Poets, anthropologists, philosophers, artists, sociologists, and others provide perspectives on the male body.

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The Male Body 
Contents

Introduction
Laurence Goldstein - vii

Alien Territory
Margaret Atwood - 1

The Disposable Rocket
John Updike - 8

Consuming Manhood: The Feminization of American Culture and the Recreation of the Male Body, 1832-1920
Michael S. Kimmel - 12

Bodybuilder Americanus
Sam Fussell - 43

The Lost Child (fiction)
Joyce Carol Oates - 61

Rock Incorporated: Plugging in to Axl and Bruce
Fred Pfeil - 67

For My Son Gabriel Who Must One Day Become a Man
Ruth Behar - 102

Thirteen (poetry)
Alan Soldofsky - 104

If It Was You Instead of Me (fiction)
Brad Sewell - 106

The Sports Complex (poetry)
Lawrence Goldstein - 119

A Phenomenology of the Black Body
Charles Johnson - 121

Dress-Me-Up David (poetry)
Christianne Balk - 137

Injury (poetry)
Nicholas Samaras - 139

On the Nature of Desire (poetry)
David Lehman - 142

Pressure (poetry)
Evelyn Lau - 146

To Be Horst (fiction)
Mitch Berman - 148

A God's Perfection
Rudolf Arnheim - 151

The Male Body and Contemporary Art
Andrew Campbell and Nathan Griffith - 153

Illustrations by Jim Cogswell, Peter Howson, Nancy Van Goethem, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Nancy Grossman, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Joel-Peter Witkin, Mark I. Chester, Andres Serrano, Jonathan Borofsky, Lorna Simpson, Andrew Uchin, Carol Novak, Anne Rowland, and Ken Giles, following page 178.

Tiresias and Narcissus (from Ovid's Metamorphoses) (poetry)
David R. Slavitt - 179

In My Fifties
Leo Braudy -186

Portrait of My Body
Phillip Lopate - 204

Male Nipples (poetry)
Brenda Hillman - 214

Vasectomy (poetry)
Cathy Song - 216

Blessings on the Stomach, the Body's Inner Furnace (poetry)
Robert Bly - 218

Old Acquaintance (poetry)
Edward Field - 219

All Together Now: The New Sexual Politics of Midlife Bodies
Margaret Morganroth Gullette - 221

Inbetween Zone: Life in Neukolln (fiction)
Mario Wirz - 248

Reading the Male Body
Susan Bordo - 265

Contributors - 307
 

Description

The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures serves as an indispensable and fascinating source of knowledge about the male sex at a time when media attention to manhood has increased and when studies of masculinity have become a significant part of the academic curriculum as well as a popular topic of academic research. Subjects include the historical sources of the American body, adolescent and midlife bodies, bodybuilding, the bodies of popular icons such as rock stars and athletes, AIDS, the black body, and the variety of sexual identities endorsed and disdained by our culture. It may or may not be true, as Margaret Atwood asserts, that "Men's bodies are the most dangerous things on earth." But all of these texts affirm the necessity of knowing more about the status of masculinity at a time when feminist authors have made gender and power central themes in our understanding of ourselves and our society.
 Like its popular predecessor, The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, this volume gathers together a remarkable range of voices and perspectives on this always-timely topic. The collection begins with essays by Margaret Atwood and John Updike that define the precarious situation of manhood at the end of this millennium and concludes with Susan Bordo's essay examining the discourse of "manhood" in best-selling books, film, advertising, and political commentary. The book's contributors argue that the male body is not just an anatomical fact but a cultural sign or site that people seek to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct to fit their values. How this process of shaping occurs can be observed in Joyce Carol Oates's story about a frightened girl and a nude photograph, in Cathy Song's regretful poem about vasectomy, in Philip Lopate's self-portrait as he regards and evaluates the parts of his body, in Margaret Morganroth Gullette's polemical report on the commercial exploitation of midlife bodies, in Rudolf Arnheim's admiring description of an ancient Greek statue that preserves "a god's perfection." The anthology also brings examples from "body history" to bear on the present day: for instance, David R. Slavitt's new translation of Ovid's tale of Narcissus and sociologist Michael S. Kimmel's study of the obsession with physical vitality at the turn of this century both resonate with unsettling immediacy in the context of the values, issues, and obsessions of our own postmodern era.Work and play, anxiety and self-confidence, youth and aging, health and sickness--all of these contesting conditions are examined in the course of this rich collection of materials. General readers and specialists alike will find abundant new information and insights, and much to argue with as well as much to agree with, in the contents of this engrossing volume.