Download Muscle And Fitness Magazine Pdf

Body image has become relevant to many men, as the flourishing of male fitness magazines and the consequent development of theoretical studies on the subject demonstrate. In this article, I will examine the close connections between food, masculinities, and body image in male fitness magazines, a booming sector of the fitness and wellness publishing industry. I will attempt a qualitative analysis of editorial features and advertising pages of the October 2002 issues of Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness. I will also analyze Men's Health Guide to Women, a supplement to Men's Health published in the same month, designed as a sort of a how-to manual for men who want to increase their success with women. Since I will deal with communication and media, I will adopt a semiotic approach, emphasizing how the frequent references to food and eating, which clearly constitute a deep concern, actually construct a coherent discourse about masculinities, using words, images, and metaphors as signs within a complex code that needs to be deciphered.

Discover the world's research

20+ million members
135+ million publications
700k+ research projects

Join for free

Food & Foodways, 13:17–37, 2005



2005 Taylor & Francis

ISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 online

DOI: 10.1080/07409710590915355

FEEDING HARD BODIES: FOOD AND MASCULINITIES

IN MEN'S FITNESS MAGAZINES

FABIO PARASECOLI

Gambero Rosso Magazine, Rome, Italy

Body image has become relevant to many men, as the ﬂourishing of male ﬁtness

magazines and the consequent development of theoretical studies on the subject

demonstrate. In this article, I will examine the close connections between food,

masculinities, and body image in male ﬁtness magazines, a booming sector of the

ﬁtness and wellness publishing industry. I will attempt a qualitative analysis

of editorial features and advertising pages of the October 2002 issues of Men's

Health, Men's Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness.Iwill also analyze Men's

Health Guide to Women,asupplement to Men's Health published in the

same month, designed as a sort of a how-to manual for men who want to increase

their success with women. Since I will deal with communication and media, I

will adopt a semiotic approach, emphasizing how the frequent references to food

and eating, which clearly constitute a deep concern, actually construct a coherent

discourse about masculinities, using words, images, and metaphors as signs

within a complex code that needs to be deciphered.

Plural Masculinities

All over the Western world, a new breed of leisure publications

that deal with various intimate aspects of men's lives have recently

invaded kiosks: men's ﬁtness magazines. These publications have

now abandoned the closets of gay men and the lockers of pro-

fessional body builders to be conspicuously displayed in dentist's

waiting rooms or on coffee tables next to football magazines.

Amongst these, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and Muscle and

Fitness have proved to be particularly successful over time, in terms

of popularity and sheer sales.

They constitute a particularly signif-

icant segment in this kind of literature and deserve closer examina-

tion. I will examine the differences in both editorial and advertising

materials that assume a certain range of diversity within the target

Address correspondence to Fabio Parasecoli, c/o Gambero Rosso, 636 Broadway,

Suite 1111, New York, NY 10012. E-mail: parasecoli@aol.com

18 F. Parasecoli

readership. Muscle and Fitness is more speciﬁcally geared toward

professional body builders, while the other two are geared toward

an audience of men who, although conscious of their bodies, are

also interested in other aspects of their masculinities. Launched

in 1988, Men's Health, owned by Rodale, is deﬁnitely the most

popular, claiming a circulation of 1.7 million, with 22 editions in

30 countries.

Rodale, a family owned company, publishes mag-

azines, such as Organic Gardening, Prevention, Bicycling, Run-

ner's World, and Backpacker, and has established a public image

of health consciousness and commitment against tobacco and hard

liquor. At the end of 2002, both Men's Fitness and Muscles and Fitness,

originally owned by Weider Publications Inc. and founded by the

bodybuilder Joe Weider in the 1940s, were bought by American

Media, which already owns many tabloids, such as National Enquirer

and Star, and also operates Distribution Services to place these pe-

riodicals in supermarkets. In other words, bodybuilding has gone

mainstream.

The enthrallment with the body image, previously imposed

mostly on women, is now becoming a common feature in mascu-

line practices and identiﬁcation processes, to the point that the ex-

pression "the Adonis complex" has been created, referring to the

more pathological, obsessive forms of this phenomenon.

Recent

literature on body images has developed in the frame of theories

that consider multiple masculinities as constructed collectively in

culture and sustained in all kinds institutions (the school, the gym,

the army, the workplace). Connell writes,

Men's bodies are addressed, deﬁned and disciplined, and given outlet and

pleasures, by the gendered order of society. Masculinities are neither pro-

grammed in our genes, nor ﬁxed by social structure, prior to social interac-

tion. They come into existence as people act. They are actively produced,

using the resources and strategies available in a give social setting.

Masculinities are not ﬁxed or deﬁned once and for all; they do

not represent embodiments of discrete states of being. They vary

in time and place, in different historical, social, and cultural en-

vironments. As practices, they sometimes articulate contradictory

desires, emotions, and ideals, denying the very notion of a static

and deﬁned identity. These concurrent masculinities are not equiv-

alent: some tend to be considered more desirable than others,

even when they are not the most common, and thus become

Feeding Hard Bodies 19

"hegemonic," a standard against which men embodying other

kinds of masculinities assess their self perception and often also

their self-esteem.

Body images play a fundamental role in deﬁning

what the dominant masculinity model should look like. Neverthe-

less, men's bodies are not blank pages that become the receptacle

for all kinds of power and social determinations: they are actual

agents, and they interact with other aspects of the social practices

determining masculinities. As Connell emphasizes,

To understand how men's bodies are actually involved in masculinities we

must abandon the conventional dichotomy between changing culture and

unchanging bodies...Through social institutions and discourses, bodies

are given social meaning. Society has a range of 'body practices' which

address, sort and modify bodies. These practices range from deportment

and dress to sexuality, surgery and sport.

The growing attention to the male body—it has sometime

been argued—is, at least partially, a result of the mainstreaming

and the normalization of gay culture.

Nevertheless, also in het-

erosexual contexts, male strong bodies have traditionally served

as metaphors for sexual potency, power, productivity, dominance,

independence, and control. Both discourses are somehow articu-

lated in the contemporary hegemony of the muscular body type

(also known as mesomorphic, as opposed to ectomorphic, slim,

and endomorphic, overweight), often in connection with a phe-

nomenon sometimes deﬁned as "re-masculinization."

Until a few

decades ago, the aspiration for a muscular build was a prerogative

of a small circle of professional and amateur bodybuilders, who

were also involved in different forms of competition, giving to the

whole scene the veneer of a sport. In time, after large sections of

the gay community embraced the muscular body as desirable and

prestigious, the same attitude became more and more visible, also

in heterosexual—or should we now say metrosexual—circles. A

renewed attention to the body and its appearance goes well be-

yond the concern for its athletic potential, which was a normal

element of the sport subculture, uniting all men, gay and straight,

in the same awe for the bulging muscle. These phenomena explain

the growing success of men's ﬁtness magazines, which, at any rate,

carefully avoid dealing with issues of sexual preference, and ban

20 F. Parasecoli

any hint of homoeroticism, which is, nevertheless, always lurking

behind the glossy pages of the magazines.

The growing prestige granted to the muscular body places

increasing pressure on men to take greater care of their looks.

Men seem to adopt different strategies to make sense of their bod-

ies when they do not meet the hegemonic expectations; the three

predominant ways to adjust the discrepancy between the ideal and

the real body have been deﬁned as reliance, where the individ-

ual works on his body to reach the model; reformulation, where

each individual adjusts his conception of hegemonic masculinity to

meet his abilities; rejection, where the individual totally refuses the

hegemonic model.

In the case of reliance, usually great amounts

of energy, money, and time are invested in gaining the desired

body image, often with anxious undertones that reveal a certain

preoccupation with control over one's body. In this context, food

plays a fundamental, though often concealed, role. Diets and eat-

ing habits are interpreted as a key element in the construction of

aﬁtbody.

Advertising to the Hardliners

Needless to say, the food and supplement industry has tapped into

these trends to acquire new consumers for highly processed prod-

ucts that ensure growing revenues for a sector structurally plagued

by intense competition.

Many of the advertising pages in these

magazines often play with a sense of inadequacy, or with a desire

for emulation in order to increase sales, proposing behaviors, and

values. These constructs hinge on dedication and effort that help

to form the constructs of hegemonic masculinities.

On the ﬁrst page of Muscle and Fitness ,weﬁnd an ad page by

Animal for "Hardcore Training Packs." Next to a hip bodybuilder,

wearing a woolen hat and a grungy sweater, we read the sentence:

"Shut up and train," followed by a small print copy text:

Every day you train is judgment day. Each rep, each plate matters. You don't

make time for talk. All you care about is moving weight. Nothing else. This

is hardcore. This is Animal. Can you handle it?

A few pages later, the same man is shown, while lifting heavy

weights, with an expression of near pain on his face. The text states:

Feeding Hard Bodies 21

Go hard...or go home. Balls-to-the-wall training. You sweat. You push. It

hurts. In here, there's no room for crybabies, no place for talking trash.

Just raw lifting. This is the real deal. This is Animal. Can you handle it?

In the same magazine, another ad shows a weight lifting bench

with pillows and a blanket in an empty room. The text reads,

"Obsessed is just a rod the lazy use to describe the dedicated."

Amen, one would fervently respond. What we face here is a full-

blown cult. The new religion requires total dedication, in anticipa-

tion of the ﬁnal ordeal when all believers will present themselves

to the Big Trainer to have their thighs and deltoids carefully mea-

sured. Good results can be attained only by severe, unrelenting,

and even painful workouts.

Nevertheless, followers are offered ways to cheat a little, as in

any religion. The magazine pages are full of ads for protein drinks,

integrators, engineered nutrition items, and dietary supplements

that can help adepts to reach their goals. Exercising is necessary,

but science can help to the point that one can grow muscle while

sleeping, as with products such as SomnaBol-PM, Night charger,

or NitroVarin-PLS.

Nonetheless, the ad speciﬁes that there is

absolutely no need to stop taking regular proteins during the day.

As a matter of fact, most advertising in Muscle & Fitness is re-

lated to nutrition, meeting the readers' needs to ensure the correct

intake of substances required to bulk up, and expressing the food

and supplement industry's necessity to increase sales. The techni-

cal terminology it uses aims itself at readers who are supposedly

familiar with choline bitartrate (for serious mental energy and acu-

ity, we are told) or glutamine peptides, who are extremely aware of

their daily protein intake, and who would never ingest the wrong

kind of proteins. We are made privy of "the ugly truth behind the

collagen."

Pigs feet, cattle hide, crushed bone, ﬁsh skin. How did they ever end up in

your chocolate protein bar? Easy. After those bones and skins get soaked in

lime to remove all hair and grease, seared with acid until they disintegrate

and then molded into edible gelatin or collagen, they become part of

countless protein bars, even the best sellers.

The text, advertising the VHT 100% real Protein Chocolate Rum

Cake, is placed next to a full page picture of a meat grinder where

22 F. Parasecoli

a cow skull, a not-at-all-bad-looking ﬁsh, a bone, and a pig foot

are being cranked in what is clearly an impossible fashion. The

effect is quite overwhelming, even if for a non-American, the pig

foot and the ﬁsh actually look appetizing. But the correlation with

death, clearly expressed by the skull and the bone, would make

even the most adventurous eater ﬂinch. To balance the disturb-

ing effect of the image, the text is followed by a very reassuring

chart that explains how the protein efﬁciency ratio is much lower

in collagen than in, say, milk protein, beef protein, or best of all,

in whole eggs. The advertisement clearly tries to convince the po-

tential consumers to buy a product that provides the necessary

nutrients, all the while avoiding any contamination with the less

appealing aspects of food, namely death and corruption.

The assumed goal for this magazine's target readers, it is clear,

is gaining muscle mass. The three page advertisement for Cyto-

dine, "The Single Most Revolutionary Advancement in Bodybuild-

ing History," recurs to the old routine of the before and after pic-

tures, except that the before pictures portray bodies that would

make the average male seethe in sheer envy. The same trick is de-

ployed a few pages later, where we are told that an Idrise Ward-El

was able to lose 20 pounds of fat and gain 25 pounds of muscle

with the help of Muscle Tech supplements, like Cell-tech.

The

before picture of Mr. Ward-El shows us a stocky but muscular and

good looking black man, who, in the after picture, actually boasts

huge muscles (and no longer wears glasses). At this point, it is

necessary to note that Asian men are conspicuously absent from

these magazines, both in the editorial and the advertising mate-

rial. The underlying but unexpressed assumption is that Asian men

are either not interested in achieving a muscular body for cultural

reasons, or physically not able to do so.

Buy a Better Body

Muscle & Fitness readers are hardliners and dedicated body-

builders. The advertising is overwhelmingly concentrated on nu-

tritional items. The few exceptions are pages for sports gear. On

the other hand, advertising in both Men's Fitness and Men's Health,

with a greater emphasis on ﬁtness and general well-being, also

promotes colognes, after shave moisturizer, razors, a juice proces-

sor, trekking shoes, even cars, fashion and hi-tech. The advertising

Feeding Hard Bodies 23

in Men's Health deﬁnitely appeals to needs other than ﬁtness or

muscle building. As we will see, even women become a center of

interest. It is relevant to point out that in all three magazines, the

advertising pages for nutritional products can be classiﬁed in two

typologies: the ones where each item is promoted exclusively for its

nutritional value without any reference to taste, and others where

ﬂavor plays a certain, if peculiar, role.

Only one advertisement in the three magazines refers to the

idea of actually cooking food. The headline is: "Trim, tone, deﬁne,

& sculpt! Your complete Diet, Training, Nutrition and Fat Free

Cook Book Collection." We are informed that the cook, a black

woman who smilingly displays her amazing biceps, besides being

a master chef, was a contender in the Miss Olympia body building

competition. She's not alone: the other author is a white nutrition

consultant with a health science degree. The ad interestingly uses

a woman, as muscled as she is, to evoke the idea of the kitchen,

while the scientiﬁc side of the cookbooks, guaranteeing good re-

sults, is the work of a man.

This element—as we will see—often

recurs when the preparation of food is mentioned. The fact that

the cook is black and the scientist is white adds further layers to this

advertisement, revealing race biases that are otherwise invisible in

this kind of literature, probably based on the assumption that part

of the readership is composed of black males.

The scientiﬁc seal that seems fundamental to these ads is par-

ticularly evident in those belonging to the ﬁrst typology, advertising

nutritional supplements. Long lists of components are given in un-

compromising terminology, aimed at convincing readers that the

products are actually systematically engineered to improve their

muscle mass. Pictures and details of muscled persons, and images

of the advertised items, usually accompany written texts. Since their

names are difﬁcult to remember, and in the end they all sound the

same, it is important to display the actual box or ﬂacon in the ad,

to make sure that readers will be able to recognize it when they are

shopping at their local health shop. Most of the products in this ty-

pology do not make any reference to the act of eating. Sometimes

a ﬂavor is given to them, especially when it comes to drinks and

bars, but it is not relevant in the economy of most ads.

On the other hand, the second typology employs the element

of taste to make the advertised products more appealing, even if

only to ensure a certain variety of ﬂavors for the same product. The

24 F. Parasecoli

important elements are still nutritional, but consumers can turn

to taste to avoid boredom. Even in this second category, there is

little, if any, reference to actual food. Some ads display fruit, milk,

or chocolate next to the supplement. Designer Whey promotes a

peach ﬂavored bar with the catching title "Finally! Because we're

so sick and tired of chocolate." The paradox is that the ad does

not refer to real chocolate, of course, but the ersatz ﬂavor that

can be found in other bars.

The Maxxon bar ad boldly refers

to the actual act of eating and munching, usually not even con-

sidered, almost repressed. We see four images of the bar. In the

ﬁrst one, it has just been bitten, then more and more chunks of it

disappear, supposedly in the watering mouth of a reader. Under

each image, we read "Crunch . . . crunch...crunch..."and ﬁnally

"Mmmmm!" In this unusual case, the supplement is not mysteri-

ously incorporated in the body to increase muscle mass, but it is

actually chewed.

Labrada Nutrition promotes a Carb Watchers Lean Body Ba-

nana Split Meal Replacement Bar. In the ad, the bar is actually

dipped in a banana split, with whipped cream, cherries, and even

chocolate prominently displayed. This is probably the most risqu´e

image in the three magazines, but the impact is, of course, bal-

anced by the copy that points out that the bar provides 30 g of pro-

teins and just 4 g of sugar. The suggestion is that, by choosing that

product, health conscious consumers are allowed to sin with their

minds and mouths, but their bodies will not even notice it.

Pages

promoting everyday food products that one would ﬁnd at a corner

store or a supermarket are absent in Muscle & Fitness. While in

Men's Fitness,weﬁnd only a few representations, Men's Health pub-

lishes ads for Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Wendy's, V8 vegetable juice,

and Stouffer's frozen meals, and nutrition supplements become

much less frequent. The readers of the latter magazine appear to

be considered by the advertisers as full blown eating creatures, even

if the products, not necessarily ﬂat-belly friendly, refer to a kind of

food consumption that does not include any actual cooking.

From this semiotic analysis of the advertising pages, we can al-

ready draw a few conclusions about the relationships among food,

nutrition, masculinities, and muscle building, with body images

playing a paramount role in the choices of what these men—for

whom the magazines are meant—eat. Taste and sensual appre-

ciation don't play a central role. Different ﬂavorings are added

Feeding Hard Bodies 25

only to ensure variety to meals that otherwise would be always the

same. The key element here is nutrition: how much protein the

body absorbs, and how much fat it is able to burn. Readers seem

to show a certain need to be reassured in their quest for ﬁtness,

and the agency that guarantees this sense of protection is science,

connoted as exact, matter of fact, serious, and above all, masculine.

Science, considered as a legitimate masculine way of think-

ing and approaching reality, also plays a very important role in the

editorial features concerning food and nutrition, second in impor-

tance only to the stories about ﬁtness and muscle building. In the

three magazines, we ﬁnd sections with nutrition advice: all of them

quote the sources the news is taken from, and in Men's Fitness ,we

even see the face of the experts that give the tips.

Despite the

continuous reference to science, the general discourse is far from

adopting an actual scientiﬁc approach: tips are just tips. Readers

are offered bits and pieces of unrelated news about this speciﬁc

nutrient or the other, without any systematic connection.

As it of-

ten happens in diet and nutrition communication, editorial staffs

opt for clear, simple, and ready-to-apply pieces of advice, avoiding

any difﬁculty intrinsic in the subject matter.

In Muscle & Fitness, readers are told to decrease their con-

sumption of Java coffee for a leaner diet, since in an experiment

made in Norway, "the intake of chocolate, sweets, cakes, sweet bis-

cuits, pastry, and jams increased when coffee intake was higher,

and decreased when coffee intake was lower. The opposite effect

occurred with ﬁsh dishes, other drinks, as well as with physical

activity."

No explanation is given about the phenomenon, not

even tentatively. On the other hand, in Men's Fitness ,wereaders

are told to take caffeine before a workout, because "caffeine stim-

ulates the release of free fatty acids, which are utilized for energy

when you exercise, leading to fat loss."

Another feature in Men's Fitness is dedicated to soy, endorsed

for its muscle-building and protecting capacity.

The whole story

is an attempt to explain that eating soy and soy-derived products

will not transform readers into "bandy-legged yogis with torsos

the shape of Coke bottles." As a matter of fact, after reassuring

bodybuilders that the phytoestrogens, contained in soy and simi-

lar to estrogens, do not constitute a problem for masculinity, the

author afﬁrms, "real men eat tofu, in moderation." In the Nutrition

Bulletin section, Men's Health invites readers to add ﬁsh oil to their

26 F. Parasecoli

diet to avoid the risk of developing both an irregular heartbeat

and insulin resistance, to eat strawberry and black raspberries to

reduce risks of cancer, to drink soda to help quench appetite, milk

to reduce the risk of colon cancer, and wine for better breath.

Readers are presented a mass of unrelated information that seems

to play with their health fears. "Smart strategies" are proposed to

ﬁght any kind of problem connected with food.

In the Weight Loss Section of Men's Health, readers are taught

what to order at an Italian restaurant by two juxtaposed pictures.

One is a serving of lasagna with antipasto and two breadsticks (959

calories), the other is eggplant parmigiana with a side of spaghetti

with marinara sauce and two slices of garlic bread (1,246 calories).

Frankly, both look quite unappetizing. The text states the obvious,

underlying the necessity of limiting caloric intake, without provid-

ing the reader with any actual advice or information about better

and healthier eating.

Lose Fat, Build Muscle, Eat Smart

As in the case of the advertising pages, the goal of editorial fea-

tures dealing with nutritional models and attitudes is usually not

to follow a balanced and constant diet that can ensure body ﬁtness

in the long run, but rather to obtain fast results that are immedi-

ately visible on the body. The focus is on food as building material

for a better-looking, longer-living body, rather than as a source of

pleasurable experiences or a marker of cultural identity, let alone

a cherished and hated instrument for caring and nurturing. Each

magazine presents some sort of diet. For example, Muscle & Fitness

introduces King Kamali, a 6 meal, 7 snack daily program that has, at

its core, heavy and hard training. The program mixes fresh food,

such as fruit or chicken breast, with protein powders and meal

replacements.

The same issue of Muscle & Fitness also dedicates a long fea-

ture to a Crash Course in Nutrition for college students, with a

strong caveat against consuming fast food and, in general, "sweet,

salty, and fatty temptations."

Fast food is not bad, per se, as it of-

ten solves time and budget problems common to many students.

As a matter of fact, the editor lists many snacks, categorized into

"crunchy," "fruity," and "substantial," that can help youngsters ﬁght

their hunger without fattening them up. The aim is, once again,

Feeding Hard Bodies 27

to bulk up, to add muscle, and to lose fat. Male students are not

supposed to waste time cooking, which might make them look ef-

feminate. They are advised to "stock up on canned beans, frozen

vegetables, bagged pasta, and even canned tuna to provide a basis

for many nutritious meals." One single recipe is given, and that

is for batches of pasta "made ahead of time and refrigerated in

a sealed container until you're ready to assemble the meal." As a

matter of fact, all that students are supposed to do is toss some

precooked or canned food in the pasta.

Men's Fitness presents us with the 15/21 Quickstart Plan to

lose up to 15 pounds in 21 days.

For each week, a daily diet is

prescribed (not proposed) that has to be repeated, unchanged,

for seven days. The diet is composed of 6 meals, with two main

intakes and 4 snacks. Readers are also given eight "ground rules for

maximal fat loss," such as "Eat the meals in order," "Eat all the food

prescribed," "Don't cheat." The language transpires sheer severity:

If you want to lose fat, you have to be totally dedicated, even ready

to sacriﬁce yourself on the kitchen stove, for you are required to

boil eggs, steam vegetables and ﬁsh, and bake potatoes. The feature

is illustrated with picture of fresh, if unappetizing, food, in light

yellow dishes and bowls.

The same magazine, nevertheless, deals with the issue of daily

food intake, in an article aimed at teaching readers to maintain

the muscle they have earned in months of training without losing

deﬁnition.

The story features appetizing pictures of simple and

nourishing dishes, just like those one could see in a food maga-

zine. Readers are given another series of clear rules. "The idea is

to control as much as possible of what goes into what you eat." The

control issue is paramount: If one does not keep one's otherwise

wild appetites in check, one can neither lose fat and build muscle,

nor maintain one's body frame. Once again, most of the dishes

proposed in the maintenance menu require little or no prepara-

tion. If they do, it's not mentioned. So readers are told to eat lean

turkey, chicken breasts, or salmon, but no information is given

about how to ﬁx them.

Do Real Men Cook?

When actual food is advertised, it is ready-made or fast food. Poten-

tial readers are not supposed to have any connection with buying,

28 F. Parasecoli

storing, and cooking food, all activities apparently belonging to

the feminine. Male subjects cannot perform activities related to

the preparation of food without affecting their masculine traits

and the inscription of these in a cultural order that is deeply gen-

dered. By reiteration, the norms intrinsic to these practices and

processes, highly regulated and ritualized, are likely to be incorpo-

rated in the very body of the individual, which thus enters the do-

main of cultural intelligibility.

They constitute the conditions of

emergence and operation, the boundaries and stability of the gen-

dered subject. Thus, the production or materialization of a mascu-

line subject is also its subjection, its submission to rules and norms,

including the ones regulating the kitchen. The embodiment of

gender through reiterated practices, including food related activi-

ties, reveals the inﬂuence of power structures that, in Foucaultian

fashion, are omnipresent and pervasive, not necessarily connected

with speciﬁc institutions, and not always imposed on the subject

from the outside.

At any rate, the food and supplement indus-

try seems eager to and capable of exploiting these elements to

encourage readers to buy products that reinforce their perceived

masculinities by avoiding gendered activities, such as buying food

and cooking, while turning them into better consumers of high

added value, hence more expensive, products.

Usually, no cooking is required from readers. In Muscle &

Fitness,weﬁnd a feature about eating ﬁsh.

"Bodybuilders, grab

your can openers—try these 10 scrumptious, high-protein seafood

recipes you can prepare in minutes." Readers are given alternatives

to the boring old tuna, such as canned or preserved salmon, clams,

crab, and shrimp. Again, these dishes can be assembled more

than cooked, saving time and sparing the readers' self-esteem.

On the pages in Men's Fitness, triple-deckers become "a tower of

muscle-building power."

The title is reinforced by the picture of

a never-ending series of superposed layers of sandwich, ﬁlled with

a scrumptious bounty of food. The abundance is so overwhelm-

ing that the sandwich passes the limits of the page and continues

on the next one. Then, of course, limitations are given about what

kind of bread, cheese, and condiments are to be used. Again, there

is no cooking involved. This is real men's food, even if it gingerly

avoids mayonnaise, full-fat cheese, and fattening bread (described

as "bullets to be dodged").

Feeding Hard Bodies 29

Men's Health has a section called, "A man, a can, a plan,"

that gives a recipe for "Beer-n-sausage bake: a tasty, ﬁlling, and

alcohol-tinged meal."

This is the quintessential macho meal:

cans, beer, and no cooking. Well, actually there is some cook-

ing involved. A sausage has to be grilled in a skillet and then

put into the oven with the other ingredients, but we are still at

a manageable level of assemblage. Anyway, everybody knows that

cooking meat, as on the occasion of barbecues, is a man's thing.

Exceptions are rare. In a story aimed at promoting pork, after

reassuring readers of its leanness, Muscle & Fitness entices its read-

ers with tips for making it tastier ("fruits go well with pork") and

even gives instructions for a tropical stir-fried pork tenderloin, re-

inforced by an inviting picture of the dish. It goes without say-

ing, we are given the exact quantity of calories and nutrients per

serving.

In another section of Muscle & Fitness, Laura Creavalle (the

author of the above mentioned cookbooks advertised in the same

magazine) gives the recipe for a home-baked and healthy fruit and

nut bread.

The recipe is simple and quick, and while the text

refers to "moist, delicious cakes that warm the hearts of young

and old alike," it also warns against the excess of fat in baked

goods. It is interesting that the cook is a woman, and while she

refers to the emotional connotations of food, she also puts herself

under the banners of the ﬁght against inordinate consumption of

victuals.

Again, dedicating time and effort in ﬁxing meals is perceived

as connected to the nurturing role that is considered typical of

females. Women re-afﬁrm their nature by performing their role

of caregiver. They are responsible with feeding not only their

own, but also others' bodies, ensuring their survival, but submit-

ting them to the constant temptation of the unchecked, always

invading ﬂesh. This short examination of food preparation prac-

tices, as explained in the feature articles, reconﬁrms the conclu-

sions deducted from the analysis of the advertising pages. Cook-

ing is perceived as one of the most identiﬁable performative traits

of femininity. Men should avoid participating in the transforma-

tion of food at the stove, an almost alchemical activity danger-

ously close to the growth of ﬂesh, inherently difﬁcult to keep in

check.

30 F. Parasecoli

How to Feed a Naked Woman

As a matter of fact, according to Men's Health Guide to Women, there

is an occasion when a man is supposed to cook: When he wakes

up after a night of sex, and he wants to ﬁx breakfast for the naked

woman dozing in his bed.

"Once you get her into bed, these

breakfasts will keep her there," afﬁrms the writer, who, being a

woman, knows what she is talking about. The ﬁve recipes she gives

are simple and quite fast. The point is to nourish the body in

ways that are propitious to more sex, obviously the sole goal of all

the cooking. So readers are told that the crustless quiche they are

taught to prepare is "high in protein to help control SHBG, a sub-

stance that makes it harder for your body to use testosterone and

arginine. Argigine is an amino acid that improves the blood ﬂow

to your penis and may also improve sexual stamina for both men

and women." In the introduction to Eggs Benedict with Broiled

Grapefruit the author states:

Eggs, bacon, English mufﬁn: the combination provides extra zinc, a mineral

that she needs to stay well lubricated and that you need to keep producing

semen; You'll pick up niacin, too—a B vitamin essential for the secretion

of histamine, a chemical that helps trigger explosive orgasms. And since

studies have found that too much or too little dietary fat can decrease levels

of libido-boosting testosterone, the recipe has been tweaked to provide an

optimal 28 percent of calories from fat. The pink grapefruit? It's for her;

women like pink stuff.

Is that not a known fact? Nevertheless, readers are clearly advised

to avoid thinking about women, except as objects of sexual desire,

waiting in bed to be fed. "Remember when your mom used to make

French toasts on Saturday mornings? Try not to think about it.

Instead, think about thiamin and riboﬂavin." Thank goodness sci-

ence is there to help men achieve their goals and, to some extent, to

reassure their apparently wobbling self-conﬁdence. Recipes have

more the function of a placebo that works like Viagra, rather than

a sensual, sexual experience to be shared with one's partner. Taste

is not mentioned once.

Herbs and other natural ingredients are also supposed to help

with one's sex life.

They surely will not hurt, and they might actu-

ally help, "whether you're an old man battling occasional bouts of

impotence or a younger man whose sex drive is sometimes slowed

Feeding Hard Bodies 31

by stress." A whole list is given, with speciﬁc explanations for each

substance. A similar approach is evident in a feature in Men's Health,

"The Sex for Life Diet."

The article you are about to read is based on the simple notion that a) men

like food and b) men like sex, so c) wouldn't it be great if you could actually

eat your way to more fun in the bedroom? Grunt if you agree. Or maybe just

sharpen your knife and fork. With help from nutritionists and the latest

research, we've discovered 10 superfoods that can help you at every age

and stage of sex life—whether it's seducing women in your 20s, producing

Mini-Me's in your 30s, or inducing your equipment to keep working in your

40s and beyond.

Science is invoked not only in the content of the story, but the

whole argument is presented like a robust, if actually fake, Aris-

totelian syllogism. Men act according to logic, even when their

bodies crave sex and food, and live their lives according to neat

plans. In your 20s, you have fun; in your 30s, you concentrate on

reproduction (not out of love, but with the goal of creating repli-

cas of your narcissistic self); in your 40s, there is nothing much left

to do but worry about your faltering pleasure tools.

In the pictures, we see a handsome couple engaged in various

activities. In one, the smiling, blond, thin, and cute woman feeds

pizza to her muscle-bound, tight T-shirt wearing partner. In the

second, he has just dipped a strawberry in whipped cream, while

she coyly averts her gaze from him, with a ﬁnger in her mouth. In

the third, she holds a glass of red wine in her hand, while he smiles

and leans on her. The images make a clear distinction between

male food (pizza) and female food (strawberries, whipped cream,

wine). Wine seems to haunt men as a dangerous world, often per-

ceived as intrinsically feminine, that they are obliged to cope with

and that causes performance anxieties. Men wander in uncharted

territories, far from the reassuring haven of beer. In the article,

"22 Ways to Make an Impression," readers are given a few basic

tips:

"11. Never bring out a half-consumed bottle of wine sealed

with aluminum foil. 12. When choosing a bottle of wine to take to

a dinner party, spend between $10 and $15. That's for a bottle, not

a gallon. 13. When a wine steward gives you a cork, sniff it. Don't

check it by plunging it rapidly in and out of your pursed lips."

In other words, never mimic fellatio in front of your date,

as allusive to future pleasure as that may be. Why is the "wine

32 F. Parasecoli

steward" supposed to give you the cork to sniff? If that operation

needs to be done, it should be his task, and he will pour some wine

in your glass to swirl and, yes, sniff. The story is written for men

who clearly are not used to ordering wine, and prefer eating at

the local diner, or even greasy spoon, rather than at a restaurant

where a somehow menacing and mysterious "wine steward" might

embarrass them. We ﬁnd another hint to the anxiety provoked

by dining experiences in "24 Rules for a Successful Relationship,"

which interestingly mentions dinner in the same sentence with the

choice of living quarters or, even, reproduction.

Put your foot down the next time both of you are making plans for dinner—

or, heck, deciding where to live and whether to have children. Women rate

agreeable men as more attractive than stubborn ones, but only if the nicer

guys have a dominant streak. If strength and decisiveness are missing, nice

guys come off as meek.

In only one instance taste is mentioned together with sex. In "9

Tricks of Domestic Bliss," giving tips on where to have sex when at

home, we read:

Use a sturdy wooden table, which is more comfortable than the ﬂoor and a

better height than the kitchen counter, says Louanne Cole Weston, Ph.D.,

a sex therapist in Fair Oaks, California. Have your partner lie back on the

table with her pelvis near the edge. Then reach for some food—anything

that can be licked off is fair game. Giving your tongue something tasty to

aim for can help you dwell in one spot longer—and she'll love that.

Cunnilingus can be fun, but it is better to give it more taste. Here,

women are equaled to food, put on a table, and eaten. They don't

necessarily taste good though.

Balanced Diets, Controlled Bodies

In all the examined material, a strong desire to control not only

one's body appearance, but also to curb one's desires and appetites

is evident. A ﬁt male body becomes the material expression of one's

dominion over the self. Muscle & Fitness features a story about "tam-

ing the craving for sugary treats."

Sweets are interestingly con-

nected with women, either because they supposedly yearn for them

more than men do, "especially during that week of the month,"

Feeding Hard Bodies 33

or because they control the administration of sweets in the house-

hold, and not only for children. The professional bodybuilder,

Garrett Downing, tells readers,

Since I have problems with portion control, I put my wife in charge. She's

the keeper of the sweets. She'll give me one or two cookies and hide the

rest from me. Otherwise, I could actually sit down and eat an entire box...I

think if you try to eat clean all the time, you get to a point where you get a

little insane. Having that bit of a sweet treat brings a little sanity back into

your life. If you're training consistently and the rest of your diet is intact,

occasional treats won't do damage. When you don't train consistently but

cheat frequently, that's when they catch up. Even when you're dieting, you

can allow yourself a treat—a couple of cookies, a slice of pie or cake.

The woman as the "keeper of the sweet" is quite a powerful, if invol-

untary, metaphor. The phrase reveals an ongoing struggle between

a "clean" diet and the unrelenting desire for sensory satisfaction

that can lead the more dedicated man to "cheating." Sweets—

and appetite in general—are clearly perceived as feminine. This

is a recurrent—though often latent and disguised—element that

plays an important role in structuring the nutritional discourse in

these magazines. As a matter of fact, only women appear capable

of keeping men's desire in check, probably because they are sup-

posed to deal constantly with their own. The agency of desire, thus,

becomes the agency controlling desire. This ambivalence reminds

us of Melanie Klein's theories on the ambivalent desires and fears

of devouring and being devoured in infants.

According to the

famed psychoanalyst, the mother's breast, and any other source of

nourishment, that ensures satisfaction and then disappears, is per-

ceived as both good and bad, creating frustrations in infants and

cannibalistic drives aiming at the destruction and ingestion of the

desired objects. Since infants experience their own cannibalistic

drives as dangerous, they protect themselves by externalizing and

projecting them outside, on to the breast, from which they fear re-

taliation in the form of ingestion. Thus, desire and hunger are per-

ceived as potentially destructive and, for that reason, projected on

the outside. This anxiety ridden dualism that characterizes the ﬁrst

months of life—deﬁned by Klein as "paranoid-schizoid"—appears

to be successively sublimated in the dichotomy that, according to

the feminist theorist Susan Bordo, haunts Western civilization from

Plato on. She writes, "the construction of the body as something

34 F. Parasecoli

apart from the true self (whether conceived as soul, mind, spirit,

will, creativity, freedom ...) and as undermining the best efforts

of that self."

As it happens, when gender is applied to this dual-

ism, women are on the side of the lower bodily drives, embodying

appetites and desires that weigh down men in their attempt to

achieve freedom from materiality. In the passage from the feature,

"Taming the Craving for Sugary Treats," we quoted, women are the

keepers of the occasional but controlled treats that allow men to

attain the perfect trained body by freeing them of excessive stress

about food.

If we follow the Kleinian hypothesis, sweet treats,

of which the writer acknowledges the irresistible appeal, material-

ize the schizoid attitude of infants desiring their mothers' breast

and being frustrated at them when they do not get total satisfac-

tion. The desire for limitless enjoyment cannot be met; the craved

symbiosis between the child and the mother, where the infant fan-

tasizes to get rid of all individuality, is unattainable and intrinsi-

cally impossible, because the body is always already inscribed as

singular and autonomous in the cultural order, despite its inher-

ent fragmentation.

Similarly, the alluring and threatening sweets,

symbolizing unbridled pleasure, must be kept at a distance, sub-

mitted to the woman who knows how to deal with this kind of

danger.

In the development of these dynamics leading to a loss of the

individual distinction that is clearly perceived as a masculine trait,

women coincide with the dimension that has been deﬁned by Ju-

lia Kristeva as the abject, "a threat that seems to emanate from

an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the

possible, the tolerable, the thinkable ...The abject has only one

quality of the object—that of being opposed to I."

As Mary Dou-

glas has shown in her study on purity and danger, the abject is

what subverts order, codiﬁed systems, and stable identities. In this

speciﬁc context, sweets endanger the whole effort to build a dis-

tinctively masculine, muscular body. They belong to a dimension

both wanted and, precisely for this reason, demonized, in that it

could condemn the male body to lose its frontiers that were gained

with such great difﬁculty.

As Susan Bordo has pointed out, the body is identiﬁed "as

animal, as appetite, as deceiver, as prison of the soul and con-

founder of its projects." It is always in opposition with the spiritual

self and rationality that mirror the divine.

Historically, Bordo

Feeding Hard Bodies 35

argues, women have been identiﬁed with the debasing dimension

of the body, chaotic and undisciplined. Men, on the other side, are

supposed to reﬂect the spirit. Masculinity is embodied in their con-

trol over the ﬂesh, a metaphorical equivalent of their dominion

over female unchecked carnality. The dichotomy is inscribed in the

male body as a series of clear oppositions between hard and soft,

thick and thin, and, of course, ﬁt and ﬂabby. Food is a temptation

that can make man fall, unless it is stripped down to its nutritional

components, puriﬁed by the intervention of scientiﬁc rationality.

Within these nutrients, the main contest is between protein, the

building material for good muscle, and fat, the symbol of the un-

controllable ﬂesh. Carbohydrates are in a middle ground; they are

the fuel that allows us to work out, but they can easily fall in the

realm of the enemy if they are consumed in excessive quantity.

The battle is fought in every man's body, and it takes strenuous

efforts. Food and nutrition often play an important role in the dis-

course proposed in this literature, deploying scientiﬁc language

to reassure readers of the effectiveness of the advice given. This

rhetoric proposes a strong desire to control not only one's body

appearance, but also to curb one's desires and appetites. A ﬁt body

becomes the material expression of one's dominion over the self,

over the ﬂesh and appetites that often appear as tainted by a def-

inite feminine character. Control clearly does not imply cooking;

most of the dishes proposed in those magazines require little or

no preparation. Cooking food seems to constitute a threat to the

reader's masculinity; men consume, they do not get involved with

the chores related to food. Men's ﬁtness magazines present them-

selves as scientiﬁc weapons, offering practical advice and helping

readers to discern when food is a friend and when, more often, a

foe.

Notes

1. See also Connell, R. W. 1995. Masculinities. University of California Press.

Connell, R.W. 2000. The Men and the Boys. University of California Press.

Bordo, S. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New

York: Farra, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

2. See the company's ofﬁcial website, www.rodale.com

3. Harrison, G., Pope, Katharine, A., Phillips, R. O. 2000. The Adonis Complex.

Touchstone Books, New York.

36 F. Parasecoli

4. Connell, R. W. 2000. The Man and the Boys. Polity, Cambridge, p. 12.

5. Connell, R. W. 1995. Masculinities. University of California Press, Berkeley CA.

6. Connell, R. W. 2000. The Man and the Boys. Polity, Cambridge, p. 57.

7. Bronki, M. 1998. The Male Body in the Western Mind. Harvard Gay and Lesbian

review, 5(4):28.

8. Jeffords, S. 1989. The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War.

Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

9. Wienke, C. 1998. Negotiating the male body: Men, masculinity, and cultural

ideas. The Journal of Men's Studies, 6(3):255.

10. Gerschick T. and Miller, A. 1994. Gender Identities at the Crossroads of Mas-

culinity and Physical Disability. Masculinites, 2:34–55.

11. Marion Nestle. 2002. Food Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press,

pp. 1–30.

12. Naomi Wolf. 1991. The Beauty Myth: How images of beauty are used against women.

New York: W. Morrow.

13. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 1.

14. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, pp. 138–139.

15. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 87.

16. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, pp. 58–60.

17. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, pp. 20–21.

18. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 204.

19. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 17.

20. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 65.

21. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 70.

22. Muscle & Fitness, November 2002, p. 57.

23. Men's Fitness, "10 ways to leave your blubber," October 2002, pp. 46–50.

24. For the reasons behind this approach, see Marion Nestle, 2002. Food Politics.

University of California Press.

25. Muscle & Fitness, "Cut back on Java for a leaner, healthier diet," November

2002, p. 44.

26. Men's Fitness, "Expert's tip: Cut the bad stuff in half," October 2002, p. 50.

27. Men's Fitness, "The power of soy," October 2002, pp. 134–136.

28. Men's Health, "Nutrition bulletin," October 2002, p. 52.

29. Men's Health, "Eat this not that," October 2002, p. 72.

30. Muscle & Fitness, "Crash course in nutrition," October 2002, pp. 158–162.

31. Men's Fitness, "Quick start three week program," October 2002, p. 77.

32. Men's Fitness, "Going the distance," October 2002, pp. 118–121.

33. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter. Routledge, New York 1993, pp. 1–23. Butler

limits herself to sex, but I do think that also food can be approached in the

same way. She wonders: "Given that normative heterosexuality is clearly not

the only regulatory regime operative in the production of bodily contours

or setting the limits of bodily intelligibility, it makes sense to ask what other

regimes of regulatory production contour the materiality of bodies." p. 17.

34. "Power must be understood in the ﬁrst instance as a multiplicity of force rela-

tions, as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations,

transforms, strengthens or reverses them: as the support which these force

relations ﬁnd in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the

Feeding Hard Bodies 37

contrary, the disjunction and contradictions which isolate them from one

another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose gen-

eral design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus,

in the formulations of the law, in the various social hegemonies." Michel

Foucault, 1990. The History of Sexuality Vol. I. Vintage Books, New York, p. 93.

35. Muscle & Fitness, "Go ﬁsh," November 2002, pp. 168–174.

36. Men's Fitness, "Science of sandwich," October 2002, 96–98.

37. Men's Health ,"Aman, a can, a plan," October 2002, pp. 66.

38. Muscle & Fitness, "Pork slims down," November 2002, p. 68.

39. Muscle & Fitness, "Home-baked and healthy," November 2002, p. 206.

40. Men's Health Guide to Women, "How to feed a naked woman," October 2002,

pp. 56–59.

41. Men's Health Guide to Women, "Better sex naturally," October 2002, pp. 146–

151.

42. Men's Health, "The sex for life diet," October 2002, pp. 156–159.

43. Men's Health Guide to Women, "22 ways to make an impression," October 2002,

pp. 4–5.

44. Men's Health Guide to Women, "24 rules for a successful relationship," October

2002, pp. 166–167.

45. Men's Health Guide to Women ,"9tricks of domestic bliss," October 2002,

pp. 208–209.

46. Men's Fitness, "Sweet tooth?" November 2002, p. 210.

47. The Selected Melanie Klein, 1986. Edited by Juliet Mitchell, The Free Press.

48. Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable weight. University of California Press, p. 3.

49. Jacques Lacan, Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je. In

Ecrits, Editions du Seuil, Pairs 1966. See also Slavoj Zizek, 1989. The Supreme

Object of Ideology.V erso, London, pp. 121–129.

50. Kristeva, J. 1982. Powers of Horror. Columbia University Press, New York, p. 1.

51. Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight. University of California Press, p. 3.

... L'associazione tra big men e big food si riproduce attraverso pratiche alimentari che costruiscono una maschilità fisicamente forte e sessualmente potente. Al tempo stesso, però, la cura del corpo tonico e muscolare apre all'adozione di regimi alimentari che devono nutrire un corpo che da macchina sembra farsi sempre più progetto riflessivo: il riferimento alla scelta del cibo appare sempre più come una forma di autocontrollo e di cura di sé (Parasecoli 2005), e le forme di pratica alimentare maschile sembrano farsi più complesse, plurali e riflessive (Sobal 2005;Mycek 2018;Newcombe et al. 2012). ...

Raffaella Ferrero
Alice Scavarda

The paper explores the interpretative repertoires with which adolescents and young men give sense to their everyday food practices, as well as they shape their masculinities. Through the use of photovoice, participatory technique that implies the subjective production of images, we illustrate the different positioning and distancing from the available repertoires about the social construction of food and gender. Adolescents and young men

Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco

This chapter delves into the role played by sagre in shaping the perception of the history and place of the community. Focusing on the ethnographic cases of the Fasolà Festival of Oltrepasso and the Pink Asparagus Festival of Mezzago, the chapter points out that a sagra is a device able to reterritorialize the community fostering a new sense of belonging and participation as well as a positive understanding of the future.

Emily J. H. Contois

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food - edited by J. Michelle Coghlan March 2020

Francesco Screti

In this paper I analyze the construction of masculinity in contemporary advertising discourse. The dataset consists of 5 videos, which constitute the series of ads broadcast in the Swiss TV to advertise the meat product Swiss firm Bell. The approach is multidisciplinary and within the frame of the Critical Discourse Studies, especially for the militant stance of the researcher as agent of the social change. Given the multimodal nature of data, I will analyze images, sounds, and written texts. The main tenets of the conceptual framework are: a) the banality of ads as discourse, and therefore its profound and subtle power of creating and spreading ideological meanings and representations; b) the idea that gender is socially constructed; c) the anthropological connection between meat, barbecue, and masculinity. In these ads the gender stereotypes, and the social expectations on how men and women should behave, are implicit assumptions of the argumentation, which work at semantic as well as conversational level. The persuasive force of the ads fully relies on the receivers' acceptance of this assumption. In so doing, the ads implicitly contribute to the construction of gender and perpetuate gender stereotypes, in particular on a certain traditional and conservative idea of masculinity: men do not cry, do not sing or dance, they are insensitive, and hirsute. These ads deserve to be studied for how surreptitiously (re)produce the gender, thanks to their banality and humor.

Francesco Screti

En el presente artículo se analiza la construcción de la masculinidad en discursos publicitarios contemporáneos. El corpus de la investigación está compuesto por 5 vídeos, que constituyen una serie de anuncios transmitidos en la televisión suiza entre 2012 y 2014 por la empresa suiza de productos cárnicos Bell. La perspectiva adoptada es multidisciplinaria y se encuadra en la tradición de los Estudios Críticos del Discurso, especialmente en cuanto al posicionamiento militante del investigador como actor del cambio social. En particular el análisis se basa en una concepción multimodal del discurso, lo cual se traduce en un análisis cualitativo de imágenes, sonidos, y textos escritos. Los principales postulados sobre los que descansa el marco conceptual del análisis serán la banalidad de los discursos publicitarios y de ahí, su poder en la creación y difusión de significados y representaciones ideológicos; la idea de que el género es construido socialmente; la conexión antropológica entre la carne, las barbacoas, y la masculinidad. Los anuncios presuponen implícitamente las expectativas de género, es decir estereotipos sobre cómo deben comportarse hombres y mujeres, en la argumentación, esto es, plantean ciertos comportamientos como un presupuesto compartido en un nivel semántico y conversacional. La argumentación que permite el funcionamiento (es decir la capacidad persuasiva) del vídeo se basa enteramente en la aceptación de este presupuesto. De este modo los anuncios contribuyen de manera implícita, pero no por eso menos potente, a la (re)creación de estereotipos de género y acaban por perpetuar cierta idea de masculinidad muy tradicional y conservadora: el hombre no llora, no es sensible, no canta, no baila, tiene pelos. Dichos anuncios merecen ser estudiados justamente por cómo (re)producen subrepticiamente el género, también gracias a su banalidad y comicidad.

Katheryn Twiss

Cambridge Core - Archaeology: General Interest - The Archaeology of Food - by Katheryn C. Twiss

Chris Wienke

In an attempt to understand the relationship between the body and masculinity, this paper explores the extent to which body image has significance in men's lives. I begin by considering the cultural ideal of the male body as conceived within the context of popular culture. Citing both cultural examples and empirical evidence, I argue that the muscular body type represents the dominant cultural ideal. I then explain how the present paper builds on prior research on the male body image. My argument here is that prior research has neglected to study the meaning of body image from the perspective of men's everyday lives and therefore provides an incomplete assessment of men's views of body image. In response, this paper draws from interview data compiled from a larger study, illustrating the different ways men relate to cultural ideals of male bodies, how men adjust to the demands of ideals, and how men normalize their own bodily condition. This paper suggests that men develop a number of complex strategies to negotiate the meaning of their bodies in view of cultural ideals of male physiques.