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Levi Johnston Is Too Hairy and Hideous To Be Objectified

Sady

Oh. My. God. Becky. LOOK. AT HIS. ARMPIT.

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Yep! Hot hot Levi Johnston Playgirl pics are out. And, while I myself might reserve these pictures for when I have gone around accidentally licking all the household cleaning products again (oh, WHAT. Like it’s MY fault they’re so brightly and attractively packaged) and am in need of an effective ipecac, this has more to do with the fact that Levi Johnston’s Cash-in-Mania ’09 is fundamentally icky, especially when compared to how Bristol “Person Who Got Somewhat More Shafted By This Whole Deal” Palin is doing, and I associate the sight of naked Levi Johnston with unplanned pregnancies and unwanted national scrutiny and abstinence-only education and lack of cultural or familial support for abortion and generalized terror. Basically, I never want to think about Levi Johnston in a sexual context, but that is only because the one sexual context I associate him with is my very worst nightmare of all time.

Whereas OTHERS are just more appalled by the presence of his armpit hair! For example, here are the thoughts of Chippendales dancer Nathan Minor, quoted in a very highbrow piece on US magazine’s website:

The only problem — his hairy armpits! We take only mostly shaved guys. He should also focus on his diet to help him get a bit harder. He doesn’t have to go the fitness-y hard look, but he could tighten up a little bit. His body is a little soft.

Uh, WHAT? Nathan Minor, I hate to have to ask these questions, but: have you ever seen an actual, non-Chippendales-employee male person In The Nude? Because I have. And they are QUITE A GOOD BIT “SOFTER,” on the whole, than this. Oh, and also? They’ve got armpit hair. Almost every time.

Or maybe the problem is that Levi is not hairy ENOUGH? Consider the input of Playgirl editor Jayme Waxman:

I think it’s hard to get a 19-year-old to do ‘sexy’ and really get it. At 19, you know how to show off your still-tight body, but do you actually know how to use your sexuality? I feel like you really develop your sexual energy and attitude in your 20s and 30s, so Levi has a way to go before he’s completely comfortable in his body. He doesn’t have much chest hair, does he? I like a bit more chest hair.

So, alternately, Levi Johnston is “tight” and “soft,” lacking in hair and inappropriately hairy, hot because he’s 19 and too young to be really hot… hold up. Is it Freaky Friday again? Because, all of a sudden, a photo of a dude is being subjected to the same impossible standards and annoying criticism that we are used to seeing regarding naked-lady photos. And I, for one, am perplexed!

Well, except maybe not. Because (a) I realize that I am objecting to a certain level of grossness in the discourse surrounding PLAYGIRL DUH, and (b) there is a long history of the culture at large co-opting feminist discourses and making them gross. And, around the time that “sex-positive” got swallowed whole by Sex & the City, the end goals of that movement (hey, guys, you know what’s fun? Sex. You know what would be even more fun? If we stopped persecuting, marginalizing, terrorizing, assaulting and/or killing people based on how they have sex) were replaced by a brand new vision of sexual equality and freedom, in which all of us – yes, you and you and you – would be allowed to opt in to a particularly gross, objectifying, consumer-friendly version of sexuality. Even the dudes, apparently!

I would be lying if I said that I did not derive some LOLs, of the dark and vindictive variety, from seeing a dude discussed in the same way that ladies so often are. But it’s also somewhat illuminating. For, while I am so used to the extreme and unrealistic standards we use when appraising naked ladies that I often give them no more than a cursory eye-roll and gagging noise, they really become apparent and ridiculous when applied to a dude. And just as ladies, on the whole, do not look the same when naked as professional Naked Time Entertainers, dudes don’t tend to look that way either. And it doesn’t mean they’re not cute! It just means they’re not professional Naked Time Entertainers, who tend to put a really extreme amount of work into the whole naked package because that is their job. And judging any civilian’s nakedness by that standard is silly and reductive and also a really easy way to set yourself up for some severe disappointment. For, it’s true: even though the thought of him gives me nightmares, Levi Johnston is, by any reasonable standard, an attractive young man.

Except for his hideous, hideous armpits. OH. MY. GOD.

50 thoughts on Levi Johnston Is Too Hairy and Hideous To Be Objectified

  2. I don’t know, Levi’s face makes me think he’s a dickhead. Maybe if I put a paper bag over his head it would be okay.

    Also, Yes.

  3. Is that a tattoo? Did he have this before he impregnated Bristol? If so, what was Sarah doing letting them see each other in the first place? CLEARLY a bad influence!

    Agree with Shinobi that he looks/acts like a douche. I’d take R Patz’s somewhat strange, sparse, wannabe body hair over Levi’s waxed(/really that young?? oh god) glory any day.

  5. “Am I the only one who would be entirely freaked out by a guy without armpit hair?”

    Yes. Or at least, I hope so. Armpit hair does not equal ‘manly’ any more than shaved legs equals ‘feminine’. There are many reasons to not have- or to selectively remove- body hair on both sexes, varying from athletics to personal taste… I would have hoped that a feminist-minded individual would have recognized that. Or do personal grooming habits only get defended when it is a woman being judged?

  6. I’m just concerned about why armpit hair is such a huge deal. I would love to see that guy’s reaction to my armpits (also hairy, a lot of the time, and belonging to a very small lady).

    Also wow, when I said I wanted equal rights for everyone I didn’t mean ‘we’re all treated with equal contempt by douchebags on the internet’.

    Also also, I love you Sady.

  7. That is just so wrong on so many different levels. I feel nasty just looking at that picture. Would they only be interested in armpit hair if it was Bristol posing? I think not.

    “Am I the only one who would be entirely freaked out by a guy without armpit hair?”

    I wouldn’t be. I’ve been with at least one man who quite naturally had virtually no armpit hair. And this guy was pretty muscular and had no problem growing facial hair, so it wasn’t like he was lacking in testosterone either. He also had no problem impregnating me…twice.

    I couldn’t care less either way, really. Just as I can’t really care less either way if a woman has armpit hair or not.

  8. “Am I the only one who would be entirely freaked out by a guy without armpit hair?”

    Totally not something I’ve ever given thought to either way.

    Also I so agree, he really does look like a douchebag. If only because that tattoo is his own last name (just in case he forgets it?)

  9. You know what’s hilarious?

    When we have a thread about the objectification and body-shaming of women, somebody, usually a straight guy, comes along to tell us that the thing the woman in the example was being body-shamed for actually gets him hard, and he can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to screw a woman with the thing that she’s being body-shamed for… or he says that the thing that she is being shamed for *not* having would make him go limp. And we all jump on him for taking a thread about body shaming and making it about who he would like to have sex with, because talking about whose bodies are worthy of being sexual is exactly the *problem*.

    So Sady points out that nowadays, there are opportunities for sexual equality in body shaming, and that men are being dragged into the mire of “you can never be good enough” along with women. And what happens, but someone comes along to say “The thing that he is being body-shamed for *not* being would actually be repulsive to me.” Because threads about body shame are always about who you would like to have sex with! (Or, if your orientation doesn’t point in that direction, who you think is worthy of being considered sexual by other people, whose orientation *does* point in that direction.)

    It’s really, really funny because it totally proves Sady’s point. It’s also kind of sad.

  10. “Also wow, when I said I wanted equal rights for everyone I didn’t mean ‘we’re all treated with equal contempt by douchebags on the internet’.”

    Yeah, that. Let’s get some higher-quality equality somehow.

  11. Yeah. I mean. Cute people are cute and all! But let us not, I pray, turn this into a discussion of whether X body attribute is cute/uncute/freaky/freaky only in its absence/etc. I mean, jeez.

    The point is that we all have bodies that do not fit the Professional Hot Person Model standard – even if we are Professional Hot Person Models! Hence, airbrushing, lighting crews, makeup, strategic camera angle determination, etc. – and that the ridonkulousness of our willingness to hash out the hotness of a particular body while pretending that these “perfect” bodies we are all after are ACTUAL REAL BODIES THAT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD (spoiler: they’re not, actually!) is even more self-evidently ridonkulous when the body in question belongs to a dude.

    So, you know. Levi Johnston’s hotness or the hotness of all the armpits ever anywhere in the world can be put on hold, maybe. Whilst we have that other discussion.

  14. I think shallowness is part of the human condition. There are dark sides to all of us, and I hate how progressive politics often require that we gloss over them. Desire is a funny thing, after all. You can’t quite quantify it, or put it in especially neat brackets, because it works on so many levels simultaneously.

    “Am I the only one who would be entirely freaked out by a guy without armpit hair?”

    ‘Freaked out’ is probably the wrong phrase to use, in my case, but we all have our preferences.

    Let’s get some higher-quality equality somehow.

    If quality equality means I shouldn’t blabber on about how I think X looks hot because of Y, but A does not look hot because of B, then it would be not the kind of quality I would personally aspire to.

    Something I never get tired of pointing out is the fact that we’re all corporeal beings. We all judge each other on appearance, because we occupy these flesh and blood vessels, and they’re how we interact with the world. I want a level playing field, personally. But I don’t believe the judgment itself can, or should, go away.

    What should be changed is the corporate mandate on “hotness” in general. Just to give an example – I don’t care that Nathan Minor thinks that Levi is “soft” or whatever. If I like someone, I like someone, right? The media always forgets how desire really works. It’s not about perfection, it’s not about being fashionable, it’s about a want. Which isn’t necessarily rational.

    Wanting someone is messy. I think we want to deny that so much that we kind of allow the media to present this really sanitized picture of what is and isn’t attractive. And that sucks. It hurts all of us. It especially hurts us when we’re young, and trying to make sense of our bodies.

    Variety really is the spice of life, and I, for one, want more of it. A very narrow aesthetic is not only harmful. It’s boring.

  15. But how can they sell important undarm hair removal things to men if they aren’t ashamed of their armpit hair. (Looking forward to deodorant commercials featuring guys without their shirts on showing off their smooth underarms.)

  16. This: If quality equality means I shouldn’t blabber on about how I think X looks hot because of Y, but A does not look hot because of B, then it would be not the kind of quality I would personally aspire to.”

    And this:

    What should be changed is the corporate mandate on “hotness” in general.

    Are the same problem. Unless we’re playing the “my personal aesthetics are completely private and untouched by marketing” game which is a very dull and dishonest game indeed.

    Why can’t we simply say “A is attractive to me.” Why must we say “because of XYZ” any why ever say “B is not attractive to me because of UVW.”

  17. “I think shallowness is part of the human condition. There are dark sides to all of us, and I hate how progressive politics often require that we gloss over them.”

    Thus far, we are agreed! It is true that people respond to pictures of pretty people, sometimes without wanting or needing to know anything about the pretty person in question. And I’d agree that a political theory or program which doesn’t acknowledge the complexity of human nature, or of the problems it’s trying to solve, is doomed to failure. (And obnoxiousness!) So: yeah, we all have immature libidinal petty greedy status-hungry selfish gross sides to our nature. Even those of us who identify as progressive or feminist! Because we’re animals, and that’s how animals are. And any political program that tries to legislate that side of us away, or repeal all legislation and return us to a state of Edenic purity and capital-F Freedom, is going to be brought to ruin by its inability to grapple with that aspect of being human.

    BUT. I think the issue, with objectification, is that it creates an environment (specifically for ladies – although dudes can be objectified, they are still privileged enough to be spared many of the grosser and more limiting aspects of the experience) where one’s sexual attractiveness can ALWAYS be called into play as a determining factor of one’s worth. You’re too hot, you’re not hot enough. You’re too sexual, you’re not sexual enough. You’re too masculine/feminine, you’re not masculine/feminine enough. Your body is always subject to evaluation and the results of the evaluation can affect you even when they shouldn’t: they can affect your job prospects, how you’re treated on the job, whether or not people take you seriously when you speak. Look at the furor over Sarah Palin’s magazine covers: one is called “sexist” because it doesn’t make her look hot, one is called “sexist” because it makes her look hot, and the underlying factor behind both of these controversies is that Sarah Palin CAN’T BE A DUDE, and so her body will always be able to be called into question when determining her credibility, and she’ll always have to walk that “hot enough/not too hot” line. And, ICK, Sarah Palin, but that does sort of illustrate the double bind of living in a world where you always have to calculate the presentation of your body so as to enforce your credibility in various more or less impossible ways.

    So, when people call for a space in which someone’s “hotness” isn’t a subject in question, I don’t think they’re necessarily DENYING the libidinal charge one gets from looking at pictures of cute strangers (I mean, maybe some are. But I’m not!) I think they’re just trying to work toward an understanding that the “hotness” of someone IS NOT ALWAYS A RELEVANT FACTOR in discussion, and that “hotness” is allowed to sway our judgments of people in ways that have nothing to do with sex, which really shouldn’t be the case. We may be animals, but we’re RATIONAL animals, and I think rational animals can agree that this is a bad strategy. And, yeah, ladies get the short end of the stick in that dynamic, so we’re normally defending our own right to have our own “hotness” left out of discussions that have nothing to do with it, and it’s kind of funny that this whole discussion is happening in regards to naked Levi. But what are you gonna do? If it’s not fair for dudes to do this to us, it’s not fair for us to do this to dudes.

    Anyway. Sorry for WALL O’ TEXT COMMENT TIME, there.

  18. Armpits are tools of the patriarchy.

    You are a bad person and should be glad that I was able to get to the kitchen for paper towel as quickly as I was or I’d be billing you for a monitor and keyboard.

  19. “Playgirl’s still around?”

    Yeah, I was surprised b/c its demise was touted widely a couple months (or possibly even further) back, so I guess only the paper publication folded, although I can’t check for sure since I’m at work.

  20. Unless we’re playing the “my personal aesthetics are completely private and untouched by marketing” game which is a very dull and dishonest game indeed.

    Personal aesthetics are touched by a lot of things. They’re touched by marketing. They’re also touched by some random experience you had when you were 10. And the way said experiences interact within your brain is important as well. We’re not robots, after all. No?

    Why can’t we simply say “A is attractive to me.” Why must we say “because of XYZ” any why ever say “B is not attractive to me because of UVW.”

    Because the why question is always pretty interesting. And one that can never be answered fully. Although I think I didn’t express myself nearly as well as I would have liked – I was talking about determining, or trying to determine, why a certain person is attractive to you, and then teasing out the details. Levi, for example? I’m fairly certain that part of the reason why I find him attractive is that body hair.

    So, when people call for a space in which someone’s “hotness” isn’t a subject in question…

    Well, I think that space is very important. But I think part of the problem here is the general anxiety people have when it comes to being attracted to someone/not being attracted to someone. Attraction in general operates in this really weird way – we pathologize it, basically. Instead of thinking “eh, she’s hot, so anyway…” or “nope, not my type, so anyway” we create drama out of it. I think it’s really bad in the States, actually, due to various factors. (My knee-jerk reaction is to blame religion, but I realize it’s more complicated than that) Does that make sense at all?

    But what are you gonna do?

    Keep on being a shallow bitch until I can no longer get away with it? Or until, I don’t know, I get bored? Men judge me every time I leave the house, after all. The thing is, I judge them too, albeit more quietly. I don’t think I’m better, or more evolved. I just have less social power. I want more, dammit. But I don’t fight for it by going “stop looking at me,” I fight for it by going, “hey, guess what, I’m looking at you.” I think it’s just one approach out of many.

    If it’s not fair for dudes to do this to us, it’s not fair for us to do this to dudes.

    Depends on the context, no? Playgirl, I think, is very straightforward.

  22. around the time that “sex-positive” got swallowed whole by Sex & the City, the end goals of that movement (hey, guys, you know what’s fun? Sex. You know what would be even more fun? If we stopped persecuting, marginalizing, terrorizing, assaulting and/or killing people based on how they have sex) were replaced by a brand new vision of sexual equality and freedom, in which all of us – yes, you and you and you – would be allowed to opt in to a particularly gross, objectifying, consumer-friendly version of sexuality. Even the dudes, apparently!

    How Foucaultian! I am cast back many many years to my undergrad days when I naively believed that sexual liberation of women could never be co-opted into a Bad Thing. But now, apparently, everyone knows better. Even me.

    And it doesn’t mean they’re not cute! It just means they’re not professional Naked Time Entertainers, who tend to put a really extreme amount of work into the whole naked package because that is their job.
    this makes me want to refer to Jenna Jameson’s recent appearance on Oprah where she referred to the constant, ongoing “monsterization” of her body (meaning, plucking, waxing, dyeing, shaving, and, presumably, breast implanting) being one part of it she definitely did not miss.

  23. sorry, referring to my first comment, when I said “being one part of it she did not miss” I meant “one part of having been a porn star that she does not miss.”

  24. “Men judge me every time I leave the house, after all. The thing is, I judge them too, albeit more quietly. I don’t think I’m better, or more evolved. I just have less social power. I want more, dammit. But I don’t fight for it by going “stop looking at me,” I fight for it by going, “hey, guess what, I’m looking at you.””

    I think the issue is whether that is, in and of itself, a “fighting” move. I would say, without any other activism or movement toward social change, it’s neutral. It’s definitely not bad (as long as you’re not reinstating a body standard that is just as limiting and unrealistic as the body standard for women), and it can be good in an indirect way, by making you FEEL more powerful, which may enable you to engage in other forms of activism. And I don’t underestimate the benefits of getting your head in the right space re: self-esteem and feeling powerful and liking yourself before you engage in activism, since without that one’s engagement can be either misguided or nonexistent; the worse my self-esteem is, the worse my activism and/or writing and/or general objectivity becomes – and I am not a liar, so I will say that owning my own particular variety of hotness and reserving the right to pass judgment on the dudelier gender was a big part of acquiring self-esteem, for me. So the role of the individual is not negligible, and inner work matters. But it doesn’t, in and of itself, cause social change. You have to do other stuff, too. The thought of hot young things getting mutually and heterosexually happy about each other’s hotness isn’t exactly new. And I think you’re right to say that what we need is more variety, in terms of our iconography of human prettiness; that’s definitely part of what we need. But we also need to rid ourselves of the idea that just plain flipping the script is, in and of itself, enough to even the score. Or even that “evening the score” should be a goal. I think we can value desire, and also break free of the script which says that only certain bodies are desirable and expressing desire for them always has to go hand-in-hand with disrespect.

    I agree with you that Playgirl definitely invites one specific form of gaze and appraisal. But this post isn’t Playgirl. Nor is US’s roundup, which inspired this article, Playgirl. I would never write a post about a Playgirl photo spread that went, “THIS IS OBJECTIFYING [WHOEVER],” because that’s not news. But the fact that a guy’s body is being picked apart in a way that we traditionally reserve for ladies on a major pop-culture publication’s website? Interesting. And somewhat newsy. And I tried to bring a few other ideas to the table, aside from “here is a naked young man, what do you think of him,” and a few people responded with stuff that really just mimicked some of the excesses of dudely/sexist/slut-shaming talk, up to and including saying that we’d fuck him if he had a paper bag over his head or talking about how much hair is “normal” or “freaky” on a human body (answer: different people have different amounts of hair in different places). And people expressed discomfort, and I didn’t think that was unreasonable, and – since I personally aim not to make people uncomfortable in the same old ways that they’re made uncomfortable elsewhere – I tried to request that we change the course of the conversation.

    And this conversation we’re having right now is really great! So, I’m happy about that!

  25. “I want a level playing field, personally. But I don’t believe the judgment itself can, or should, go away. ”

    Those two sentences do not go together.

    How so? Do you think there is a way for us to not to respond to each other’s bodies in both positive and negative ways?

    I think expressing all of this is a whole other kettle of fish altogether, and agree with Sady that the forms of expression tend to be weird. I tie that to the general anxiety we have over desire or lack thereof.

    Sady,

    Like I said up above, I think this is also about recognizing the dark and uncomfortable side of attraction in general. I don’t really think it’s as much about feeling powerful as it is about feeling, hmmm – comfortable? Maybe that’s the word I’m looking for, I’m not entirely sure. Like, when I talk about looking at men, I’m not talking about this happy-go-lucky, mutually affirming attraction – although it can be that, in part. I’m talking about recognizing something that’s actually pretty odd – especially so when you try to reconcile it with politics – but also something that doesn’t have to be destructive as long as we don’t pathologize it and then take it out on others. Which is something that men do quite a bit, of course- “you failed to arouse me, you’re not a human being,” “you aroused me, you’re also not a human being.” Etc. To me, that ultimately speaks of serious personal issues. If you’re not comfortable with yourself, how can you ever be comfortable with others?

  26. I’ll take hairy arm pits over a hairy chest any day.

    Levi, don’t listen to those silly people. We love you just the way you are.

  27. I wonder, what’s the right emotion (mix thereof?) to feel when a double standard suddenly gets re-aimed, not to stop harassing the group unfairly targeted, but to suddenly start fucking over both groups?

    Right now I’m feeling a mixture of schadenfreude/poetic justice (“ha, now THEY can deal with this shit”), hope for positive results on the empathy factor from them as a result, sadness at more people being pressured to conform to a beauty ideal, and some degree of selfish personal satisfaction at seeing a beauty ideal I’m aesthetically fond of potentially inflicted on people who are quite obnoxious and selfish in their freedom from it (i.e. men who don’t shave thiers, but expect women to do so, and would scoff and laugh if a woman asked (either way) for equality in this matter. And then a little bit of guilt for that last part.

    Does anybody else have trouble with liking/preferring aesthetic features or types of beauty that are the result of social pressure/conditioning or double standards, and/or that are labor-intensive or uncomfortable to maintain? Is there guilt involved, over having or expressing that preference? What attempts are made to get beyond it, if any?

    I dislike body hair, as a personal preference, and there’s a part of me that wants to jump up and down with joy at the prospect of hairless bodies being as de regeur for men as they are for women,* and yet I’m aware that that’s very selfish of me, given that those types of standards ARE a pain in the ass to live up to, and are potentially serious self-esteem killers.

    Any thoughts on this?

    *also, I have some degree of suspicion that it would have to be at that level of social requirement for most heterosexual men not to ignore it because it’s too much trouble. In addition to men not being expected to live up to this specific standard, generally, it seems that men are more at liberty to eschew whatever standards they want, and still expect to get (and get) female attention.

  28. I thought we were living in the Twilight Zone with this whole gender role reversal male-objectification-unreal-perfect-beauty-standards-thing until I remembered that kissing another guy on stage is still icky and gross and what about the CHILDREN.

  29. Whenever these discussions about desire and objectification come about, I’m reminded of a conversation I once had with a feminist former friend of mine, who the ultimate rainbow-flag-happy Will-and-Grace quoting pro-queer-rights activist of DOOM until I came out to her as queer, and started occasionally expressing desire in public.

    Her: You objectify women. WORSE, some of the women you objectify fit arbitrary commodified standards of beauty that keep all of womanhood down. I recommend that you read Ariel Levy’s book, Female Chauvinist Pigs.

    Me: (Started out trying to defend the idea that desire does not necessarily = objectification, then gave up.) What the hell, I objectify women. I’m queer; it’s part of my job description.

    I don’t want to sound too angry or cynical… Ok, I recognize that our ways of expressing desire sometimes (often) reinforce existing power structures. I’ve read my Foucault and I know that sexual desire is often used as a mechanism for reinforcing existing power structures. I also know that as someone who is white, thin, conventionally attractive, etc. my privilege gives my opinion on these matters undue weight. However…

    When I first met some queer people the thing that appealed to me most about them was the way they dealt with lust. A dash of “we’re all animals, let’s just embrace the glorious messiness of sex without questioning too much where it comes from” (as Natalia said) but also a lot of “we were treated as invisible, or trash, through most of our lives; let’s embrace this playfulness, this shallowness, this frivolity, as proof that we are important; that we matter; that we don’t just deserve basic respect and rights before the law, but also happiness and love and the space to be ourselves.”

    In that sense, I think that the expression of desire, yes, even desire for a conventional packaged perception of beauty, can be at least a little bit radical. I sometimes feel alienated from straight feminist women because I feel that I am asked to repress a part of myself, something that yes, does inform not just my romantic interests but my friendships and relationship to the media and general life outlook, for the sake of some ideal that I’m not particularly interested in if it has no room for that part of me. There is room of course for the critique of existing standards and where it is and isn’t appropriate to talk about one’s tastes, but what I’m often hearing at the back of my head is this voice going: “You’re objectifying women. Quit bringing us all down!” and unfortunately, at this point, I tune out.

  30. Wow, this is a great thread, especially the discussion going on between Natalia and Sady. Well done.

    Here’s what I would like to address: “Right now I’m feeling a mixture of schadenfreude/poetic justice (”ha, now THEY can deal with this shit”), hope for positive results on the empathy factor from them as a result, sadness at more people being pressured to conform to a beauty ideal”

    The thing is, men have always had to conform to an ideal, one which I believe is as equally damaging in many ways as the one to which women have been subjected. Patriarchy hurting everyone, and all. I mean, maybe they don’t have to wax every inch of their bodies (I’m exaggerating), but that’s because the modern body, male and female, bears the burden of constantly showing difference, a difference that is constructed, stupid and good for neither men or women. So I can’t quite get behind feeling vindicated when a male body is subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that a female body undergoes, because it just doesn’t feel like progress.

  31. What Andrea said.

    This stuff has been going on for men for at least the last 20 years in the same kind of form, what we see here is just making it more obvious to those who aren’t men. This may or may not be the first time a famous man has been subjected to it, but this kind of scrutiny and disparagement feels very familiar to non-famous men.

    Also, this really does nothing to change perceptions of men’s roles: men, when it comes to sex, are just supposed to want it all the time. Women are supposed to look as if they want it but also be the gatekeepers of sex: the classic “virgin/whore” dichotomy – to do “woman” well involves looking like she wants it without looking like she wants it too much (i.e. a “skank” or a “slut”). For Levi to do “man” well in these images all he has to do is look like someone worth “doing”. That different commenters have different ideas of what that is should be no surprise, but the underlying message is the same. It may be an extra level of policing gender but it’s no kind of progress.

    And, as the OP points out, Levi is cashing on on having performed his patriarchal manliness in truly oppressive way (unplanned pregnancy and all). Compare that with the ways in which women are treated on the other end of that equation and you can see that nothing has changed. No progress here, either.

  33. Not to mention that the instances of eating disorders for men are climbing steadily, and not diminishing for women as a corollary (it’s not like the proverbial slice of pie, there’s enough to go around). This modern obsession with perfect, unattainable bodies is absolutely damaging for every single person in modern society (I would say modern Western society, but that seems to be no longer the case), and it seems to be a tidal wave that’s showing no signs of slowing down.

  34. “Does anybody else have trouble with liking/preferring aesthetic features or types of beauty that are the result of social pressure/conditioning or double standards, and/or that are labor-intensive or uncomfortable to maintain? Is there guilt involved, over having or expressing that preference? What attempts are made to get beyond it, if any?”

    Kyra, I’m pretty content with a late 18thCentury standard: Look! All the upper classes (and those who could pass, or aspire to pass, or at least aspire) wore wigs, powder, and paint, and dressed as well as they could POSSIBLY afford. I don’t have a problem with that – especially since soap is more accessible now than it was then. Women were powdered, painted and be-wigged; men were powdered, painted and be-wigged, and took great pains in designing their clothes and picking out their lace patterns. There were a lot of other inequalities; there still are now, but my preference is for a highly groomed aesthetic, male and female, regardless of who is sleeping with whom.

  35. La BellaDonna, that’s actually an early 18th century aesthetic, but I understand your point. Previous to the French Revolution, distinctions between classes were much more important than distinctions between genders. And actually, during the 18th century, it was the male nude that was depicted in art over and over again, not the female. But that’s just because the male body was thought to be the pinnacle of human perfection and the surest way to test and artist’s skill. However, it was only the woman who was expected to literally preform a toilette, meaning to make adorning herself with all of that lace and make-up a spectator activity for the man in her life.

  36. And let’s not forget that all of those cultivated beauty rituals were just a way for a literally useless 18th century aristocracy to distinguish itself from the lower classes who didn’t have access. It may have been less sexist, but it couldn’t get any more classist.

  37. SnowdropExplodes is pretty much on the money. Sady presents it initially as perplexing or surprising, but I doubt it is for anyone raised as a man.

    And of course the women react roughly the way men do, they’re being presented with a very similar situation and aren’t all that different. I don’t want to take responsibility for the cultural narrative on what makes women attractive, I want to disown it. Why shouldn’t everyone (whose opinions on attractiveness don’t precisely mirror the main cultural narrative) not want the same?

    Men judge me every time I leave the house, after all. The thing is, I judge them too, albeit more quietly.

    Which also means that women are a lot more aware of it, and all that entails. It’s easy to be totally unaware of it as a man (I’d guess especially so if your appearance is kind of middling, so that people don’t react strongly to it.)

    But I don’t know what sexual attraction to appearance without objectification is, so I don’t know anything about whether turnabout is fair play (or even partly desirable). I do know that if you spend a month administrating the Wikipedia article [[Penis]], you’ll quickly discover that every man with a webcam is pretty eager to put pictures of his penis on the internet where people’ll look. There are a lot of men looking for some objectification.

    I also know it isn’t as easy as saying “Jeez ladies, just speak up if you want to see more skin”, a lot of men will react badly to such requests. (And so long as I’m being honest, I’d probably react along the lines of “Take off, you’re a liar.” but with more cursing, and end up running away if pressed.) But is it possible there’s a happy place somewhere between where men and women reside today? Or is it some orthogonal direction?

  38. “How so? Do you think there is a way for us to not to respond to each other’s bodies in both positive and negative ways?”

    I don’t believe that you can have a level playing field -and- still engage in judgments. I’m not personally interested in creating a genuinely even playing field where sexual attraction is concerned because I’m not at all sure such a thing is possible. Human beings and their preferences are too varied. Maybe it is possible, who knows. I am all for working towards greater acceptance of varying body types, in men and women. But I’m pretty sure that you can’t have a level playing field and still hold onto your positive/negative judgments. One or the other will have to go.

  40. Faith, but that depends on the impact of the judgment, no? Right now, the impact of judgment on women is pretty disastrous, for example. But I think that if people we’re a little bit more laid back and a whole lot less sexist, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem.

  41. Given the fact that the very definition of “judgment” is “this is right, that is wrong” or “this is better, that is worse” I’d have to disagree. The impact of judgment on men is getting increasingly worse, with the rate of eating disorders increasing etc. Judgment never means acceptance, I’m afraid.

  42. Is “I (don’t) find x attractive because… ” a judgment? If it is a judgment, is it even possible to not judge?

    What i find attractive is probably influenced by movies, magazines, comics… If i talk about it, do i perpetuate existing beauty standards?

    Maybe, but so do moviegoers, magazine readers, comic fans…

  44. My take on it is that desire = something I personally feel towards another human being. Its counterpart is repulsion. I am capable of feeling both, for many reasons.

    Objectification, however, is when I expect another human being to actually *be* my desire/repulsion (and especially that immature part where I get nasty when the other human being remains the human being they always were and not just the desire/repulsion mantra I wish they would be).

    As far as feminism and judgment goes, I still think it’s early days for feminism and that many women do not know how to adequately judge the risks and benefits of heterosexuality (as practiced in a patriarchy/rape culture). I personally think it is less of a slippery slope for women to apply outdated/improper standards of objectification than it is for women to fumble through a compulsory heterosexuality that starts at the premise that women = the sexual desires of men.

  45. Andrea said And let’s not forget that all of those cultivated beauty rituals were just a way for a literally useless 18th century aristocracy to distinguish itself from the lower classes who didn’t have access. It may have been less sexist, but it couldn’t get any more classist.

    But oh! so! fun! (eyeroll) Until the heads came off that is.

    Natalia said Right now, the impact of judgment on women is pretty disastrous, for example. But I think that if people we’re a little bit more laid back and a whole lot less sexist, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem.

    We are very far away from this. I think especially young people feel that their sexual attractiveness is quite literally a survival skill, which is of course utter bullshit (gives the finger to ev psych people on general principle) but feels real. You can’t speak about ” flesh and blood vessels” and ignore the flesh and blood realities of what one’s fun, sexay, to be defended vigorously judgments do to people. We have, in fact, become much more laid back and body judgment has become worse. Time for a different solution.

  46. We have, in fact, become much more laid back

    We have?!?!

    You can’t speak about ” flesh and blood vessels” and ignore the flesh and blood realities of what one’s fun, sexay, to be defended vigorously judgments do to people.

    I couldn’t ignore the realities if I tried – considering the fact that I also live them. But I blame that on the fact that I don’t think society, American society in particular, is at all laid back. I think that’s a facade. It’s kind of like, if you look at the covers of American magazines, you might think that the United States is pretty liberal when it comes to sex… when it isn’t that liberal at all, actually.

  48. Okay, but can we all at least agree that, universally, not having a head is definitely going to make you less beautiful? 😉

    But when it comes to men, which head are we talking about? 😉

    (OK, I’ll stop)

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