I was watching a program on the history channel about sex in ancient egypt and every time they had to have a bumper or some scene to show while a talking head was explaining an idea it was always a naked woman shot with the shadows. Not once was there a nude or even suggestive man.

I really wonder if future generations are going to think that it was only women who had sex in our times and that men were forced into it sometimes.

I hate the fact that even many straight women are taught that LUST and SEXY are in the form of a woman and not that of the male body.

Also note that naked guys are considered to be "funny" or "crude," while naked women are seen as erotic, sexy. It's just stupid.

I hate Suicide Girls... it's dumb that there are no Suicide Boys for females to enjoy.

Great post! When I was a teenager, I sometimes felt ashamed for harboring lustful thoughts - since, as a woman, I wasn't really supposed to have them. Even today, I'm more likely to find erotic stories (which place an emphasis on emotion along with sexuality) to be sexy as opposed to pictures of naked or scantily clad men, because it's hard to accept that, as a woman, my sexual gaze is valid.

This reminds me of how when Lust as a sin is personified (for instance in the manga and anime Fullmetal Alchemist) it's always a woman, even though in mythology you also had male incubi along with succubi.

I've found as a lesbian that pictures of scantily clad women don't do anything for me, but I can't tell if that's because as a woman the female body isn't a mystery or of I'm just so desensitized to it that there's nothing exciting about it. A woman in a three piece suit, on the other hand...

YES. It is for this reason that I always correct someone when they say "Well, sex sells." Only a *particular* kind of sex sells...the kind that men want.

Another interesting aspect of this ad is the way the Brazilian woman is perceived in the media. Cachaca is a Brazilian alcohol so OF COURSE they show a woman with a bikini line and even a Brazilian bikini wax.

One thing that always bothered me about the film Seven was the way Lust was handled.

In the other sins (with the exception of the last), the one "guilty" of the sin was the one who was tormented and (most often) died.

However, in Lust, it was the hooker who bore the punishment and the John who escaped without physical torment and alive.

It always seemed to me as if the serial killer was putting equal (or even greater) blame on the hooker for "inciting" lust.

Jenna, I also really didn't like that either.

The movie took the one "sin" related to sex, and made sure to portray a very extreme sexual violence against a female. Movies like to portray sexualized violence against women, don't you know it's "edgy"?

Yawn. If it wasn't, you know, EVERYWHERE, maybe we could consider it "edgy".

i guess the question is then, what looks sexy to a woman? my guess is that women seem to be more interested in the context of a body, the personality associated with it, than just a body itself. maybe i'm extrapolating too far but as rosemary mentioned above the three piece suit, or whatever article of clothing on an attractive body, is more likely to incite lust than a bare ass because it says something about someone's character. i agree that "suicide boys" would be great (OMG GREAT) but i think part of the appeal of suicide girls is that they're framed in the context of a personality. they aren't interchangeable parts, they're individual, and that makes them more attractive. I've heard that while most porn is made by men, most sexually explicit fan fics are written by women. i think girl porn is more about character. i'm just not all that interested in naked pictures of strangers and i don't think that's necessarily an issue of conditioning. my first experience of erotica was a book of boris vallejo paintings followed by michelangelo, which i think gave me a pretty even handed look at sexy naked people who i found almost universally uninteresting. i'm not saying that conditioning has nothing to do with it or that women are uninterested in naked strangers, per se, just that the tendency may be more toward character than physique.

I find this dynamic interesting when played out in my art classes. Drawing a nude woman in a suggestive pose is rather passe, but drawing a nude man (and god forbid, actually showing a PENIS) is somehow dangerous or crude and the offending image is much less likely to be hung up in one of the forever-rotating gallery halls, especially during Parent Weekend.

It's also interesting that this dynamic seems to be the exact opposite in my biology classes where all of the anatomical diagrams are illustrations of nude males.

I suppose the male body is the default in science or any other academic pursuit, but when it comes to art, the female form is somehow more 'pleasing' to study and makes for better decorations in the halls next to our obviously default male anatomical sculpture dummies...

This is a great post--I was just having a conversation with a friend recently about the phrase "sex sells" and I was trying to explain that sex =/= women's bodies, but he didn't quite get it. I'm going to send him this link; maybe seeing it in a slightly different context will make it clearer.

Just from conversations with my wife, we both agree that in general the nude female form is, from an aesthetic standpoint, much more pleasing than the male form. Male genitals just look kind of silly.

We did both agree that shirtless men can look attractive, though, and I think you see quite a bit of that aesthetic in marketing and other media. Penises just look funny.

I think there is a bit of a societal role-play going on here, as well, in that in a "sinful" or "sexy" context, the change that is made is for a woman to be acting seductive. There is an implicit assumption in our culture that any and every man in the room is one seductive gaze away from ripping off his clothing and going to it in a bathroom stall. All men are assumed to want sex, as much of it as they can get, whenever they can get, where women are assumed to need convincing. The degree to which this is or is not true can be argued separately, but what is important is that a woman who actively seeks sex is seen as bucking this trend and therefore something unusual, exotic, and sexy. Whereas a man who wants sex is... just a man.

Mike: how much of you and your wife's perspective of the nude male form comes from socialization, though?

I don't think male genitals look silly at all. I do think that we are socilized, however, to think that it's silly to sexually objectify men.

"Just from conversations with my wife, we both agree that in general the nude female form is, from an aesthetic standpoint, much more pleasing than the male form. Male genitals just look kind of silly."

I am not going to argue anyone out of what they claim they like as an INDIVUDUAL, but please. I have heard this argument so many times - oh the reason we see women's boobs all over coffee shops but you'll never see cock-n-balls is because womens bodies are "SO MUCH MORE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING". Talk about a male heterosexist gaze!

Please excuse the crudeness of my language. ;-)

If we're talking personal preferences, I don't think women's bodies are more aesthetically pleasing then men's, and my husband doesn't either.

I've heard that a million times as well. All it takes is a look at another culture or another time in history to see that this isn't universal.

Case in point: Ancient Greece - particularly the practice of exercising nude (with optional body oil..) to encourage appreciation of the male form. Meanwhile, women's bodies were described as "natural mutilation"...!!

I do think men's genitals look silly, but to be fair I also think women's genitals look silly as well- and I'm bisexual.
I think it also might be worth pointing out, in the context of this discussion, that what we find attractive in another person's genitals is just as much swayed by our culture as anything else is- which is why there exist operations to remove a woman's outer labia or lighten the color of the skin around her vagina to make it 'more pleasing', and why you almost never see a representation of a penis with a foreskin unless it's part of a discussion of foreskins. That's without going into the whole issue of size, how it moves, etc.

A while ago I found a website that the readers of this blog might be interested in: A gallery of real, everyday men's erect penises (in a non-sexual context) to show the huge variety of totally normal forms that a penis can take, as opposed to the "ideal" that is the only thing shown in porn and other media. The site's creator hopes that the pictures will help fight the stigma men feel about having less-than-"ideal" penises. You can find it here: http://www.erectionphotos.com/

I also completely disagree on the "penises just look silly"-thing. There aren't many things more beautiful than a nice looking (to my eyes, obviously) cock. And a handsome man, at that. Yes, even a naked one. ;)

But foremost I wanted to thank Jenna and Kelly for making me feel less alone with hating that scene. Though I experience it being even worse than just punishing her for his sins. I perceive that scene as punishing the man, completely ignoring the fact that she is a human being; she just seems to be a meaning to show him his wrongs. No humanity left to her at all.

Aside from that, thanks for the blog! First time commenter here, hope I'm not stepping on too many of the wrong toes...

Thank you!

I have such a hard time explaining this to my husband. When I try to point out the abundance of naked women in media and that it doesn't actually seem sexy to everyone (especially me - I'm not bi), he just doesn't get it. He just tries to argue that the "female form is more aesthetically pleasing", "sex sells" ... and does not understand that I just do not like boobs (give me a penis to look at and I'll be happy). He really doesn't see how priviledged his sexuality is. He gets to see 'sexy things' all around while I have to look hard for them. Sigh...

when comparing how "sexy" is portrayed it's useful to mention greece because men were portrayed in sculptures as objects of lust.... by men... for men. what portrayal of lust is by women for women?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostFanficWritersAreGirls
i really like tvtropes.org, its another interesting analysis of pop culture.

saying that women have been culturally programmed not to look at men as sex objects seems to assert the correlary that without this social programming they would lust after men in the same way that men lust after women. it could be that women don't evaluate sex partners the same way that men do. maybe women have different criteria? it could be that the reason visually sexually objectified male bodies appears "gay" is that men are usually more interested than women in that kind of objectification.

What I find remarkable is the change in the perception of men's bodies in recent decades. Thirty years ago it was unremarkable for an athlete or regular guy to wear short shorts or brief swimwear, while today it has become unthinkable. When the topic of shorter shorts for men comes up on The Sartorialist or other places, the most negative comments seem to come from younger women. Since I was already an adult before the change in perception happened, I've never quite understood why it happened.

It's funny to me that a lot of this conversation has been taken up by male genitalia (which I happen to find both attractive and funny). Despite the huge number of phallic symbols intentionally used in advertising, I don't think we'll ever see actual penises used as soft commercial symbols of lust. Nor will we see actual vaginas.

Heterosexist male gaze aside, it looks to me like a very specific female body is used to suggest lust in ads like this. 99% of women's bodies look absolutely nothing like the silhouettes in that "lusty" convention center, so it's hard to say that they're standing in for femininity itself. Rather, the specific images of curvy hips, large breasts, long smooth legs, and thick shiny lips are all individual symbols for "sexy." The equivalent objectifying images of the unlikely male physique - washboard abs, V-shaped pelvises, well-rounded underwear bulge, GI Joe pecs, muscled arms - are a lot more ubiquitous in marketing and pop culture than some visitors to this blog seem to acknowledge. Sure, most of the time they're still advertising to men, but if the same images seemed to be effective to the female market I doubt the ad industry would have any shame in using them.

And correction: "SEX" doesn't sell. The particulars of penetration, bodily fluids, genitalia, and all the messy emotional stuff are certainly not the topic of this kind of marketing. Rather, SEXY sells. Very important difference IMO.

I don't know what world you guys are from, but I would guess that I see the naked male torso of a buff underwear model about 25% as often as I see a nice looking pair of legs or a pleasing bust. There are a ton of magazines promoting the idea of male beauty these days: Mens Health, Muscle and Fitness, GQ, etc. On TV I can think of numerous advertisements showing half naked male models writhing around (Ax body spray used to have a ton of these), and I'm having trouble thinking of an action movie made in the last 10 years that didn't feature at least one shirtless beefcake shot. And this is just at my local grocery store and on cable TV. There are billboards and posters featuring "hot guys" a plenty if you walk about half a mile north to the gay district in my town.

If anything, I'd argue that we are seeing more and more images of "sexy" men these days. It wouldn't surprise me if this fact is linked to what I perceive as (but haven't taken the time to research or prove) the rise of various personal, self-image problems in the male community: anorexia, adonis complex, etc., etc.

In the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?pagewanted=all

researchers show that even straight women are physically aroused by images of women, whether they feel turned on or not. Indeed, women experience physical arousal when shown images of monkeys having sex. It's unclear whether this is a biologically hard-wired response or socially determined; it is clear that the male gaze is just simpler and better understood than the female gaze. This seems to furnish one reason that straight male fantasies are so predominant: it's a path of least resistance for advertisers. Of course, that doesn't preclude the other reasons you've mentioned!

@Evan - images of 'sexy' men are definitely on the rise but they have a long way to go before they reach the same level as images of 'sexy' women! A long, long way.

to ss - The study says that NEITHER group was aroused by the bonobos. And frankly, this just seems like another bad study or a decent study turned bad by bad journalism. And you also say that "straight male fantasies" are easier to understand. It doesn't help your credibility when you try to stereotype women by misquoting bad studies. :/

Oh wait - nvm. It does say that striaght women had "a rush of bloodflow" when seeing the bonobos. It wasn't to be said for lesbians, though. So it is still not ALL the women.

Lesbians aren't attracted to chimps? Who knew?

Honestly, if this wasn't about sexuality and gender roles, would anyone think that someone saying that something-or-other is intrinsically "more esthetically pleasing" than something-closely-related says anything more profound than an expression of individual opinion?

But to my point: if they had displayed on female and one male silhouette, I think it would still display Lust, but in the sense of normal and pan-gender human sexuality rather than "the male gaze." The male gaze is pretty overrated.

Oh, and women lust after men just as much and as often as men lust after women. But the socialization exists in how we all pretend otherwise.

If most people truely felt women are better looking than men, women wouldn't be constantly told we're ugly. The media's always pressuring women to change our physical appearance in some way.

It's offensive that they use womens bodies to represent lust. It's like a slap in the face to straight women and gay men. And you're right, if a male body was used to represent lust it would be aimed at gay men. It's ridiculous. And men trying to use science to back up their pathetic fears and prejudices isn't going to work anymore.

Sadly, women are hated and shamed for finding naked men attractive. I think female hetrosexuality is the most feared and reviled sexuality. Throughout history women have been relentlessly punished and shamed because of our lust for the male form and we've even had our desires completely denied.

Men feel threatened by the female gaze. They know there's power in objectification and that's why they're terrified of it. Girls are taught about the male gaze from a young age. They're taught they have to modify their behaviour and the way they dress because of it. Girls/ women's desires are denied because society does not want boys/men to have to view themselves through women's eyes. Some men may joke and say they wish they were objectified by women the way women are objectified by men, but every message in society tells us otherwise. They're scared that women like looking at young attractive naked men, so they tell themselves that we care more about personality or money. In some cultures women are expected to cover themselves from head to toe to stop men thinking lustful thoughts but the men in those cultures don't want to have to cover themselves so they delude themselves that women don't lust after them. Men deny female lust because they want women to always be held responsible for our actions. For example: If a woman has an affair with a married man we're told it's because she's a cold, manipulative bitch, not because she's not in control of her feelings.

The reason some people say mens bodies are ugly is that we see far too many images of unfit, overweight, ugly looking men in films, on television etc. We not seeing men's bodies in the condition they're designed to be in (slim, toned, muscular). Germaine Greer wrote a book called Boys (I think) she was making the argument that boys/young men have been seen as the epitome of beauty thoughout history and that women should appreciate the young male form. (I haven't read the book but I saw her doing the rounds on tv promoting it a few years back).

I'm sick of women being taught by society to objectify each other. We're always bombarded with images of near naked women in magazines/adverts aimed at women. If we say we don't want to look at near naked women we're told it's because we're jealous when in actual fact it's because we're not lesbians. Instead of looking at men we're told we're supposed to be looking other women. I think this is society's way of brainwashing women into viewing themselves through the male gaze. that's why so many women are obsessed about their weight and looks and feel insecure. We need to stop viewing ourselves as objects. No good can come from it. I feel sorry for gay men too because even though their desires are taken more seriously than straight women's, they also have to put up with the media alway equating naked women with lust and sexual attractiveness. None of this is healthy for anyone female/male, gay/ straight.

Anyway, I'd like to think things are slowly improving, I cetainly think young straight women are becoming more in touch with their own desires and feeling more empowered. For example: before the internet, young girls usually didn't know what a penis looked like until they had sex, unlike boys, who had porn films and magazines where they were able to see every inch of the naked female body before they had sex. Thanks to internet girls are easily able see the penis in all its erect glory, any size, colour etc.( I'm not condoning or encouraging minors to look at porn, I just think the scales need to be more balanced.) An erect penis is a penis in it's sexual state. Why is seeing the penis in it's sexual state so taboo?

Sorry about all the mistakes. I hope some of that makes sense. I've had a few drinks and this post touched on something that always annoys me. Just thought I'd add a few random thoughts.

There are three reasons why female bodies are used by our culture and male bodies are not:

1. Up until very recently men owned everything and ran everything - and so everything revolved exclusively around them and their desires.

2. Female desire threatens male dominance and the idea that men own everything - including women - and so there's no point in females having their own strong desires - they exist to be sexual merchandise, not sexual consumers.

3. Homophobia - a straight man might feel a twinge of lust towards a beautiful male body and in our culture that MUST NOT HAPPEN! The ancient Greeks had a much more relaxed attitude towards homosexuality so they could stand to see beautiful male bodies - and there was no chance of wives getting to act on their own desires since they were virtual slaves.

On the hopeful side - the more women own things and run things, the more we will see our desires reflected in the culture. And yes, I am being hetero-centric, but we are the majority and so our desires have a bigger impact on culture at large. But gay men will benefit from a greater celebration of masculine beauty as well as straight women.

And for the record - I LOVE to see images of beautiful men, and although personality counts, I could certainly ignore it to a large extent in exchange for masculine beauty.

@Sarah:
Little late to this post but THANK YOU SO MUCH for articulating what I try to express ALL THE TIME over this whole business. *slow clap*

well said, sarah

@Jack Vermicelli,

"I think it’s reasonable to believe that the socioevolutionary model is borne out empirically."

Just because you think "it's reasonable to believe" it is borne out does not prove that it is borne out.

And your reasoning is flawed to boot -

"You yourself make the point that certain behaviors have been prevalent “throughout history”- shouldn’t this tell us something? Biology informs culture; culture does does exist in a vacuum, absent of biology."

The cultural phenomenon of exchanging goods and services for currency has also existed "throughout history" - that tells us exactly nothing about biology informing culture.

And this is laughable:

"Women just happen to be the peacocks of the species, not the pea hens. Like the pea hen, women possess certain traits which are not developed for optimal individual survival, but which affect the livelihood of genes in the long run. It’s not wrong or right that there’s a difference between peacocks and pea hens; sexual dimorphism (physical and psychological) simply exists, quite apart from any notions of fairness or equality."

No, women don't just "happen" to be peacocks.

Unlike birds, humans DO exchange goods and services for currency - and for much of human history women were prevented from controlling money and a woman's survival depended on being married off to a man - it was imperative that she looked as good as possible in order to do so.

This again, tells us nothing about biology - except the very basics, that men are stronger than women and therefore can hurt women more easily than vice-versa, and that women are also at a disadvantage during pregnancy.

Men have taken their basic physical advantages and ran with them - from developing cultures in which you can kill a woman if she offends her family's "honor" right up to the development of a feeble "science" of evolutionary psychology that seeks to bolster the belief that male dominance is "natural" - and that female peacocking is a result of nature and not instead the very specific efforts on the part of male dominated culture to force females to strut their stuff in order to get married off to the highest bidder.

The fact that what you believe to be innate - human females being peacocks - is wrong, dead wrong, AND it is proven wrong by the fact that as women come increasingly into economic independence - which we have over the last 20 years, women are increasingly hooking up with younger men - and younger men are spending more time and effort to make themselves look good than ever before.

Women now have the luxury to choose mates based on youth and beauty - the way men always had. Women are striking at the very heart of male privilege by doing so - which is why evolutionary psychology, with its claims that male privilige is bestowed through biology, is so popular among social conservatives.

Of course the old ways are still powerful - it takes time to alter the course of human cultural customs - and females forced to sell themselves in the basis of their appearance is thousands of years old and is still going on in some cultures to this very day - families selling little girls to old men in marriage in order to settle a family debt, for instance.

But it IS changing - and in a time-span that is far less than evolutionary.

And as time goes by, the claims of evolutionary psychology will continue to die a flaming death as a result of such empirical evidence. I've already seen it happen - the EPs used to claim that women were more naturally monogamous than men (some still do) but genetic testing demonstrated that so many married women had given birth to children who were biologically unrelated to the their husbands.

And that only represents the times when infidelity resulted in birth, and there was genetic testing. This is only a tip of the female infidelity iceberg - so the best-informed evolutionary psychology promoters have quietly dropped the woman monogamous claim.

But as always, it takes some people a long time to catch up.

@Jack Vermicelli

"For the most part, yes. Socio-economics (all social behaviors, including economic) are psychological in origin. "

No they are not "in origin." Economics springs from environmental conditions - does the soil support crops? is the weather good? are there useful metals in the ground? Can the local fauna be domesticated?

The behaviors - and psychology - originate in the human biological response to these realities.

In the most simple terms - if you don't get enough nutrients - which is an environmental factor first, and a social factor second - you could end up with brain damage which will most certainly impact your psychology.

Everything can be said to be biological because we are biological creatures. But the outrageous claims made by evolutionary psychologists based on bad reasoning and even worse empirics invents a whole other world, completely independent of the actual environmental conditions and bio-psychological constants that reign on THIS planet.

But then we know what planet evolutionary psychologists thinke we are from - men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And other such simplistic fairy tales.

Socio-economic conditions that developed in a less-than-evolutionary time-frame led to women becoming "peacocks" not some mysterious evolved genetic condition - the evidence of which neither you nor any evolutionary psychologist has EVER demonstrated. Because your standards of evidence are "it makes sense" and case closed.

It's astounding that anybody with an education beyond the eight grade gives any credence to evolutionary psychology twaddle.