I’ve been gearing up to write a post about the appalling images of men in new TV shows and the implicit assumptions that underlie those images, but Linda Holmes over at NPR has done it for me, so well that all I can really add is to flap my hand frantically in its direction and say “Yes, right, see, that! That thing!”
Your female-gaze moment of the day: the Men of the Stacks calendar, raising money for charity by showing off the sweet nerd beefcake of America’s male librarians. I do believe they’ve shelved the myth of men not being hot under “bullshit”.
And finally, just for grins, the most reliable quiz I’ve yet seen on How to tell if your son is gay.
“The Superbowl still gets roughly 1 billion viewers world wide”
I bet many only watch it for the incredibly pricy ads and don’t care one bit about the actual match.
@marc2020 When I notice a TV trend I always try to find the one, lonely, successful experiment that has set off a parade of copycats, but I’m a little cynical about television. I haven’t watched most of the shows you’ve referenced (just The Walking Dead and few episodes of House), but I think they’re all about relative super-men and savants at the top of their game? They all seem to have the theme that if you’re super-awesome enough then everything… well, if it doesn’t work out per se its really cool to watch all the awesome happen. Maybe television is… Read more »
My mum thought I was gay, because I had no girlfriend and was depressed. Sigh :FACEPALM: It could be fun to try this test on me.
@marc: I’d love for you to write a piece exploring these issues further. There’s a lot of ground to be covered.
I really want to see if I’m gay or not!
That third link is pretty funny.
The first and last links are excellent, don’t get me wrong, but that second link had me going “asdfjkl;asdfjkl;!!” I will love you forever for that second link. 😉
I have to say at this point I’m confused about what shows like How To Be A Gentleman and Last Man Standing, are reacting too becasuse there’s certainly no lack of trad masculinity on TV especially American TV where you’ve got House, Mad Men, NCIS Los Angeles, 24, Sons of Anarchy, The Wire, Board walk Empire, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Blue Bloods, Friday Night Lights, in fact I’m actually struggling to think of a show where a straight white heterosexual male isn’t the lead character or at the very least at the centre of the action. The Superbowl… Read more »