The quest for masculine to-be-looked-at-ness?

Abstract

This chapter looks at the intricate ways in which heterosexual, middleclass, white, cisgender men on the one hand attempt to construct a sufficiently attractive and sexualized public persona, but on the other hand attempt not to turn themselves into sexual objects. This refusal to self-objectify or self-sexualize, and the ensuing condemnation of those who do, is a way of preserving the dominant gender order, wherein heterosexual men are constructed as dominant and active subjects and others—most clearly women—as subordinate passive objects. This cultural construction of women as objects and men as subjects is at the heart of the patriarchal order as it is currently constructed in Western cultures. The justification for looking at this issue now is that we might currently be witnessing a “crack in the phallocentric order” where men are increasingly constructed as objects of desire in popular culture and marketing communication. This inevitably leads to re-negotiations of how masculinity is constructed, as men are anxious not to lose their hierarchical positions within the current patriarchal system.