Boys, Body Image And Sexualization: An Equal Opportunity Destroyer

[seabeyond]

D’Angelo, ‘Untitled,’ and What Happens When Men Get Treated Like Women

Amy Wallace’s profile of D’Angelo in GQ is fantastic, and not least because it breaks down how the video for “Untitled,” one of the sexier things ever produced, contributed to his unraveling. In other words, D’Angelo got treated like a woman, and it was not exceptionally good for his mental health:

But as D began to fall apart, the video would be the only thing many fans remembered. “The video was the line of demarcation,” says Harris. “It sent him spinning out of control.”…The trouble began right away, at the start of the Voodoo tour in L.A. “It was a week of warm-up gigs at House of Blues just to kick off the tour, draw some attention, break in the band,” says Alan Leeds, D’s tour manager then and now. “And from the beginning, it’s ‘Take it off!’ “…

D’Angelo felt tortured, Questlove says, by the pressure to give the audience what it wanted. Worried that he didn’t look as cut as he did in the video, he’d delay shows to do stomach crunches. He’d often give in, peeling off his shirt, but he resented being reduced to that. Wasn’t he an artist? Couldn’t the audience hear the power of his music and value him for that? He would explode, Questlove recalls, and throw things. Sometimes he’d have to be coaxed not to cancel shows altogether. When I ask D about this, he downplays his suffering. Watching him pull hard on another Newport, I realize that he finds it far easier to confess his addictions than his insecurities about his corporeal self. Self-destructing with a coke spoon—while ill-advised—has a badass edge. Fretting over what Questlove has called “some Kate Moss shit” seems anything but manly…

What’s fascinating about that Questlove quote is that it implies that you shouldn’t be affected by how other people perceive your body. It’s a perspective that makes men feel better about ogling, about demanding. If it’s flattery, there’s no ugly undertone to it, no sense that the person you’re telling to take it off owes you, that you could turn on them if they don’t comply. But when a man experiences, gets driven crazy by it, it’s not really “some Kate Moss shit” anymore, and it’s not complementary. So much of pop culture is like this. When a man experiences objectification, or stays at home with his kids, suddenly, this arena that women have been playing in for decades is a revelation. How does it feel, indeed?

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/05/23/489372/dangelo/




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 might raise an eyebrow or two.




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.




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.)

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.

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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.

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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.

http://www.shapingyouth.org/boys-body-image-and-sexualization-an-equal-opportunity-destroyer/



my son was in 7th grade during the twilight popularity. we often had conversation (often) about the girls behavior in class talking about the guys in the movie. and my sons sneering and scornful comments about the guys finding any excuse to take their shirts off. was a big thing in that period for the boys. i found the conversations interesting. it also gave us an opportunity to discuss the whole issue.

[Blue_Tires]

1. thanks for this...

kick

[ismnotwasm]

2. The problem is

To me anyway, is that we can't discuss or visualize the body aesthetic without objectification---a different deal than finding someone sexy and desirable. Its not taught nor even encouraged. and our white bread standards of beauty is so banal.

Poses often put models positions of vulnerability-- with no safety apparent. If someone in advertising wants to go all evo-psych, there it is, prey and predator acted out on a sexual stage disguised as entertainment or commerce. This seems to be our current standard for the erotic and I just find it incredibly limiting and, obviously incredibly damaging as well.