Masculinity and The Male Exhibit.

Introduction/background:
Whether its a Greek statue, Michelangelos David, an Olympian wrestler, an
advertisement for Armani by Beckham or Jockey by Dan Carter, an image of an almost-
nude athletic male carries a multiplicity of meaning and signifiers.
We live in a visually oriented culture, constantly invited to desire, to look, which is
powerfully invested in the human body as the tangible site of and sight for being and
identity, both of which modernity has structured as thoroughly sexual.
1

Fetishised by gay men for decades, the athletic, muscular male body has moved from
sports and porn movies to mainstream media.
2
Much the same like Barbie, the doll
with the impossible proportions dictating the unattainable female body, popular culture
(including advertising and pornography) prescribe the desired embodiment of the male
form. Beautiful, healthy, and young
3
has become the new male elite, obsessed with the
gymnasium and body image.
Masculinity is a performance
4
where performance signifies gender (in this case
masculinity) and its representation in media (internet, pop culture, porn, theatre,
performance, advertising, film, etc). Performative in the sense that the essence or
identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and
sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.
5
The performance
of masculinity is also constructed on external influences and actions across many
discourses that signify normative masculinity.
6
Sports plays an important role in
constructing the social roles of masculinity.
7
Wrestling, athletics, rugby, football,
boxing and many other disciplines reinforce hegemonic masculine norms by disparaging
femininity and using power [on members of the same sex] and violence to assert
dominance.
Michel Foucaults theories on sexuality offer an extensive understanding on how power
and social constructs shape our lives. Our individual performances mould our bodies
and the concept of self. The physical body in modernity is an object, and at the same
time, a target of power. In short: it is manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys,
1 Richard Leppert, Representing Girls: Modernity, Cultural Anxiety, and the Imaginary in Tobin
Siebers, (ed) The Body Aesthetic: From Fine Art to Body Modification (University of Michigan
Press, 2000). p.77
2 Mark Simpson, Sporno, Out Magazine, June 19, 2006, http://www.out.com/
entertainment/2006/06/19/sporno.
3 Michelangelo Signolrile in interview with William J. Mann, Laws of Desire: Has Our Imagery
Become Overidealized? in Dawn Atkins, ed., Looking Queer Body: Image and Identity in Lesbian,
Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities (New York: Haworth Press, 1998)
4 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,
2006).
5 ibid, p.136
6 Todd Migliaccio, Mens Friendships: Performances of Masculinity, The Journal of Mens
Studies 17, no. 3 (2009): 226+.
7 Steven J. Harvey, The Construction of Masculinity Among Male Collegiate Volleyball Players,
The Journal of Mens Studies 5, no. 2 (November 1996): 131+.
responds, becomes skillful and increases its forces.
8
On the other hand Pierre Bourdieu
sought to reveal powers connections in social life. His theory of habitus builds upon the
concept of economic capital to offer social, symbolic and cultural variants. Physical
capital, which falls under cultural capital incorporates notions of body shape, skin colour
age and of course, physical competencies/power to gain advantage. For both Foucault
and Bourdieu, the fabric of society the power relations and class relations, are both
addressed (directly or indirectly) by our physical bodies.
Along with the commodification of the male body, masculinity is shifting from aggression,
control and dominance, to the gaze and spectacle of male physique, mimicking nature.
Sportsmen much like porn stars, are show-offs, and with the pornoification of sports
through advertising media, we have eventually become producers of porn, exhibiting
ourselves offline and online, through sexting or social media.
Aims and objectives of the research:
For Georges Bataille, to appropriate one is to excrete the other. In his open letter to
Breton et al, Bataille brings in the metaphor of Marquis de Sades consumption fetish,
where Verneuil makes someone shit, he eats the turd, and then he demands that
someone eat his. The one who eats his shit vomits; he devours her puke.
9

It seems we have consumed so much shit in the form of porn and advertising,
that were now vomiting pictures of ourselves into the ether incessantly, exhibiting,
exchanging and reappropriating on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media
platforms. The nude selfie has become the product of our image-saturated culture: an
exhibitionist expression of the narcissistic nude spectacle; idealistic depictions of male
form from the pornographic or from the aggressive world of sports and advertising.
Men are becoming more and more objectified and sexualised, wanting to be looked at,
desired for their manly aesthetics.
10
My research will examine the social male physique
spectacle (online and offline). Is this a counteraction to the loss of traditional masculine
values of power and dominance? To quote Hal Foster We become locked in its logic
because spectacle both effects the loss of the real and provides us with the fetishistic
images necessary to deny or assuage this loss.
11

Objectification is traditionally aligned with the gay and female population, but the new
narcissist trend creates along with the feminine-masculine gaze; a masculine-masculine
one, which pulls it back into the gay sphere, and brings about my next question: How are
these new masculinities asserting or reclaiming themselves from homosexualisation?
Or is this the start of a new fluid sexuality with blurred boundaries between the homo/
hetero?
8 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York:
Vintage Books, 1979). p. 136
9 Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
10 Milestone, Katie, and Anneke Meyer. Gender and Popular Culture. 1 edition. (Cambridge: Polity,
2013).
11 Hal Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (New York: New Press, 1999). p. 83