Noah Brand tells of his greatest professional failure, explaining his theory of The Success Myth, and introducing the idea of the female gaze.
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The masculine equivalent to what Naomi Wolf called The Beauty Myth is The Success Myth. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn Monroe said, “A man being rich is like a girl being pretty” and everyone nodded their head, recognizing and endorsing the sentiment. When a rich guy marries a slim young “trophy wife” we all nod our heads again, recognizing that, like it or not, this is a match of two high-value people, a conventionally-successful man and a conventionally-beautiful woman. It would take way too long to get into all the horrible things that arise out of these paired myths, from “gold-digger” stereotypes to men who kill themselves for being “failures”; for now let’s just talk about the idea that men can’t be considered attractive.
See, part of the poisonous idea that men are only valuable or attractive because of our worldly and material success is the implication that we cannot be attractive or sexy just for being… y’know… attractive and sexy. This is tied in with the equally-popular societal myth that women aren’t really into sex. Straight men are left to numbly accept that we’re never going to feel sexy or attractive, and deal with that with the poker-faced stoicism that is our permitted range of emotional expression.
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A little while back, I found out what a lie that is, and it led to my own collision with the Success Myth. I’m a geek, and I run with a geek crowd. If anyone I know can’t quote The Princess Bride from memory, they have the good taste to keep that to themselves. This means that the women I get involved with tend to be fangirls, which means they tend to write and read slash fiction. That was how I first began to learn about the female gaze.
Slash fiction, or erotic fan fiction involving male characters from popular media, is one of the largest gift economies on earth. Yaoi manga, Japanese comics featuring tales of beautiful and sexy men, written by and for girls, is one of the most dominant genres of manga in the world. Romance novels, pornographic tales of gorgeous, sexy men humping the hell out of either women or each other, account for fifty percent of all paperback sales in the U.S., and were the first major success story in the ebook market. The female desire to look at, read about, obsess over, and lust after men is absolutely massive, and kept discreetly off the cultural radar. It’s How To Suppress Women’s Writing all over again: how to suppress women’s porn. Yaoi is dismissed as being for teenage girls and therefore irrelevant, romance imprints are excluded from bestseller lists, and slash fandom hides in Googleproofed communities online, entrance gained only by introductions and shibboleths, many of its fans afraid their husbands or boyfriends might find out that they…
That they what? That they’re really into men? That they find the male body, male sexuality, male emotions to be intensely, obsessively erotic? How exactly did our entire culture agree to keep it a secret that straight and bi women are turned on by guys? Shouldn’t that be less of a taboo and more of a tautology?
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Plenty of the movie and TV shows out there spend lots of time on the male gaze, the camera drooling over one woman or another in the same old predictable ways. Much rarer is the female gaze, which is not just the male gaze pointed at guys. The female gaze has its own subtle vocabulary, its own tropes and in-jokes, and it is almost never seen in mainstream movies or television, because the few women who are allowed to direct films know that their job depends on not shaking things up too much. I don’t blame them, I blame the cultural pressures that delete female desire, thus leaving straight men feeling perpetually undesirable. To find the female gaze, you have to find the images of men that women create or share with each other when they don’t think men are looking: the fan art, the carefully-selected stills, the doujinshi, the endless underground economy of female desire.
I was stunned when I discovered this world. I’d grown up on a million jokes where the sight of a naked man is greeted with “Ewwww!” I’d seen umpteen hundred TV shows where women occasionally agree to have sex with a guy as a favor or in exchange for something else. I’d absorbed the misandrist, misogynist idea of men as slavering, horny beasts and women as purer, more spiritual (meaning sexless) beings. Having found my way into slash and fan art circles, I was eyeball-deep in unchecked female libido, men seen through a lens of sexual desire that I was unfamiliar with, but instantly fascinated by.
A lot of men didn’t believe me when I told them about this. I was, after all, arguing against a mountain of cultural conditioning, armed with nothing but reams of smut. At the very least, I was assured, women are not aroused by men visually. There have been Studies. Using Science. All I could say was no offense to science, but I was forced to demolish this beautiful, brilliant theory with a few ugly little facts. If women aren’t visually aroused by men, I asked, why is Orlando Bloom famous? Because he’s the finest thespian of his generation? What do you see when you look in a teenage girl’s bedroom? A bunch of vivid textual descriptions of her favorite actors and pop stars? The personal written correspondence of Robert Pattinson or Gerard Way? Hell no! You see endless, endless photographs, pin-ups, posters, visual images of gorgeous dudes. The female gaze is real, and it is hungry.
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To some of you reading this, this isn’t news at all. Others will find this in direct contradiction to what they think they know to be true, and should take this paragraph to draw a deep breath and try not to get the bends.
What is the female gaze, you might ask? What are its characteristics? If the male gaze, as seen in… well, every shot of any woman in every Michael Bay film, is about lots of skin on display, emphasis on T&A, and a general visual sense of being posed for display and sexual availability rather than actually doing anything, then what does the female gaze look like? Well, I wasn’t the only person asking that question, and a lot of research turned up some interesting info.
First and most importantly, there is no one, singular female gaze any more than there’s one singular male gaze. What we refer to as the male gaze is a rough average of some tendencies that show up over large numbers. Every guy has his own variation on it, and some of us find the “normal” male gaze rather tediously predictable and dull. Indeed, it’s assumed to always be directed at women because, as usual, gay and bi men get erased as an irrelevant minority. Just as much variance exists with the way women ogle men, but again, one can find some interesting patterns and tendencies over large samples. So as I talk about the female gaze, bear in mind that I’m referring to general rules of thumb that seem popular, not This Is What All Women Want. There are enough assholes selling that latter line, and I’m not one.
One of the first things that jumps out is how different the guys look from eroticized images of men done by and for other men. Gay porn for guys tends to veer toward the hypermasculine: big muscles, square jaws, and a lot of emphasis on the cock. Tom of Finland remains one archetypal example. Images of sexy men done by and for women tend much more toward slimmer, less beefy guys, with more androgynous facial features. Hands and wrists are frequently focused on and overtly eroticized, as are lips and eyelashes. As to penises, it’s not that they’re left out, but they’re not the main event. They become part of the overall package, no pun intended. To put it another way, I have never read a piece of gay erotica by a man that didn’t include a specific measurement in inches, and I’ve never read one by a woman that did include it.
The key, I think, is vulnerability. Guys seen through the female gaze appear vulnerable, not covered in bluster and emotional armor. Very often traditional forms of male emotional or symbolic armor are present, but opened, damaged, or in some way cracked. A man wearing a good suit, but with his tie loosened and his top buttons undone, is one popular example. The armor of male privilege and protection is there, but opened enough that the viewer can glimpse the vulnerable man inside. He’s not just showing us what he wants us to see, we’re seeing what he might not choose to show.
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As this gradually became clear to me, I became fascinated with the possibilities. I formed a partnership with my best friend, and she and I set out to try to produce a porn magazine that would feed the female gaze. In the process we worked with some wonderfully talented writers, and some utterly charming and fun models. Nice, nice guys, and all gorgeous. We provided a greater range of hot guys than the boring shirtless dudes one sees in Cosmopolitan, the standard-bearer of bland. Skinny little pretty boys, muscular ladykiller types, tough ex-military dudes, soft-eyed teen-idol faces… it was an all-you-can-eat buffet of beefcake.
Anyway, long story short, it failed. Not because the material wasn’t popular, though some Monday-morning quarterbacks have assured me that this just proves that they were right all along about women not finding men hot. No, everyone who bought the magazine loved the smut, loved our sexy guys and hot fiction. It’s just that it turns out I’m really crap at running a business. I’m vague about paperwork, I subcontract the wrong jobs and handle the wrong ones myself, I’m actively horrible at marketing and I kind of hate social media… I take full responsibility for the whole thing going bust.
Which, I don’t mind saying, put me in a pretty bad emotional position. I’d been fond of joking that I was too ugly to appear in my own magazine, a reflection of the fact that I do feel insecure about my looks, my own damage from the Beauty Myth. But the nature of the socialized male ego is such that while one can take plenty of splash damage from the Beauty Myth, the Success Myth is usually a direct hit. And here I was, thirty-three years old and a failure in business.
“Failure” as a noun is one of those incredibly potent and damaging concepts, especially for men. American culture in particular has a real habit of equating business success with personal virtue, our “anyone can make it if they really try” mythology. Therefore, the failure of the magazine meant that I, personally, was unworthy as a human being. Sure, I knew that it was gender-socialized bullshit, but knowing something and feeling it are two really different things. Hell, look two paragraphs up and see how much I felt compelled to insult myself, because the manly thing to do is accept responsibility for what a big fat failure you are. The despair, the feeling of profound and personal worthlessness, is hard to overstate. For a little while there, I was pretty seriously not okay. And I’m still gender-socialized enough that that’s a difficult sentence to type, because it feels like admitting weakness, which is impermissible.
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Luckily, it was around that same time that I started blogging at No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz, and was startled to see it take off spectacularly well. It served as an antidote to the sense of failure. Suddenly I had an outlet for all the thoughts about gender issues I’d been mulling over for years, and my words were finding an audience. It turns out that one thing that really helps with feeling worthless is having a lot of people tell you that your writing has changed their perspective or made them feel understood. I’m aware that I’m spectacularly lucky to be able to say that from experience. And now, I’ve been invited to write for the Good Men Project, where I will be contributing more of my generalized sociological noodling, along with republishing some of my “greatest hits” from NSWATM. That, too, feels pretty damn validating; to be invited to join a community of this size and caliber helps me think that maybe, just maybe, I’m not a worthless bum after all.
Still think I’m ugly, though. Even though I know better.
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photo laverrue / flickr
Whoever claims that women don’t get horny just as much if not more than men, hasn’t met me in the morning 🙂
I would like a copy of that magazine!
when eyes find each other it can become a channel of intimacy as sexual as actual contact. when you have both it is ecstasy. usually it can’t be this intense and be “out in the open” but it is secret which intensifies it.
Interesting article, and I certainly agree that men’s looks are a lot more consequential than traditionally assumed. However, there is no question that men are far more affected by a woman’s physical looks–the face and body–than women are by a man’s, when it comes to sexual arousal. Teen girls have posters of pop stars and movie stars because these men are famous, and enjoy high social status. Not necessarily because they are good looking. Take the Beatles in their day, or Mick Jagger, for instance. Take Justin Beiber, Bruno Mars (who actually looks kind of girly), or Usher (who does… Read more »
If women are more attracted to slimmer guys this implies nothing but that the beauty ideal men think most wimen have is not certainly what women want. The rest is your interpretation. Also the notion that what men find attractive only when focussing ob womens apoearence is looks only is shortsited: If it would be so, why could beauty ideals change so fluidly? The change of beautyideals very surely shows that we find beautiful at least to a oart also what is socially accepted, i.e. associated with conformity, recognition and success. Hence mens tastes cannot be explained by some never… Read more »
But just like plenty of men fall in love with women who aren’t “perfect-sexy” according to our cultural ideals, plenty of women also fall in love with men who are hardly “perfect successes.” Or anything close.
Many, many of us women fall in love with men who maybe have a great sense of humor or share our interests, or just “get us” or, maybe ideally, are seen as our perfect counterpart.
I think that men and women both feel like they need to meet ideals that our culture tells us are important when real people aren’t nearly so narrow-minded.
“Many, many of us women fall in love with men who maybe have a great sense of humor or share our interests, or just “get us” or, maybe ideally, are seen as our perfect counterpart.”
and many, many of us men also fall in love with women who maybe have a great sense of humor or share our interests, or just “get us” or, maybe ideally, are seen as our perfect counterpart. Looks are not important at all
fantastic article, thank you for sharing! gives me hope (as a man of [in my opinion] average attractiveness) but also makes me even more self-conscious, though I think that internal conflict is a good one
bluenotebacker,
I feel the same mix of hope and self consciousness. In what way do you find that internal conflict to be good. I’m looking for a way to re-frame it.
Very awesome article on the female gaze. Also true for me…i am an older woman but find myself obsessed with certain asian boybands on u tube and now buy asian movies why? cos they have hot guys who get naked!… but the films also tend to have a heart which seems always to be the backbone of the movie with action etc layered on top. I find this is lacking in western movies. Also in the west that kind of beauty is pretty much non existant in media images but it correlates with what the author above states. Manga also,… Read more »
Here’s where I part ways with some modern academic views of gender. A “gaze” is not an actual force. It’s not something that someone does to someone else. Your eyes don’t send out rays like Superman’s heat vision. They just receive the light rays/particles that go into them. Looking, staring, and even “leering” (if you could even define such a thing) are not invasive actions against another person. If you “feel someone’s eyes on you,” that is an illusion. It’s a very real sensation, of course, but that sensation comes from inside you, not from outside. It’s not the same… Read more »
Great post “I would make a clear distinction between staring and actual physical invasions – catcalling, touching, standing too close, getting in someone’s way, etc. Once you hold other people responsible for how you feel when you’re looked at, you’ve shifted your issues onto them, and you’ve moved your boundaries onto their bodies, which is exactly what catcallers do.” But what about art? Say I paint a picture of a naked woman posed in a way of my choosing… That’s often classed under Male Gaze in art literary circles. I’m projecting my fantasy onto the female form, or something like… Read more »
The flippant response is to ask the person commenting on your painting why he/she assumes that artistic images are supposed to be representational. Who says that what one sees as a female body is meant to represent a female body? That person sees what he/she interprets to be a female human body, but that viewer is simply imposing a bourgeois representationalist interpretation onto what is in reality shapes on a canvas. That’s the great slippery thing about art crit – you can always challenge the assumptions of the viewer and suggest that they are acting out their own issues when… Read more »
Hah… I don’t know about the blindfold sculptor, but here’s a response to sculpture…
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/exhibits/downtown/soho/sohoart/documents/kruger.html
This kind of view is practically fundamental at the art school I attend. Eventually I’ll have to tackle these views head on in my work – especially the view that the gaze is a form of violence. That really bothers me.
Thanks for your thoughts
I would think that a cutting-edge, avant garde, postmodernist approach to art would call into question the very categories of “male” and “female” as entirely narrow-minded philistine blinders. If someone refers to you as a “male” in art school, I say you challenge their internal construction of you as such. Who are they to label you as “male” at all? That is SOOOO twentieth century anglocentric. Are they suggesting that they cannot really come to a valid critique of a piece of art until they know the gender of the artist? That seems hopelessly essentialist somehow. And I don’t know… Read more »
Visited the link just now. Kruger makes a completely valid point, though it’s so obvious as to be absurdly, unavoidably true. Yes, a stone sculpture is on objectification in which what you see is something silent. Hard to say that a stone sculpture has been silenced, of course. Traditionally, anthropomorphic sculptures don’t speak. So, it makes perfect sense that feminine sculptural subjects don’t speak, because male subjects don’t speak either. Praxiteles’ discus thrower doesn’t say very much either. (Maybe he’s talking beyond the range of human hearing?) If you heard the rock speaking before you carved it into a “female”… Read more »
Silly question, but: how do they know that you’re “male”? How do YOU know that you’re “male” if you think that you are? Was there a box on your art school application in which you had to identify as a particular gender? That sounds so archaic for a place that’s meant to explore creativityand push boundaries….
There are boxes on the application. For statistical purposes, I assume. No option for trans-gender or otherwise. @wellokaythen: I interpreted the silencing critique as a metaphor that is meant to fit into the narrative of patriarchal oppression. Women are to be seen and not heard. And there’s a sub-text of violence linked to male lust. I think it’s quite underhanded in its approach. “This reminds me of some people I know who see a phallic symbol in anything that’s longer than it is wide.” Hah, yes… Sometimes I toy with the idea of baiting the tutors and class by casually… Read more »
It’s all determined by personal taste, isn’t it? My girlfriends at age 13 would drool over the gorgeous lifeguards at summer camp…and to tell the truth, I haven’t seen such a gorgeous collection of Olympians in one spot since then…Wow! But truthfully, I preferred my gangly, cute 13 yo Jewish BF, who had freckles and knobby knees (who reminded me of Paul McCartney, who was the ultimate for me then)…. David Beckham is cool and sleek in his undies, but personally I turn my gaze to Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud (fully dressed!) and Michael Fassbender as Jung (also fully… Read more »
Viggo as Sigmund looks like Rade Serbedzija!
What success really looks like: http://goo.gl/obiC
Wow.
Great article.
This is far more interesting than hearing about how men objectify women.
Ten more like this, please.
I like this so much that I am already anticipating your next writing. Please keep The Good Men Project alive.
Noah doesn’t ‘introduce’ the idea of the female gaze. I have a book from 1988 called ‘The Female Gaze’!
Isn’t it just amazing how much bullshit we’re fed about so many fundamental things?
I mean seriously. Why are there so many such “big lies” out there that we are sold?
I do wonder about that. Is it religion and control of the masses that drives it?
Hmmm…..
Well humans tend to create norms and then place a high value on those norms. When most people do something a certain way, or believe something, people tend to think of it as being ‘right.’ It’s linked to the way we create identity. I like x, y, and z, which makes me This. You do not like x, y, and z which makes you That. And because I am part of This, it is better then That. It’s an us-vs.-them mentality. Then on top of all that, we share our ideas. The more people we can convince to become This,… Read more »
I feel ya. It’s still stupid.
Dumb ass humans.
Too fearful to be free.
So it goes…
I am a middle-aged woman who loves looking at men (yes, Beckham, too!) and loves sex; does that make me a freak? I never have cared about a man’s wealth or lack there of. I have always told the men I have been with how much I lust after them, one, because it was the truth and two, because we all want to be seen as desirable. You’re not ugly at all, Noah (and I don’t know how you look), because you are insightful and interesting; you could work with that! And a business that didn’t take off isn’t necessarily… Read more »
This is a great piece, and one I definitely need to read again. For years (years of a mostly sexless marriage, I’ll add), my husband tried in no uncertain terms to tell me that he needed me to objectify him. I don’t mean in a domineering way, but in a honey-you-are-hot-and-I-want-your-body kind of way. Because at the time I didn’t need it from him, I definitely didn’t give it back. We are in a different place now, and I find him so attractive and delicious. He catches me leering, and he becomes aroused when I tell him how much I… Read more »
I wonder if this could be related to how men and women are taught to view relationships and the opposite sex differently. As a woman, I was always taught that all men would find me physically attractive (if I conformed to certain beauty standards, etc) but the thing that would make a relationship truly personal was whether a man appreciated my personality and intellect. The classic stereotype that all men want is to get into my pants, but a good man will want to talk to me too. I wonder if men feel the opposite (as a generalization). Like this… Read more »
Being an overweight male who copped quite a lot of flack for it from females in school, I think looks are probably important to both genders now. The impression I get from women is that looks are quite important and so is having a job, a decent job at that, and a sense of direction in life. I’m not sure what women think of men who have part time jobs, or are studying though but then again people vary in what they like so there is no one easy answer. The stereotype of a man having more money = more… Read more »
Noah this is some good shit man. THANK YOU. Because the conversation turned to Beckham (which I am not sure fits into your idealized man for women’s gaze but has sure caused a stir) over on our blog: https://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/david-beckham-man-or-myth/). “Having found my way into slash and fan art circles, I was eyeball-deep in unchecked female libido, men seen through a lens of sexual desire that I was unfamiliar with, but instantly fascinated by.” LOL. Yeah me too. I don’t know anything about it but I take your word for it. Absolutely fascinating and cool and liberating to the male box… Read more »
I forgot to mention that we DO find handsome “regular” men attractive physically (some of you think we look at you all as walking bank-books or portfolios). If you don’t already know that women secretly objectify you – you must be living under a rock!
That´s the first time I actually hear about that. If it´s true what you´re saying, then it´s a secret well kept.
I’m not sure what you’re saying is what you really mean… I’m perfectly ok with the idea that there are people making value judgements about my looks. But when you say ‘objectify you’ and there are criterion (looks, butt, pecs, smile, etc) that is implying – especially in a conversation referencing “Male Gaze’ – that those are your sole criteria for deciding the worth of that person. Thus my personality, status, etc are irrelevant and you have ‘dehumanised’ me. This is what men are assumed to be doing to women all the time. Do you want to be in that… Read more »
I doubt if it’s as high as 10% of men who are being “objectified”. Maybe 2%. And if women are keeping it a secret how would we men know? You know what? I really have nothing to do with this conversation. You and the 10 or 2% of the men involved in this issue feel free to continue. As we say in the military, carry on.
Matt Lowe – I agree with every single thing you said. Great response! =) As to the men inquiring about David Beckham’s appeal. Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, even former-hotties like Clint Eastwood – are women today drooling over these successful men? No. Most women are attracted to David Beckham (Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, and the likes etc) solely for their looks – handsome face, amazingly toned/tanned pecs/biceps/butts, hair, skin, smile, etc. It has very little to do with their success. Things like career/finances only make men attractive when they are your “regular”, “real-every-day” men. When you are… Read more »
The female gaze is frowned upon because generally, those women that are honest about it are also unashamed about it and tend to be more promiscuous. Men like promiscuous women for a night, but not long-term. Thus, women hide their carnal urges in order to give the perception that they are “clean” or “pure.”
It always seems like in those explanations, whatever women do, it gets blamed on men somehow.
The male gaze is far more frowned upon but that’s always blamed wholly on men.
Personally, having met more than a few promiscous women in my time, I’m rather fond of those “promiscous” women.
Forget the virgins. Who wants to be with a woman who doesn’t know what the heck she’s doing and is afraid of everything? That spells awful sex to me. Gimme a woman who’s been around the block a few times and knows how to rock my world with confidence and skill any day.
Just my 2 cents.
“At the very least, I was assured, women are not aroused by men visually. There have been Studies. Using Science.” Have you been talking to people from the 50s? That myth was expelled years ago for being, well, nonsense. Every study I’ve seen about women’s sexuality states that men and women respond sexually in almost exactly identical ways. http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=22044 In a similar vein there’s the whole “women are more mature than men” thing, which stems from the fact that most people think girls go through puberty earlier than boys. In fact boys and girls start puberty at the same age,… Read more »
Matt Lowe – I agree with every single thing you said. Great response! =)
I agree with you about studies. Most studies are approached with a bias already in place, and funding to feed that bias. Occasionally they are honest, but for the most part, studies on human behavior are most often approached with a particular point of view in mind. It is not hard to taylor the study to swing one way or another, even if that is not the direct intention of the person doing the study. Sometimes they just can’t help themselves. Behavior studies are not like medical studies, where the product or procedure either does what it says or it… Read more »
I suspect that one key difference is in how men and women “gaze” at people they’re attracted to. It’s not necessarily a difference in how much men or women notice, but HOW they notice. I have the sense that women just tend to be a little more subtle and just multitask better – a brief glimpse and then the visual is incorporated into their imaginations quickly, mentally filed away for future reference while they go about their business. Women are better at noticing without appearing to notice. For some reason, whether it’s nature or nurture, men tend to stare longer.… Read more »
While I don’t doubt the existence of the female gaze, there’s still something the male gaze has that’s missing, that I pinned a few months ago as what bugs me. The lady I was dating at the time and I were going out with a bunch of her friends, and she wanted to get “all tarted up,” that is, to dress sexily in such a way that she’d attract the attention of many men. That notion is pretty much completely foreign to men, at least the ones I know. (I’m not saying all women can do this, but even the… Read more »
I’d say the guys are probably still trying to show wealth vs looks although lately it seems everyone is on the whole beauty train. New studies showed men as insecure about their looks as women however women getting tarted up usually have to put on makeup and do their hair, far more than a male’s preparation usually.
And I guess just looking at the popularity of gym and weightlifting, if you want to see how some men try to attract the female gaze….just goto the gym.
Sure, men have limited amounts of preparation, but that doesn’t make what I said any less true (It’s not like men could, if they chose to prepare more, get “tarted up.”) It just means that women have a gazee role that they can’t escape, while men have a gazer role that they can’t escape.
And I’m not sure about the gym. I’m not looking for men *trying* to attract the female gaze; I’m looking for men *attracting* the female gaze, and I’m not sure if that qualifies as both or just the former.
Just take the Super Bowl commercials, for example. Women don’t love to see David Beckam in his underwear because they are aroused by suggestions of soccer. (Okay, maybe for some, but those women generally call it “football.”) It ain’t primarily because they think tidy-whitey underwear is sexy. It’s the body. I have stubble and it’s time to shave. He has stubble and it’s gorgeous. (Unfortunately, that’s about the only way I can realistically put him and me in the same paragraph.)
Now, does the fact that he’s rich make any difference? I’m guessing yeah, it totally does.
does the fact that he’s rich make any difference? I’m guessing yeah, it totally does. It does? I suppose I can take your word for it, but for me, when I’m watching that commercial, the “who” he is doesn’t even enter into it, much less how popular he is or how much money he makes. I see a muscular, well-toned, well-groomed, masculine body, on a guy who is smiling and flirting and having a whole lot of fun at the camera. He could be a bum they picked off the streets, cleaned up and trained into shape, and if he… Read more »
Just to get your opinion (if I’m thinking of the right commercial) he also had a lot of tattoos too.
Was that a plus or negative or null affect on the whole shebang?
I would say less that he’s rich than that he’s really successful. I’ve never been drawn to rich guys, but I always liked guys who were really *great* at something. I dated a stand-up comic who was SO funny and everyone loved him, but who worked in a shoe store to pay rent, I dated a director who was amazing at what he did, but was just starting out and so he worked as a PA. Mostly all stories like that. Both are very, very successful now and famous in their industries (no, I’m not telling you who!) and probably… Read more »
That is a nice and honest answer. But it speaks of something that has been bugging me for a long time. Namely the feeling deep down that I would like gender dynamics to shift in such a way that guys are valued for what they look like and not how successful they are. Women are fighting against the expected high standard of grooming. – But the positive side is that women can be attractive without being successful. But this is a way, a role that is precluded for men. In fact, being successful is much harder to get and more… Read more »
That’s true more of young women.
Uh, no. I saw the commercial and went into a sort of zombie mode. I think I poured coffee on both feet and didn’t notice. My boyfriend, whom I generally try to spare from evidence that I’m aware there are other men in the universe, caught me gaping in abject wonder at the sheer sexiness of the commercial.
And I had no idea who it was. So no, Beckham’s money had nothing to do with the fact that the ad was paralyzingly awesome.
That Guy I quoted you over on the blog. Hope that is okay.
https://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/david-beckham-man-or-myth/
I wonder if we can say the same about Steven King and how attractive his near-billion make him look?
Welcome Noah and THANK YOU!! When more of us see ourselves as we are rather than as we think we’re supposed to be, men might finally get a clue. I’ve never been able to figure out if I’m a plumber who plays at being an author/actor or an author/actor who survives by doing plumbing but I’m leaning to the latter. All the same, it scares the crap out of me to fail at all levels because I can’t commit fully to one or the other. That said, I’m still tilting at windmills so………thanks for a little perspective.
What exactly do you mean by ‘men might finally get a clue’?
A clue that women do see us as sexy in a different but no less powerful way. Ok not all of us qualify as sexy any more than all women qualify as sexy, (in a socially stereotypical kinda way) but you know, there is a lid for every pot. Someone out there finds you sexy no matter how unsexy you feel about yourself……………
Uh..no they don’t. And I don’t see the male gaze becoming acceptable again for a very long time…if ever…
Just another 180 opinion.
Acceptable again? Are men allowed to look at women or not?
Even I know the answer is “not”.
“I don’t see the male gaze becoming acceptable again for a very long time”
How and what men choose to look at can only be judged acceptable by ONE person. The man doing the looking. As for you….who cares whether you think its acceptable. Its none of your business. There aren’t your eyes.
I didn’t make it unacceptable. Those are societal standards listed under the phrase sexual harassment. Unless I’ve missed a recent definition change.
““I don’t see the male gaze becoming acceptable again for a very long time” How and what men choose to look at can only be judged acceptable by ONE person. The man doing the looking. As for you….who cares whether you think its acceptable. Its none of your business. There aren’t your eyes.” It took me a long time to figure this out and shed my guilt about liking what I like. So far as I’m concerned now, society and what it thinks about my interests in what I look at, can go frak itself. I run my life, not… Read more »
LMAO – I have seen (and I’m sure you have too) some hugely ugly men and women with a big smile and a bunch of kids. Just because there isn’t a lineup of supermodels begging to blow you does not mean there is no one who finds you sexy.
I really enjoyed this article. As a lesbian, I spent a long time trying to figure out whether my lack of attraction toward men was something I actually didn’t feel, or whether it was something society cultivated. For a long time I couldn’t figure out whether I was a lesbian or bi, in part because of the way the media does focus on the heterosexual ‘male gaze’ but not the heterosexual ‘female gaze.’ Anyway, my point in bringing that up is that this is an issue that affects pretty much everyone, and yet is so rarely discussed. So thank you… Read more »
The positive of the “female gaze” is that it’s discussed from a male perspective. That’s what is key. I don’t know how the “female gaze” could be negative. Even if it was idolized and as socially dominant as the “male gaze.” I’d love to know that every woman that sees me wants to do me. The feeling I get most days is that most women want to flee from me out of fear or that I simply don’t exist.
Remarkable how different it is on either side of the gender divide isn’t it?
Awesome piece, Noah! I never thought about The Success Myth and how damaging it can be to men. I’m really grateful for your perspective on this…