Like Bees to a Flower: Attractiveness, Risk, and Collective Sexual Life in an AIDS Epidemic

Margaret Frye,Nina Gheihman

doi:10.15195/v5.a25

Margaret Frye, Nina Gheihman

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.15195/v5.a25

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Abstract

We examine how men's shared understandings of women's physical attractiveness are influenced by concerns about risk in the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic. Using 180 conversational journals—descriptions of informal conversations about sex occurring in Malawi between 1999 and 2011—we show that men deploy discourses of risk to question and undermine the status advantages enjoyed by attractive women. Men simultaneously portray attractive women as irresistibly appealing and as destructive to men. Men engage in two types of collective responses: First, men work to discipline themselves and each other, reframing attractiveness as illusory and unworthy of pursuit; and second, men endeavor to discipline attractive women themselves, portraying them as evil temptresses that must be suppressed and reasserting their masculine dominance through harassment and violence. These findings reveal how men's classifications of women as sexual objects operate as forms of symbolic violence, legitimating and naturalizing their gendered domination over women.

Highlights

We examine how men’s shared understandings of women’s physical attractiveness are influenced by concerns about risk in the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic
Drawing on a unique data set comprised of conversational journals—descriptions of informal conversations about sex over this 12-year period—we show how men collectively draw upon discourses of risk to question and intentionally undermine the status advantages enjoyed by attractive women
She was of medium height, not really fat, with breasts that stood firm; her twinkling eyes were amazing, she had a well-curved body that would have been a hit on any catwalk, and above all, she was dressed to kill. She wore a tight miniskirt, a fishtail blouse that ended above her navel, and she was brown in complexion. [My friend said] “Wow! What a beautiful creature

Summary

Introduction

We examine how men’s shared understandings of women’s physical attractiveness are influenced by concerns about risk in the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic.

Results

Conclusion