9 December 2000
Stephen Wood

AFTER FEMINISM made women visible to themselves, it made men visible to themselves as well. Now it appears as if men in general are the object of a lot of media and cultural attention. As the new decade settles in they are responding to this scrutiny in some interesting ways.

Men are subject to similar kinds of pressures as women: representation in the media and channels of popular culture tell them how to be a man; seductive images of a powerful 'phallic' masculinity, of which many men may feel they fall short; masculine conditioning that goes on in groups of men in different social contexts such as the workplace, the pub, or more generalised cultural arenas, like those of sport, shopping and sex.

Through the channels of popular culture, the body in particular is presented so as to influence popular perceptions of the male self. Emanating from film, television, videos, books and magazines are notions of muscularity, strength and power, wrapped up with generous helpings of fearless domination, which help to produce images of the ideal man. A semiotic analysis of gender has treated men's and women's bodies as the objects of social symbolism. The study of the imagery of bodies and the representation of masculinity in film, photography and the visual arts has traced complex but powerful systems of imagery through which bodies are defined.

It's an inescapable fact that all this imagery is going to be soaked up visually, through the exercise of the gaze. It's also true that we tend to construct our world by perceiving it, that how we see and how we live are part of a complicated interrelation that produces our identities. We are being continually sprayed with visual images of a masculine physical ideal, one which derives its selling power from associations with power, so it's no wonder that many men feel ashamed of their bodies, male bodies that somehow aren't quite masculine enough. This shame comes from a sense of being looked at, of being the object of some impersonal gaze. There's no-one watching, but somehow all this cultural attention has created a watchful atmosphere that calls to something in the male psyche, puts man on his guard, makes him self-conscious and ashamed of himself. Men turn their gaze inward, introjecting the attention they receive as an internal governing principle, turning a steady, sexualising gaze upon their own fallible, human flesh in order to keep it in check, see that it doesn't exceed its proper bounds, those set out by the masculine physical ideal. And this makes them feel guilty and unfulfilled.

Q: How do you reconcile the masculine physical ideal with most men's lived experience of their bodies? For years I had bigger breasts than most of my female friends. They rested on my stomach like a pair of forearms on a bar. I used to get attacked at school for having big tits, which I found quite distressing. Of course lots of girls (especially girls of a certain age) get this kind of treatment, but the thing is, I'm not a girl, I'm a boy, and I've often been made to feel that my male body somehow falls through the gaps between these two terms, girl and boy, by not being hard enough, not being strong enough, not being masculine enough.

I've drawn one or two conclusions. One important truth: if men's lived experience of their bodies doesn't conform to the physical stereotypes made available to them in the media, then obviously it is the stereotypes that need to change. These stereotypes, all basically to do with muscular, hard, strong, watchful bodies that resemble an erection, bear little or no witness to what men's bodies are like most of the time, let alone men's bollocks. Men need to assert their right to embody masculinity on their own terms.

Another important truth: masculinity isn't something you can possess. It's not some singular essential quality that you can acquire over the counter or in a gym or in bed with someone of a systemically sanctioned sexual bias. Masculinity isn't a single thing at all. It's a whole mish-mash of lots of different things, as diverse as the individual men in a Sainsbury's queue; different kinds of behavioural traits and habits of thought. These are not constant, they are constantly emerging and disappearing in society, as the result of joint practice worked out within loose social organisations of thought, speech, and activity, which are called discourses. These discourses are what engender communal ideas about stuff like sexuality and race, and among other things they dictate patterns of belonging and exclusion, which is why they are so interesting to anyone who wants to live in a fairer world, because what you know about, you can resist. What you name, you can change.