I’m not even sure why this made the review. Nothing new about men allowed to be human an “not perfect” in media.

I saw that scene in the trailer—she isn’t revolted, she’s astonished and a bit intimidated.  Just like a lot of us would be.

Or maybe the context is REALLY different in the movie, I dunno.

Huh, so shlubby man, hot woman stereotypes and casting assumptions are apparently inescapable to hacks even when your movie stars an actual buff and hot male lead. That’s a pretty impressive win for hacks everywhere.

Yeah, considering that movies that actually thought “hey, let’s give the straight women in the audience some eye candy” has been a relatively recent development, I’m amazed at how threatening things like Twilight or Thor must have been that the male writers of this were so threatened that they needed to include this line.

Oh no, women are starting to expect a little titilation, must destroy it before it grows. Girls, this equals ew, expect only Homer Simpson, please god, my insecure maleness will be destroyed if I have to write in the briefest acknowledgments of straight female sexuality.

With the caveat that I don’t know much about Stone’s character in the movie, the writers probably think that they’re demonstrating the character’s inherent decency by portraying her as someone who’s got such great control of her sexual urges, that she thinks critically when confronted with hotness.  Which is, of course, the problem: she’s good, so that means she doesn’t want to have sex.  Or at least not mindless OH MY GOD YOU’RE SO HOT I’VE GOT TO HAVE YOU NOW sex.  Only dudes want that.  Mars, Venus.  Boring, old.

I think Denby is totally misreading the scene. There is no revulsion. Just the appreciation of a perfect body via a very millennial comment.

Out of curiosity, have you seen the movie? I was totally appalled by the way the teenaged son/teenaged babysitter storyline resolved, and I have been hoping for some smart feminist commentary on it.

(Sorry, that was directed at Amanda, though I’d love to hear thoughts from others as well. I don’t want to give the ending away to anyone who might see it, but it’s really kind of disturbing.)

Yeah, considering that movies that actually thought “hey, let’s give the straight women in the audience some eye candy” has been a relatively recent development

Rudolph Valentino might disagree with you.

Although in deference to your point, I feel like the dearth of male sex symbols in modern times might be part of the anti-feminist blowback we’ve been seeing since the 70s or 80s. The 20s and 30s experienced a sort of miniature sexual revolution, one that gets ignored because people associate that term with the 60s. Nowadays Hollywood has less legitimate reason than ever to believe that women aren’t major consumers of media, and that they don’t find men sexy, but it seems to really *want* to believe that. And shit like this is the result.

Punditus Maximus is right - if the trailer’s any indication, Denby has completely misread the scene.

Denby is just seeing what he wants to see, in a really really sad and transparent way. Do some sit-ups if you’re so depressed about your abs, man!

It’s weird not only that he would misread the scene but that he would misread it and then react positively. If the character had reacted with revulsion, I would have interpreted it as yet another female character being turned off by the idea that a man puts effort into his appearance, a chance for the movie to remind us that Real Men don’t do that (well, getting buff, to an extent, but not other stuff). If anything, that puts more pressure on men to walk the tightrope of gender expression perfectly, not less.

At least Denby can hold tight to his dream that he stands a chance with a hottie like Stone. Which strikes me as the same thing as the girls holding up “Marry Me Harry” signs along the royal wedding parade route. Which is making me smile.

Maybe a bit OT, but does anyone know good articles on “masculine physical perfection” and the threat it poses to men especially but maybe to women as well? I usually only find crap about how it’s okay to objectify women in comics because the men are big and beefy and “perfect” too. The male gaze articles I’ve read just say men can’t abide looking at or being looked at by men, and that men get anxiety when looking at any man.

As a person who draws bodies this is a topic that’s been eating me, and while it’s easy to find articles about the depiction of women, I haven’t run into similar with regards to the male form.

Also is playgirl good source material for finding men who are bodied in a way that many heterosexual women would find attractive.

Ugh, question mark on the last sentence.

I actually wanted to mention that I REALLY liked the fact that Thor made no bones about having its lead be sexually attractive to women.  So did my gf. 

“the dearth of male sex symbols in modern times”

What?  George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Robert Pattinson, and Johnny Depp are chopped liver?  It’s true, Hollywood often pairs an older or less attractive man with a stunning starlet, but there has always been a place for sexy men, and the 1970s and 80s had their sex symbols: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, etc.  The volleyball scene in Top Gun (1986) is as obvious display of male bodies as I’ve ever seen.   

Hollywood has always been happy to give the ladies something yummy to look at (the storylines are a different matter).

This reminds me of stuff Amanda posted on earlier, about the whole buy/sell dynamic of the patriarchy and the notion that women exist to attract and men exist to be attracted.  I have not and will not see the movie in question, so I have no idea what the intent or execution of the scene is trying to say.  I can say that the notion of physical ‘perfection’ is so problematic that using it as a metric for anything—including sexual attraction—is a shallow and lazy choice and should place the motivation of the author under suspicion.

#16 Kit-kat,

I don’t know, that list doesn’t look that long compared to the one for attractive/eye-candy female stars. And when you think about the movies themselves, the objectification level is completely different - remember how big a deal it was when Brad Pitt was in Thelma and Louise and showed off his body for a few minutes, compared to oh-so-many scenes in action, drama, comedy movies of hot women’s bodies which are just seen as normal.

Well, it’s hardly a complete list, and I wasn’t equating “eye candy” with “sex symbol.”  There are lots of interchangeable good-looking young guys who star in a few movies but who will never have a real career; a sex symbol is someone who has status beyond that—they become a kind of cultural touchstone.  There are tons of pretty actresses, but not as many real Catharine Zeta-Jones level sex symbols.  The point is that Hollywood has been making movies with good-looking men intended to appeal to women since Hollywood has been making movies, and that the fact that women find them exceptionally attractive has been propelling some of them to sex symbol star status since then, too.

I saw the movie. (And liked it for the most part.)
I agree that Denby misread the scene.  It’s pretty clear that Stone’s character really liked how Gosling looked with his shirt off. Later in that scene he asks if he can put his shirt back on and she says no.

Kit-Kat

Yeah, I think the point wasn’t so much: ugly guys only. I mean, this is Hollywood where the “Entire World is Beautiful” as the TVTropes goes (no link for people’s sanities). More that in general, men aren’t treated as an object of direct desire by the movie. Sure, the character is supposed to find them sexy, but we don’t get slow-motion undressing lingering on abs and asses as often as we get the slow-motion stripping of women. When something like the relatively tame shirtless scene in Thor is worthy of note, there is a major inequality and probably explains half of the reasons that movies like Twilight are succeeding as if in a vacuum.

I think also, the bigger problem of “shlubby guy only” is in the comedy genre specifically. In comedy after comedy and sitcom after sitcom, unattractive funny man is paired with emotional cipher hot female and it’s well understood that she’s the eye-candy and reward for the male lead to partake of in some part of the movie. And the reverse rarely occurs where “Hollywood Ugly” women get the super hot man with lingering pans on his body.

And the reverse rarely occurs where “Hollywood Ugly” women get the super hot man with lingering pans on his body.

I’ve often wanted to make a slasher film where only the promiscuous characters survive. A reverse-rom-com is an equally good idea.

What?  George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Robert Pattinson, and Johnny Depp are chopped liver?

How many of these are presented as handsome and distinguished, rather than sexy?  The focus is more on their faces than bodies, with the exception of Brad Pitt.  And even there, you don’t see him shirtless nearly as often as you would see female stars in bikinis.

And half of those men are so old that a woman in his position would be damn lucky to even be cast as a hilarious grandma in a B-movie comedy film.  Just the simple fact that you even include someone Clooney’s age (who doesn’t even dye his gray hair) should be enough to show you that the male gaze is much more important than the female gaze.

@R.T., that’s honestly why I just don’t buy comics any more, ever.  I can’t deal with the art.

@R.T. Check out Filament magazine from Britain.  I think the website is www.filamentmag.com But you should be able to google it.  It’s a nudie magazine for women, and it features different body types. 

Playgirl isn’t for women, it’s for gay men who are afraid of erect penises, as far as I can tell.

The focus is more on their faces than bodies, with the exception of Brad Pitt.

I’d say Craig gets a lot of attention for his body too.

Seems I’m in a minority of straight women who feel no need to look at beefcake.  When I see a random, ripped guy with his shirt off I don’t think, “I’d tap that,” my first reaction is “Gymbo!” Or I might think, “I don’t know him.  How does he vote?  What kind of music does he listen to?”  Not that it displeases me when a new friend takes off his shirt to reveal some muscles, but that’s not what got him into a position to get naked with me, and lacking muscle definition is by no means a dealbreaker.  Maybe I’m just inadequate as a sexual consumer.  But I’d like to see less sexual objectification either way.  Equal-opportunity objectification does nothing for me.  It feels patronizing, all “and nowww… a little something for the laydeez!”  No, seriously.  No, thank you.

So, to bring it back to this movie review: it would be nice if women could catch a little break from objectification too, but that doesn’t mean the men don’t deserve it.  Even if Denby did get it wrong, I don’t have a problem with what he wrote.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody came by to drop a “you guys are all shallow, I only see INNER BEAUTY” comment.

I think Cerberus has the important point: Sure, the guys are gorgeous (or carefully presented as such if they’re getting older) but there’s not as much explicit ogling of them by the women in their movies. Albeit part of that is that the women in their movies don’t have a lot of lines anyway…

I’m not saying that the male gaze hasn’t predominated in film.  I’m just saying that there are, and have always been, cinematic male sex symbols.  Some of them have different public personas, but there are always male actors who become or become more famous because women find them sexy.  And some of them are presented as overtly sexy—hello, Daniel Craig coming out of the ocean in his little French swim shorts in Casino Royale!     

Back to the OP, I’m not sure it’s a one-way street.  Women are supposed to be perfect, yes, but they also are not supposed to be vain or to put too much effort into it—they are supposed to keep all the work of maintaing their looks hidden, and eat hamburgers and drink beer.  If they invest too much effort into their looks, they too are seen as shallow.  It’s all supposed to be “natural” and “effortless,” even as their natural bodies are mocked as hairy and smelly and in need of work.  Really, no one can win, although perhaps for different reasons.

Really, no one can win, although perhaps for different reasons.

Well it’s always seemed to me that many of the social standards placed on women are designed so that most women will fail them, so that women can be told that they’re inadequate and should count themselves lucky to have won any male attention at all, and thus they shouldn’t complain when their boyfriend/husband cheats or hits them or whatever.

Seems I’m in a minority of straight women who feel no need to look at beefcake.

Well, what do you know?  It’s almost like women are individual people with different preferences!  I don’t recognize your name so maybe you’re just new here and don’t really understand how this whole feminism thing works.

I always figured the chix dig chiseled abs meme was like the dudes dig big boobs meme: some liked them, some didn’t, while it was a turnoff for others.

uh: some liked them, some didn’t care either way, while it was a turnoff for others.

Playgirl isn’t for women, it’s for gay men who are afraid of erect penises, as far as I can tell.
Comment #25: GeekGirlsRule on 08/09 at 07:24 PM

Er, no.  It’s as much for straight women as gay men, and the lack of pictures of erect penises is the result of prudish laws in many US states.  You see, pictures of erect penises will cause the downfall of civilization.

Im genuinely curious which states have laws prohibiting the sale of pictures of erect penises. I like to keep track of asinine sex laws, and this particular prohibition is not ringing a bell.

The female gaze and the gay gaze have always been irrevocably mixed for the Misters 100% Heterosexual. There’s just no comfort in their own body for such people. They may wax their chests, but only for definition. They may wear tiny underpants, but it’s to show things off, but not THAT. And they may hang around in gyms posing and posing for hours and hours without any women around, but it’s rude to imply anything. It’s training, not being a peacock.

There’s something to the line about photoshop that is a bit of the other side of that. Her implication that it’s okay not to look like that is one thing, but that implied meaning is undermined by her desire to look. Women also look, and that’s not exactly a state secret. But like all romantic comedy bullshit, it’s easy to misread just as the stupid story suggests. Yeah, of course she wants someone who doesn’t spend time away from her at a gym. Right. I don’t know if that reviewer is being intentionally dim or the writers really pulled a fast one and got something subversive into a mainstream piece of dreck, but I know where to put my bet.

I’ll put everything on “That’s the scene to put in the previews so it will suck in the most women.” Unlike Thor, this movie wasn’t held back by a need not to make teenage boys feel as if their masculinity was being questioned. This kind of movie requires the stroking of older men’s egos. And based on Denby’s read of that scene, it has succeeded.

Im genuinely curious which states have laws prohibiting the sale of pictures of erect penises. I like to keep track of asinine sex laws, and this particular prohibition is not ringing a bell.

Well, if it’s anything like here in the UK, there probably aren’t any specific laws which explicitly ban pictures of erect penises, just vaguely-worded laws which ban “obscenity” and a bunch of legal precedents finding that pictures of erect penises are regarded as obscene according to “prevailing community standards”.

@28 @32 This is why I rarely comment here.  Everyone I know outgrew acting like that the summer before high school.  Clearly I don’t know the right people.

I love movies with Ryan Reynolds in them.  Not because he is some awesome actor, but because there are always at least two long, lingering shots of his fucking AMAZING and RIPPED body.

He’s the only actor I can think of whose movies do that.  I am almost certain he has it in his contract, which I don’t blame him.  It takes a lot of work to get ripped like that.

If anybody needs a long moment with an amazing male body, I give you this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVNOnPyvIU&feature=player_embedded

I’d heard that penises are only allowed to be depicted in the UK if they are droopier than the Mull of Kintyre. This turns out to be out of date, but perhaps not entirely apocryphal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mull_of_Kintyre_test

Now we are being told we are both immature and shallow if we notice or comment on men’s bodies in even fairly mild and delicate terms (Flora @ 40); nice. 
bnanacat, flora comments here on occation, though not enought to get a real feel for personality or pov though, until maybe we see that here.

I don’t see why Flora can’t say what she wants and express her feelings without being taken up so sharply. However, I don’t think we can talk about “the female gaze” and “the male gaze” without also talking about cultural training in overt and covert attention to sexualized images. In other words, I don’t think Flora gets to claim that “normal” or “grown up” or “mature” women unambiguously like one thing while flibbertigibbets like another. And nor does Bananacat (whose postings I like on many issues) get to claim that she is being silenced by hearing from another POV.  Lust for a zipless fuck is always going to look different from lust for a potential full time mate, as is a given person’s ability to enjoy or express those different moments of lust in public (say, at a movie showing in a theater as opposed to at home).

Also, I’d like to point out that the famous Daniel Craig shorts shot was agressively marketed, with the Star giving it his OK, as appealing to his gay fan base.  I’m not going to argue that it didn’t also appeal to women—in fact, the fact that it was popularly supposed to appeal to women was used to “protect” Craig’s heterosexual public image (I mean, he is het, but he also has a heterosexual image to market).  But Craig’s willingness to admit that his body in that movie was going to be used as erotic pin up by the gay viewer was thrown down defiantly and deliberately to the public as a sign that Craig was a consumate professional actor willing to do anything to build up a fan base.

The notion that women don’t like, or don’t demand, beefcake shots or erotic images of male stars has been used to protect older male stars for years.  The amount of work, and sheer natural luck, that it would take for male stars to maintain the perfect, semi nude shot worthy, body through picture after picture would be crushing. As it is for female leads.  Don’t underestimate the unwillingness of male leads to allow younger men to cruise through “their” movie stripped to the buff in the kinds of throw away roles often offered to younger female actors.  They can’t take the competition.

aimai

Perhaps there seem to be fewer male sex symbols in Hollywood than female because the turnover rate for the former is lower.  Several of the guys listed are over 40, for example, but the “allowed” shelf life of an actress, particularly one who isn’t a big star, is lower.
That was messed up to refer to people as having a “shelf life”.

@28 @32 This is why I rarely comment here.  Everyone I know outgrew acting like that the summer before high school.  Clearly I don’t know the right people.

Well from the looks of it you rarely comment here because the other commenters don’t pat you on the back enough for your self-righteousness.

“Well from the looks of it you rarely comment here because the other commenters don’t pat you on the back enough for your self-righteousness.”

Or, more accurately, because she knows she’ll be blasted in the face by gratuitous nastiness if she actually tries to add her own point of view to the discussion. 

This looks like a very good film to me and I’m looking forward to seeing it.  Looks formulaic (it’s a rom-com, after all) but not unimaginative or lazy at all. 

I have my own idea what might be going on in the “take off your shirt” scene, but personally I’m going to wait until I’ve seen the film to weigh in.

aimai @ 43,
since flora did, in fact, suggest that she likes one thing and those who are different are shallow, and followed up when that was pointed out as them also being immature, and banancat did not in fact claim she was bing silenced (that might be Triplanetary @  28, though I took it as point taking her to task for the suggestion that anyone who looks is shallow), why are You taking bananacat up so sharply?
I absolutely agree with your 3rd paragraph.  The power structure in movie business is such that male actors threatened by the hot new version can keep out the competition and the female ones can’t.

Ah, the tone argument.  The last resort of people who can’t handle disagreement.  At least we got a fun flounce out of it.

And nor does Bananacat (whose postings I like on many issues) get to claim that she is being silenced by hearing from another POV.

Show me the specific words where I actually made the claim that I am being silenced.

In re: unattractive men with hot starlets, in Next 45-ish schlubby Nicholas Cage was 28-year-old hottie Jessica Biel’s love interest.  They couldn’t have him hook up with Julianne Moore (also in that dreadful movie), even though she’s a very beautiful woman, because she’s around the same age as good ol’ Nick and that would be just gross.

Same thing in “Drive Angry” where Cage is paired off with 25-year-old Amber Heard. 

You just don’t see movies where ordinary-looking middle-aged women bang hot men 20 years their junior.

But that must be because ordinary middle-aged women don’t enjoy the fantasy of banging hot young men, not any kind of sexism ingrained in our culture or in Hollywood. Right? Right?

You see, pictures of erect penises will cause the downfall of civilization.

You mock, but have you BEEN on craigslist? It kind of is like Thunderdome in there. And maybe it’s just correlation and not causation, but…

@Well, what?  Ooooh, gotta go check it out, ‘cause no, I didn’t know.

And I matured back in the 60’s and early 70’s, when cultural messages agreed that my sexual responses either didn’t exist or were “wrong” for my sex. I always responded strongly to visuals. I loved hard porn that catered to my needs. I fought drives that made me want to jump on the nearest beautiful man. These were supposedly not typically female. Ha! Then I went to college, and things got much better.

I see this now as wishful thinking on the part of many men, as their primary goal with women is to control and use female sexuality for their own purposes.

Just mho and random thoughts.

Comment #25: GeekGirlsRule

Thanks for the site. It looks interesting.

I saw the movie too:  Denby’s interpretation that Hannah is “revolted” is definitely a mis-read, as are some of the interpretations based only the trailer.

(Spoilers) For background leading up to the “photoshopped” comment, Hannah is a smart, confident, self-possessed law school grad who completely shuts down The Hot Guy In the Bar’s attempted pick-up of her because she sees right through his flirty, practiced, player game. Much later, circumstances drive now-lawyer Hannah to go after The Hot Guy for some random sex.  She marches in, finds and kisses him, asks if he’s still interested, and pulls him out of the bar to go to his place.  She knows exactly what she’s getting into, and is in control of the situation.  When she asks him to remove his shirt, she isn’t revolted, as Denby wrote (wished?), she’s using sarcasm.  (Mr. Denby, anyone who’s revolted would say “Yes” when someone with a revolting body part asks to cover it up.  She says “No,” and the object of her gaze is fine with that.)  She is definitely still interested in him and his abs as the scene unfolds.  The whole scene shows her having power because she knows what she wants to do, she knows The Hot Guy’s game, and despite being self-admittedly nervous and a little drunk, she capably handles both the player and herself (they both act like grown ups!).  The scene starts sexy, goes funny, ends sweetly (and without any sex).  Though there is at least one cringe-worthy line from her, overall the scene works well to present Hannah as a better-than-average romcom character in a better-than-average romcom.

@ #6 Andrea24:  You’re so right.  The wrap-up of the unrequited crush storyline almost negated every feminist gain that Hannah’s and Emily’s plot lines had made.  It was definitely the 13-year-old boy that lives inside the writers’ heads that came up with that resolution.

You know what’s sad? I think it’s nice to hear that some women don’t care for beefcake, even if I know intellectually that there’s no valid reason to object to those who do. Maybe I just have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality at times, but it can hurt to look at some hot Hollywood hunk and know that I don’t measure up to that standard at all, and I can at some level appreciate the body image messages and depictions that women face in our culture. It gets to the point that I can feel depressed when I don’t measure up even to gay guys or attractive women, as though I’m in competition with them. Maybe the real problem is the lack of feeling like someone else is really attracted to me at a physical level, and then seeing messages that reinforce beliefs about how essential that is and how perfect one must be to deserve it. I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m mansplaining, but maybe I’m just manquestioning? Sorry if I am.

You are “poor-meing”. 
With the far lower number of hot guys and far less social acceptability of women talking about their appreciation for seeing such, you are at no level appreciating what women are subject to in just ordinary interaction, much less romantic interaction.  Sorry to be blunt, but you just aren’t.

Maybe it comes from having a background in the arts where one is trained to understand how bodies look the way that they do, but does anyone else look at a well cut woman or man, especially bodybuilders, and go straight to thinking about all the work it takes to maintain a body to look like that?

Because what’s presented as a “perfect” body in this culture is something that is, I hesitate to say, artificial, but something that needs specific training to create, whereas people who are strong and cut from labor have an entirely different look to their bodies. Look especially at strongperson competitions, these competitors look more like they may be overweight with thick midsections an large but relatively un-toned arms and legs, but it’s just the look resultant from that kind of training.

RT,
If you are talking about extreme body sculpting, then yes I do.  If you mean ripped/worked out to lean definition, no that would be 3rd or 4th thought, though typically I find people who put that much work and/or self-denile into it either self-absorbed or insecure and so sometimes unpleasant to be in company for long periods.  That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the view, just that I would hesitate to offer to share something like, say, an ice cream sundae with them.

I mean going to the gym too and getting the lean ripped look too, but it’s most likely me who thinks that way when presented with a person’s body to view.

It’s like looking at a leg and noticing the way the leg looks just above the knee because you know there is a small fat deposit there that has more effect on the look of the surface than the underlying muscles and bone do at that spot. It becomes automatic, like breathing with training and lots of practice and study.