggested that I look to porn sites and erotic photo collections for varied male nudes.
Through my nude male adventuring, I’ve come to realize that I think both the female and the male bodies have their beautiful and not-so-beautiful parts. I love the curve of a woman’s waist and hips. I love the muscles in a man’s back. I love the neck/collarbone/shoulders of both sexes. It makes me kind of sad to learn that some men think women don’t like their bodies, and it makes me sad that some women (or other men) may be reinforcing this notion. The human body is an odd, wonderful, complex, powerful thing. I’m glad we’re not all shaped the same, or my drawings wouldn’t be half as interesting to draw.
I want to echo what people are saying about women not being visual – though some may not be, it isn’t universal. I’m a straight woman, and I still find the female form attractive. Maybe not attractive like a straight man would find it, but I like to watch bodies as they move, and I admire the beauty of the female form, just as I admire the men.
You are hot. We are all sexy motherf*ckers.
The fact that you haven’t had a male model in your figure drawing classes yet is so sad to me. I’m currently taking a figure drawing class and the number of male and female models are fairly even. I won’t take that for granted anymore.
I met an art student once who had the same complaint about lacking male models. So I offered up myself
But she wasn’t THAT interested…
Anyway, I’ve experienced this “men are not hot”-attitude first hand.
In my last relationship, at bedtime i could just watch my GF undress just for the beauty of her body and the movements. I don’t think that she ever, once, during a full year, even lifted an eye from the magazine she was reading to actually see me do the same…
What a wonderful article, thank you! What your art teacher said is total bullcrap anyway. Michelangelo thought the male form was the most beautiful; he’s famous for making his female paintings and sculptures very muscular.
It’s interesting that muscles are considered a male feature rather than a gender-neutral one… For example, very muscular women are considered unfeminine by our society’s standards.
I believe that male and female bodies are equally beautiful and at the same time display different types of beauty. Amazing article
Thank you for posting this article! It’s so easy when reading online to forget that men are feminists, too. It’s nice to hear a man talking about gender and feminism and the problems that men face from the rigid gender system we have. This article reminds me of some issues I’ve noticed in regards to how we view nude models. At my college, men were more likely to apply to model than women, but the art department hired more women than men. I’ve also noticed a lot of art, especially classical, will blatantly and without shame or embarrassment show a man’s penis. In contrast, a woman’s vagina is nearly always covered, and often in a way that is completely unnatural or suggests that it is something to be ashamed of (hair falling at strange angles to cover it, unnatural and uncomfortable poses to twist the breasts into view and hide the vagina, conveniently placed props and hands, etc.) while the breasts are prominent. This has always bothered me–do you think that perhaps a view of men’s bodies as undesirable is a more modern thing? I recently looked at a resource book of nude photographs for artists with both a male and female model. The female was completely nude, and the male wore a garment that covered his penis while leaving the rest of him naked. This book was from the 1960s or 70s, much more recent that the art I mentioned. Interesting stuff to think about, definitely. At any rate, now I want to run around and ask all the guys I know if they think their bodies are gross…lol.
It’s so wonderful to hear a male feminist’s point of view! There seems to be a new movement perhaps of men coming forward and sharing their struggles of trying to be what society considers masculine versus feminine. An example of this I think is the book Guyland. It’s important to remember (and many people don’t) that feminism is about destroying the perception of a natural dichotomy between ‘male’ and ‘female’. Thanks so much for the article!
Also, I would argue that traditionally only the bodies of somewhat muscular men were considered attractive – attractive enough to sculpt/draw/paint, at least. On the other hand, larger women were once featured as the ideal (with soft curves, of course, not any lumps or bulges). What is your opinion?
without getting in to politics, i found this piece human and moving. it really gives me hope that people are speaking like this, and that other people are listening.
Wonderfully expressed. I hope that there will come a time when men come to appreciate the aesthetics of their own bodies as I do.
Both men and women are taught to feel insecure about our bodies so companies can sell their stuff. For us, is waxing, make up and tons of other products that guarantee you’ll be prettier and more desirable. I learnt to dismiss most of those messages and instead found my own way to feel sexier by being more natural and confident.
But I’ve never thought the issue from the men’s perspective and it saddens me to realize the lack of compliments you receive and how society teaches us that men bodies are ugly in comparison to women’s.
Maybe it’s related to the stereotype that men always want sex and have higher sex drive than women. Maybe women are afraid to let men know how desirable they are, thinking they’ll “lose their power over them”. I really dislike that notion, as well as the women who think that way.
I always make sure my boyfriend knows how much I want him, by touching, staring and saying aloud how I love his muscular legs, his butt, the hair around his navel, etc. It’s refreshing to discover in every boyfriend and man I’ve been with how different we are, and even though I really like my body, is men’s who turns me on and therefore I cannot think of such bodies as anything else but beautiful.
i think it mostly depends on how well one person takes care of there own body doesn’t matter what sex they are. thers still so much stupid sterotype and close minded people that have been fed crap.
sorry but it’s not true. In my experience (and everybody I know) straight women don’t like the male body. period. they like the eyes, the hands, the way you act, the way you dress etc. but they don’t really care about the whole body. sometimes they claim they do but it’s just for a sort of misunderstood sense of parity. they are bored by the male body if not slightly disgusted (the penis is funny in the best case). you became actractive for a girl only when there’s a feeling for you (for whatever reason), otherwise you are transparent in the women eyes. male body is actractive for gay or bi males and for a very little group of females, usually bisexual (why?).
Dear “Italian guy”
(I’m Italian myself, but I like to think of myself as a “citizen of the world”), maybe the women “indifference” you’re talking about comes out of the widespread Catholic influence (still very present in Italy, alas).
Hence, women are taught to not be sexual, sensual and appreciative about bodies and sex; so they might ignore those kind of feelings, or just deny them in public.
I know many women appreciative about the male body, since they trust me and they tell me what they really think.
Still, I find women abroad (England, Europe in general) generally much more easy-going and open-minded about sexuality than Italian women.
Hard to tell if you’re a troll or not, but I’ll ignore that and reply anyway: I have very hard time relating to your “truth”. As a woman I’m attracted to male bodies as a whole and at the same time to it’s details. My bf’s body is something that marvels and fascinates me every time I see him, from his hair to his hairy feet and everything in between. The only situation where I could be bored or disgusted by a male body is when the man is boring or has a very unpleasant nature. In most cases, my attitude towards the male figure is something from neutral to fascinated.
I admit that my bf became even more physically attractive when my feelings got deeper, but I see some damn fine men every day, without any feelings of lust or infatuation. Perhaps the women you have met just haven’t told you how they look at men and maybe you’ve met many of those, who are really not interested in bodies in general. They exist, just like the fascinated, visually oriented type exists.
Ancient Greeks sculpted male nudes more than undraped females. They thought that the nude male body was, indeed, beautiful and praise-worthy. They thought that by sculpting a man nude that it showed not only his raw beauty, but also an aspect of heroism, which is why most of the male gods were depicted nude.
I have always thought that male bodies are amazing. They are hard not to look at. Even though there are more men in the world than I can count, I would rather see my fiance naked in front of me any day. His body is superb. Sure, other men are more muscular, or have better skin tone, or etc, but honestly nothing could be more beautiful to me. I love his body’s imperfections, and I am able to see his body as what it is, a work of art.
Great article!
I love the male body. And not the “traditionally” attractive one – the hairless, chiseled, six pack abs body. For one thing, I can’t imagine putting my head on that rock of a chest! Nope, I like it when men have a little bit of softness. My favorite place to snuggle is in a man’s nook, with my face on his hopefully hairy chest, where I can breathe in his musky scent trapped there.
Sometimes with a new lover I just love to take him in visually, just gaze at all his lines, and valleys and flaws. A lover I have has recently started to get a patch of gray hair on his chest, and he’s sensitive about it, but I think it’s the sexiest fucking thing about him. That and his little belly,
p.s. I love how Italian guy above thinks he can speak for women.
actually I don’t think I can speak for women, it’s just my experience. maybe you’re right but if I’m wrong the truth about this issue is so incredibly well hidden…. I think that you are a (wonderful) exception. Of course I’m talking about Italy maybe in the US things are different. p.s. do you want to marry me?
ON a related note: A girl friend and a guy and I were talking about genitals last night, and the guy said he thought that all women thought penises were ugly. OH NO!!! My friend and I said In unison, and told him in our lives we’d both become acquainted with penises that were quite beautiful.
Then the guy went on to say how he thought our vaginas were like flowers. And he was totally serious. and that was adorable.
I’m gay — hot men’s bodies are awesome.
That having been said, straight men are lucky that being sexually attractive on a visual level is not something that they have to concern themselves with (much). It’s hard work — and when genetics didn’t help you out, quite an unhappy lot.
I actually think the idea of “hotness” is a problem. It’s realatively new, and seems to affect both sexes. Based on artificiality, it uses thinness, make up, hair and other things to artificially make people more like media images. Good health and fitness would be better standards.
That art teacher was such a dumbass. Anyone could tell you that the Ancient Greeks profoundly favored the beauty of the male body to what they saw as the simplicity and floppiness of the female body.
Obviously, they are no better in attitude than the “icky male” mentality of modern western civilization, but the point is that throughout art history, especially classical Europe, male bodies were prized for their bodies. What an ignorant art teacher!
I think now I’m going to go tell my buddy just ho gorgeous he is now!
Sometimes I swear these articles are written to fish out the compliments, but I do think this one is sincere…I’m a uber-hetero woman, and I don’t like the looks of women’s bodies at all, but men?!! How do you guys not know how hot you are? Ask anyone who knows me, I’m very vocal about the hotness of men. You men distract the hell out of me and always have. Of course, I love your eyes, mouth… nape of your neck (which is only made better by a teasing lock of hair falling against it), your earlobes, your shoulders…your shoulders…your shoulders… your chest… I love pecs! I want to lay my cheek against them, and just feel the manliness of… YOU. I want to hear your heart beat, that strong, powerful beat that it does when you’re all worked up…., which of course, just makes me more worked up… I love the lines from your lats down to your waist (no, they don’t have to be all muscle), your glutes… aka your butt… oh, man! I do love a man with a beautiful butt… back to the pecs for a minute.. the line from them on down to and including your penis and balls… I think the package is beautiful! So much so, that I sometimes dream of beautiful, sleek penises…your thighs are like a source of strength and power, and I love to caress them, and a man’s calves on MANY occasions has dangerously distracted my driving… not to mention… oh god, do I need to go on?
I had a long-term boyfriend who hated his feet. His toes were pulled back just a bit from perhaps shorter tendons, giving them a very sexy curve. He also had a nice arch .. he felt they looked like werewolf feet (yes, without the hair!), and I just thought they were the sexiest feet I’ve ever seen…
Let’s not forget a man’s jawline, which could honestly sometimes just finish me off just gazing at it… and a man’s arms… another dangerous distractor if viewed whilst operating a motor vehicle… and I lve a man’s hands. While a “courtesy manicure” is nice, I love all kinds of man hands…
I spent a shamefully long time just looking at the lines of a sleeping man’s face just last night. He looked like an angel to me… his profile was so hot… though closed, he had the most beautiful eyes, and the curve of his nose, down to his unbelievable mouth… let’s just say it made me nuts. I felt a little like a perv for watching him, and yet I couldn’t stop. (OK, I was at a party, and he had passed out, but to be less creepy, before he passed out he at least wasn’t opposed to me appreciating how he looked, so I think he would have forgiven me.) I knew how it felt for men to be in the same position… because every bit of you wishes that person were awake and in your arms…
So, let’s end any silly insecurities about men’s bodies. I only worry now that men will use this knowledge against us women, teasing us all the more.
PS: Yes, straight women lust in ways you cannot imagine….
I relate so much. I’ve felt this way nearly all my life. I’m really surprised that someone addressed this issue, and so succinctly. In the past, I’ve not been taken seriously when expressing these concerns; and at times, people have insinuated that I’m not straight (to put it nicely). However, I am straight. Remarkably, I can trace this anxiety to the same nursery rhyme, and also, a teacher’s insensitive comments. Thank you Hugo.