The Male Body

I read about half the chapters in Susan Bordo's The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. I'm very excited about using her ideas in my class. Her writing is "accessible" -- I hate using that patronizing word, apt though it is in many cases. She explores how the male body is a signifier of power and dominance and just as much as female bodies a site where gender is written and expressed. One chapter that was particularly interesting to me addresses the phallus -- the metaphorical representation of the penis and male power. She also talks a lot about the contradictory ideals that constrain men and the double standards that effect them. The book kind of exhausts its subject matter without being too broad.