« Now, maybe Beckham and Jonathan and the guys on « Strip Search » represent a new, more flexible form of masculinity that’s wild and free and unafraid of seeming gay. Maybe the smoothie can show off and enjoy being objectified without feeling self-conscious about it. Women have had far more freedom to express themselves or hide in masculine clothing for years; it makes sense that men would follow suit eventually. We should probably applaud the newfound freedom and the joy these young men take in being objectified; we should probably stand up and cheer when these shiny boy toys shake their asses and pout like Britney; we should encourage them to dress with flair and enjoy those spa treatments and dream their big Chippendale’s-style dreams.<\/p>\n
We should, but we can’t. Because these men might be looking for visual perfection, but we’re not. There’s just something a little bit unappealing about men who spend far more time on themselves than most women do. When the previews for next week’s « Average Joe » flashed an invasion of blond ab monkeys in matching red sports cars, flashing white teeth and spiked hair and shiny, tan six-packs, all I could think was, Where’s the variety? Who wants a bunch of pumped-up clones with the exact same body type?<\/p>\n
And what’s so wrong with a little chest hair, anyway? »<\/p>\n
From Meet the Smoothies<\/a>, by Heather Havrilesky in Salon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" « Now, maybe Beckham and Jonathan and the guys on « Strip Search » represent a new, more flexible form of masculinity that’s wild and free and unafraid of seeming gay. Maybe the smoothie can show off and enjoy being objectified without feeling self-conscious about it. Women have had far more freedom to express themselves… Continue reading A more flexible form of masculinity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}