June 5, 2012 "Carve Your Core!" "Big Arms Made Easy!" "Double your muscle in 28 days!" "17-day Abs" "Stronger, Leaner, Faster" (Men's Health UK, upcoming July '12)
Increasingly, boys' body image has gotten hammered by PhotoShop assists, iconic "Taylor Lautner abs" and muscular physiques resembling The Incredible Hulk more than healthy fitness, so it's no surprise that teen boys are joining girls in socioemotional sidewinders impacting their health at ever-earlier ages in adolescence.
Bigorexia. Muscle dysmorphia. Roid rage. Manorexia. Obsessive workouts as "Exorexia."
We've all heard the body dissatisfaction stats for boys climbing from 15% to 43% over the last thirty years, but I wish kids health pros would capture a tighter snapshot, say maybe in the last 15 to 43 WEEKS, as the recent escalation ramping up to summer "swimsuit season" is negatively impacting boys as well as girls with not close to 'equal' but disconcerting fervor.
If The Atlantic's April 2012 piece The Silent Victims, More Men Have Eating Disorders Than Ever Before doesn't give you pause, then perhaps the June 2012 back from the brink GQ profile of talented artist D'Angelo about objectification impacting his mental health interwoven with pop culture pressures derailing his music career for a decade. It might be a 'teaching moment' and wake-up call to the harm that has been amply doled out to females in walloping dollops of hyper-sexualization for years. This smart, provocative article by Alyssa Rosenberg views the unraveling of singer D'Angelo through the gender lens "What Happens When Men Get Treated Like Women" and hopefully serves as a sentinel that our societal stupidity needs to come to a halt for the well-being of humankind not just any one gender.
D'Angelo's GQ magazine comeback is a headturner for all the right reasons this time, not the smoldering sexploitation of a talented singer turned into a marketplace persona, but the emergence of a powerful message about the raw, real take down of an emerging young star, and the complicit role objectification played in the media and marketing mix.
Could D'Angelo's struggle serve as a helpful engine warning light in our over-revved culture of teen heartthrobs turned hyper-sexualized poster boys?
Twilight film star Taylor Lautner's shirtless pin-up poses are almost iconic, as he vaulted into aspirational perfection, fetishized to the point of 'wolf' packs of girls howling for his 'hottie' factor, and teen boys working out relentlessly for his physique.
Like D'Angelo, Lautner's 'exotic' objectification comes with a slew of stereotypes, race, and culture clashes.
This piece on Twilight's race and class stereotypes from Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture speaks to this well, subtitled Those Hot Indians, "Jacob, played by Taylor Lautner, may be a teenage heartthrob, but his continual depiction without a shirt shows how over sexualized, exoticized, and macho the fictional Quileute wolfpack is."
I wish D'Angelo would meet Taylor Lautner in the green room and swap stories about industry practices highlighted in Packaging Boyhood or the new book The Achilles Effect (Crystal Smith's riff on The Lolita Effect, about What Pop Culture is Teaching Young Boys about Masculinity (radio show here) because frankly, the feedback loop in my daily dose of youth culture shows boys' body image is becoming exponentially MORE of a problem than when I first wrote this piece on the Harvard "Growing Up Today Study" (GUTS) in "Buffed Boy Body Image and the Teen Scene Hottie Factor."
But wait, there's always been sexualization of heartthrobs, pop culture pin-ups as eye-candy and summer salivation over 'hotties' among both genders, right? Here's a quick look at the "then and now" through a 2011 study by SUNY-Buffalo published in Sexuality and Culture, "Equal Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone" (PDF) Synopsis?
Comparing Rolling Stone magazine covers from 1967-2009:
"In the 1960s, 11% of men and 44% of women on the covers of Rolling Stone were sexualized, in the 2000s, 17% of men were sexualized (a 55% increase), and 83% of women were sexualized (an 89% increase)." In short, women still bear the brunt of objectification, but in just the last decade, the coarseness of our culture has devolved with shock schlock hitting new levels of low.
How low can we go? Welcome to the pornification of pop culture.
Marc Jacobs "Bang!" cologne, for example, says it all.
Jacobs not only objectifies himself as the model, with the bottle between his legs, mirroring countless poses of female models degraded into hollow, detached vessels for product and profiteering…He positions the campaign in this video more as personal "art," which hipsters love to trot out as the catch-all phrase for why the rest of us in the parent realm are all pearl-clutching prudes who simply don't understand fashion. The cologne is housed in an unusually eye-catching crushed container design sending a narrow message about how masculinity is perceived at its most base-level.
Violence, volatility and virility. (I'll add vapid.)
As we battle against sexualization of girls and women, I dare say the societal reverb of reducing boys and men to prop-tastic plastic action figures falls into the 'two wrongs don't make a right' camp of objectification.
I have an entire "part two" on the consequences and repercussions of objectification surfacing in health studies, but first, here's 22-year old SPARK writer Bailey Shoemaker Richards to add her views on the fame monster of celebrification from a youthful generational lens.
As I've said before, "Houston we've got a problem…"
And not just Houston…London. And Milan. And Manila. And Brazil. And…
D'Angelo, GQ: Comebacks, Candor And Communication About the Destructive Chaos
By Bailey Shoemaker Richards
Pop culture requires specific things of those it brings to fame, and a marketable physique is almost always near the top of that list. For women, this is undeniably the case: the thin-white-blonde trio is a mold that it's nearly impossible to break out of for most actresses and artists. Men have a much wider range of "acceptable" body types, but that doesn't mean they're immune to objectification and sexualization. Men who fit the Ken doll mold are going to be sold on that, and the public can be demanding in its desire to see flesh displayed.
When women raise justified complaints about objectification, a common retort by men is that they'd love to have that kind of attention (and therefore women should just shut up and be grateful for it already). But being valued for your body over your talents is not all it's cracked up to be. Michael "D'Angelo" Archer found that out in a big way – and it ruined his career for more than a decade.
Following the release of the music video "Untitled," D'Angelo found that fans were paying more attention to his torso than his talent, and he hated it.
It would be incredibly facile and blatantly untrue to say that D'Angelo's spiral into drug abuse was entirely caused by this, but it would be equally untrue to say that it didn't play a role.
The objectification that D'Angelo dealt with was inextricably linked to the historical fetishizing of black men's bodies as excessively virile and animalistic; for a performer already highly aware of what it means to be a famous person of color, the combination was too much.
The GQ profile on D'Angelo contains a number of quotes from fellow stars talking about the pressure and responsibility of being famous and black. Chris Rock says, "I always say Tom Hanks is an amazing actor and Denzel Washington is a god to his people. If you're a black ballerina, you represent the race, and you have responsibilities that go beyond your art. How dare you just be excellent?" D'Angelo's hyper-awareness of all of these intersecting issues sent him spiraling into a haze of drugs, alcohol and failed rehab attempts, and it took him 11 years to find his way back out.
The heckling, catcalls and screams of "Take it off," the overwhelming focus on muscle over vocal tone, and the sudden feeling that his fans were no longer his fans for his voice – none of this is much different from what most young famous women deal with constantly. Entire magazines and articles are devoted to looking for the flaws of celebrity women while simultaneously showcasing how beautiful they are, often leaving to the side (or not mentioning at all) the talents that made them famous to begin with. Men might say they want the objectification that women get, but D'Angelo found that being a sex object was just another in a long line of dominoes falling towards the edge of a cliff.
This says something about the way we regard youth and fame and bodies in our culture. When a man is made to endure the same type of harassment that any famous woman has to expect as her everyday existence, and it contributes to the destruction of his career and nearly his life, that is no longer "some Kate Moss shit" as his former bandleader Questlove called it. The fact that this was the last straw for D'Angelo before he began his downward spiral makes it no less poignant or important. The toxic mélange of sexualization, being young and famous and black, and the glittering lure of a drugged escape drove D'Angelo to rock bottom.
Stories like this show some of the problems of objectification in a very clear way.
D'Angelo found himself treated like a woman and couldn't handle it – this should give men pause when they want to dismiss the idea that objectification is damaging, or something they would want themselves. Combined with a society that already makes a fetish of black men's bodies, and the racism that makes fame not just individual fame for a person of color but also adds "a lot of pressure just to be responsible for other people's lives," according to Rock, as well as D'Angelo's fear that he would burn out and die like so many of his heroes – it's little wonder that he had the problems he did, and makes it that much more impressive that he's recording and touring again.
We need to take a long look at what it takes to be famous, and what that means for the young people who strive for that. In a time when surveys of young girls reveal that they'd rather be a personal assistant to a celebrity than the president of Harvard or a U.S. Senator, and when more boys and girls would choose fame than intelligence, we should think very hard indeed about the value we give to celebrity – and the price it can end up demanding.
Bailey Shoemaker Richards, 22, is a recent graduate of Ohio University, where she received a bachelor's degree in creative writing, a feminist activist, and a member of the SPARKteam.
She spends her free time writing, reading, playing video games and watching Doctor Who. Bailey is passionate about grassroots activism, media critique and giving a voice to young women. Follow Bailey at SPARK and on Twitter
What IS Sexualization? The APA Task Force Explains…
"There are several components to sexualization, and these set it apart from healthy sexuality.
Sexualization occurs when:
- a person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
- a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
- a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
- sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
All four conditions need not be present; any one is an indication of sexualization. The fourth condition (the inappropriate imposition of sexuality) is especially relevant to children. Anyone (girls, boys, men, women) can be sexualized. But when children are imbued with adult sexuality, it is often imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. Self-motivated sexual exploration, on the other hand, is not sexualization by our definition, nor is age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality."
What Can You DO?
Tips, Sites, Resources to Debrief/Inform About Boys' Body Image:
National Eating Disorders Assn (NEDA) Tips For Kids on Feeling Good About Yourself
Boys and Body Image Tips (Common Sense Media)
Help Teens Develop a Healthy Body Image (WebMD)
BodiMojo: A Health Community for Teens (new/worthy site that I love!)
Proud2BMe.org (also new/worthy w/NEDA ties to impt female convos; needs a male forum offshoot!)
The Development of Ideal Body Image Perceptions in the U.S. (Nursing Center: great overview of then/now)
Reflections on Body Image/U.K. (newly released 80pp Parliamentary report released last week)
How to Help Kids Like Their Looks: (Family Anatomy-Body Image Series)
More research updates, 2012 health articles and 'solutions-based' interventions in part two. Stay tuned…
Boys/Gender Articles By Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth
The Bro Code: Media, Masculinity and Misogynistic Misfires
Buffed Boy, Body Image and Tween Scene, the 'Hottie' Factor
Gender, Race & Sexism: Shaping Youth Through Pop Culture Cues
Packaging Boyhood Authors/Interview: What ABOUT the Boys?
Packaging Boyhood: Corporate Pirates Raid Boys' Souls
Predatory Practices As Sport? Boys to Men & Swaggerfests
Dear Media, Please Change Your Channel of Influence
Get Boys to Participate in GirlCaught to Dial Down Disrespect
Man Down? Girl Up, Rihanna. Own Your Influence.
Turning Boys Into Monsters: Energy Drink/A Foul Taste
Attention KMart Shoppers, Dating Violence on Aisle 3
Depravity Gone Viral: A Thin Line For Humanity
What Does A 13-Year Old Boy Know About Dating Violence? Plenty.
Backdraft: DV=Differing Views on Dating/Domestic Violence
Girls As Boy Toys Takes an Even More Toxic Turn
GirlCaught! New Moon Girls Slams Sexualization!
Using Media With Mindfulness: Tell SnoopDogg NO to Alcopops!
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