Women In Susan Bordo's Beauty Rediscovers The Male Body?

Change Rediscovered

Who cares what people think about my body? For years, these words were almost exclusively uttered by men and self-secure people alike. However, with increasing societal pressures and expectations, abdominal muscles seem to be getting more attention than ever and male models seem to be just as highly coveted as women in the modeling industry. It seems that, the rise in men’s desire for a more masculine, defined body, in conjunction with the women’s desire for a man that has comparable beauty to the men they see in advertisements, come together to create revolutionized shift in the male body image. All these things seem to be true due to the exposure they get from social media. However, this is mere exposure; while in actuality male modeling advertisements has not significantly changed since the 1990s nor has societies view of the male body.

In Susan Bordo’s essay “Beauty Rediscovers the male body”, Bordo stresses the changes on the concern of the male body and how the male body is depicted in advertisements. Bordo demonstrates her stance on male advertising with graphic images of male bodies with intense descriptions. In the 1990s there was this emergence of male models depicted in a more sexual way. As Bordo states in her essay, the images of these

The reason why women are used more often than males is because it is easier to portray women in a slightly sexual way then it is for men. In an ad you could have a women show a small amount of cleavage that would keep the audience attracted. Hence, they would remember the advertisement and be more likely to buy the product. While with men it is much harder to make an ad seem sexual without oversexualizing the ad. This is just because of the nature of the female and male bodies. This leads to companies using females much more often than males, because the advertisement can maintain the integrity of the product while adding an enhancement