Did somebody order a large man?

[alias_sqbr]

On metafandom there's a rather flawed but still interesting post The Female Gaze (NSFW! Contains porn of guys) In the comments there's a link to men_in_full (SFW) which celebrates overweight men.

Looking at that I thought "Well that's fine I guess though there's plenty of positive images of overweight men getting hot chicks in romantic comedies etc". But thinking about it, the goal there is to give men someone to relate to, there's never any sense that the audience is expected to find the man attractive(*). You do sometimes have "female gaze" scenes(**) where the man's body is shown to be attractive but in such cases the man is pretty much always fairly conventionally attractive: 25-40, well built, not-too-skinny-or-fat etc.

I mean personally I find it all a bit hard to judge since my taste in men is very specific so most "attractive" guys don't do much for me anyway, but I do think about men's body image issues sometimes. I get the feeling the pressure not to be fat isn't anywhere near as intense (though it definitely still exists, especially once you get above "a little chubby") but the pressure not to be too thin/unmuscled is more intense.

Anyway, not very deep thoughts, but thought I'd get them down before I forget.

EDIT: ithiliana's post got me thinking some more, and as outfox ppints out, it's all m/m which is obviously only a subset of what women find attractive. That guy is making a m/m for women magazine so that makes sense in this context, but I think it would also be interesting to explore the female/male POV on m/f and f/f.

(*)The fact that the hot chick is supposed to is a whole nother thing. Obviously (good) women just care about personality. And anyway, female character's motivations don't have to make any sense, they just exist as a male fantasy *mutters*
(**)Plus the odd "gay man's gaze" in Queer as Folk etc, which has different rules afaict. I'm not sure which was in "Casino Royale" :)

Comments

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

I found that post odd because the OP simplified the meaning of the male gaze - he seemed more suggesting why his potential market might like his product . He also assumes that women who are interested in fandom are interested in "gay" sex voyuerism.

I'd call fandom queer, maybe feminist, definitely playing with gazes...but it's not necessarily gay at all. Nor is there any reason that women should be seen as having "gay" interests in viewing man/man erotica. Straight men who watch Live 'Lesbian' Sex vidoes don't think of their desires as lesbionic.

The wording just bothered me, like people can't even think about women desiring men without coming back to using the gay as a proxy...like hetero-female gazes are meant to be to passive to imagine or something.

Anyway, fandoms' major advantage over gay porn mags imo is that it's nowhere near as passively voyueristic or accepting of those heteronormative ideas about desire as commercial porn.


*plus using Timelords & Hobbits rather than real people removes many ethical concerns.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

p.s. The "dazzle" scene in Twilight was, imo, the most male body self esteem crushing fantasy in popular culture for ages. I felt bad for teen boys with acne just reading it. ..it's just soooo over the top objectifying.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

There was a thing in the paper about beer goggles, and them affecting women much more than they affect men. I found it interesting in comparison to this post.

[alias_sqbr]

That is interesting. I have no comment beyond that, but shall let it sit in my brain to be pondered :)

[alias_sqbr]

I found that post odd because the OP simplified the meaning of the male gaze - he seemed more suggesting why his potential market might like his product . He also assumes that women who are interested in fandom are interested in "gay" sex voyuerism.

Yes. I can understand why he focussed on m/m imagery since that's his area, but obviously the female gaze covers a lot more than that!

Hmm. Your comments have given me food for thought but I have no useful response to them beyond "hmm" :)