naked women in ads for men-wait what?

"Nude women seem to be in their natural state; men, for some reason, merely look underssed... When is a nude a nude? When it is male" (179).

Bordo didn’t write this, Josh Ashbury from the New York magazine did, but it still disconcerts me. He propels the ideology that a woman’s body is never nude or lewd since it is precisely that, a woman’s body, able to be gazed at. Borders around the gazed female is low, all can peer in, but once that same gaze is shifted onto men, it is unnervingly sexual. This is the argument I am getting from Bordo’s piece “The Male Body”, and I agree with most of her assertions. However, I find myself in a bind when it comes to whether or not it is okay to sexualize the male body like women’s bodies have been. Why? Because there are countless articles on how objectifying and sexualizing women’s bodies is problematic, why wouldn’t the same be true for men? I think the way in which the body is presented and sexualized is what makes it difficult, especially in advertisements.

She begins her article suggesting that (heterosexual) women can be turned on by nude pictures of men just as much as (heterosexual) men are turned on by nude pictures of women. Well, obviously. Then she pushes further and states that (heterosexual) women are just learning to be voyeurs since there isn’t a lot of material out there to appeal to them. Ok, I can agree with that, though being a voyeur is a nice way of saying a gazer. Then, the kicker, she says, “Perhaps, too, heterosexual men could learn to be less uncomfortable offering themselves as “sexual objects” if they realized the pleasure women get from it” (178). Hey, be less uncomfortable because you’re pleasing me! That’s how it works, right? Right? No, being uncomfortable as a sexual object is understandable. Why? Because being objectified implies a loss of self, you become just a body (object) to be lusted and gazed at. Being comfortable as a sexual person is one thing, being an object is another. The lines between object/body is hard when it comes to ads since we don’t know the person, and therefore have to look at body posture and placement to discern consent of being sexualized. That isn’t easy.

Now, I’m not against pornography or nude pictures. I am concerned about how these pictures present themselves and influence our culture/society/norms. A beautiful nude woman laying down seductively is one thing, put a man’s hands around her neck with her feet bound, and it’s a completely different picture. This leads me to the two ads for Tom Ford that I hope show up. One is for men’s cologne, though you wouldn’t know it since it’s just of a nude woman with a bottle in front of her vagina. The second is for menswear-- Lord (Byron) forbid they actually say clothes or fashion—with a naked sunglasses-wearing woman standing next to a fully clothed man with a beer in his hand. According to Bordo, this ad would probably lose money because it doesn’t satisfy dual marketing: “Dual marketing used to require a delicate balancing act, as advertisers tried to speak to gays “in a way that the straight consumer will not notice” (183). Firstly, understanding what is considered dual requires knowing what the gay/straight/fluid sexuality market even wants. But according to Bordo’s other descriptions of what the straight male audience (and presumably anyone attracted to women) wants, masculinity/i-love-vagina-see-I-am-with-a-naked-woman is it. And this ad, can be perceived as just that. The power dynamic between the woman and man is profoundly unbalanced. This woman can be anyone; her face and body are not facing the camera directly, while his is. And, she is naked and he’s not! Where the hell are they going/doing? What kind of party is this? Just because she has a smoke in one picture and is grabbing his crotch in another doesn’t mean she has control. Her head is thrust back as she exhales; she holds onto a wall for support as she crotch-grabs. Paired in that way, she is just an accessory to him. Ads like these make the first quote of this blog true; nude women=of course, just don’t look in control, nude man=hell no, put clothes on and give the camera your best face-off.

As for the cologne...I don't even know how to approach it. Since it is placed in front of the vagina, I'm going to play literal-consumer and assume it's intentions are to mask the smell of women's genitalia. That would be literal. Or, grab this cologne from her legs and you've got it all. Either way, placement makes it seem as if there is a correlation between a woman's vagina (sexual) and men's cologne (product). Buy me and you get her. Buy me and you'll smell like her? Ha, the possibilities are endless.

Help me out here, do you see what I see?