Questions and Assignments for Susan Bordo’s “Beauty (Re)Discovers The Male Body”
Read Susan Bordo’s essay, “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body.” Below, you’ll find some questions that invite you to work further with the selection.
QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING
1.
This is a long essay. The writing operates under a set of expectations that does not value efficiency. The writing says, “It is better to take time with this, better to take time rather than hurry, rather than rushing to say what must be said, rather than pushing to be done. Slow down, relax, take your time. This can be fun.” While there is attention to a “thesis,” the organizing principle of this essay is such that the real work and the real pleasure lie elsewhere. Work and pleasure. As you reread, pay particular attention to how Bordo controls the pace and direction of the essay, where she prolongs the discussion and where and when she shifts direction. Think of this as a way for her (and you) to get work done. And think about it as a way of organizing the pleasure of the text. Be prepared to describe how she does this and whether it works for you (or doesn’t). And be prepared to talk about the possibilities of adapting this strategy (a strategy of more rather than less) in your own writing.
2.
This is a long essay divided into subsections. The subsections mark stages in the presentation. The subsections allow you to think about form in relation to units larger than the paragraph but smaller than the essay. As you reread, pay attention to these sections. How are they organized internally? How are they arranged? How do they determine the pace or rhythm of your reading, the tonality or phrasing of the text? Which is the slowest, for example? Which is the loudest? And why? And where are they placed? What do they do to the argument?
3.
Bordo is a distinctive and stylish writer. She is also one of many writers who are thinking about visual culture and popular culture (about movies, TV, and advertisements) in relation to (what Bordo refers to as) “consumer capitalism.” For those who know this work, she makes use of someterms and strategies common to cultural studies. One is to think about “subject position.” Bordo says that when she saw the Calvin Klein ad, “I had my first real taste of what it’s like to inhabit this visual culture as a man.” Another related strategy is to think about how and where one is positioned, as subject or object, in the moment of vision, a moment of looking, when you are defined by the “gaze” of another or when your “gaze” is the source of definition. She says, for example, “For many men, both gay and straight, to be so passively dependent on the gaze of another person for one’s sense of self-worth is incompatible with being a real man.” She works this out in the section where she talks about Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (paras. 7–11). As you reread the chapter, pay particular attention to where and how Bordo invokes and/or inhabits the “subject position” of people different from herself. How are these differences defined? (You might make a list.) Where is she most convincing? least convincing? And, finally, be prepared to speak back to the text from what you take to be your own “subject position.” How does it look to you?
4.
At one point, Bordo speaks directly to you and invites you into her project: “So the next time you see a Dockers or Haggar ad, think of it not only as an advertisement for khakis but also as an advertisement for a certain notion of what it means to be a man.” You don’t have to be limited to Dockers, Haggar, or khaki, but as you reread the essay, keep your eye out for advertisements that come your way, advertisements that seem perfect for thinking along with Bordo, for thinking her thoughts but also for thinking about how things have changed or might be seen differently. Clip these or copy them and bring them to class.
ASSIGNMENTS FOR WRITING
1.
Bordo looks back to the history of advertising (the “cultural genealogy of the ads I’ve been discussing”), and she works directly with the ads that prompted and served this chapter in her book. These images are a key part of the writing.
Bordo also speaks directly to you and invites you into her project: “So the next time you see a Dockers or Haggar ad, think of it not only as an advertisement for khakis but also as an advertisement for a certain notion of what it means to be a man.” You don’t have to be limited to Dockers, Haggar, or khaki, but as you reread the essay and prepare for this writing assignment, keep your eye out for advertisements that come your way, advertisements that seem perfect for thinking along with Bordo (or advertisements that seem like interesting counter-examples). Clip these or copy them so that you can use them, as she does, as material for writing.
Write an essay in which you take up Bordo’s invitation. You should assume an audience that has not read Bordo (or not read her work recently), so you will need to take time to present the terms and direction of her argument. Your goal, however, is to extend her project to your moment in time, where advertising may very well have moved on to different images or men and strategies of presentation. Bordo is quite specific about her age and experience, her point of view. You should be equally specific. You, too, should establish your point of view. You are placed at a different moment in time, your experience is different, your exposure to images has prepared you differently. You write from a different subject position. Your job, then, is not simply to reproduce Bordo’s project but to extend it, to refine it, to put it to the test.
2.
The first two second-reading questions point attention to the length of the essay and to its organization. Here, in effect, is what they say:
“Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” is a long essay. The writing operates under a set of expectations that does not value efficiency. The writing says, “It is better to take time with this, better to take time rather than hurry, rather than rushing to say what must be said, rather than pushing to be done. Slow down, relax, take your time. This can be fun.” While there is attention to a “thesis,” the organizing principle of this essay is such that the real work and the real pleasure lie elsewhere. Work and pleasure. As you reread, pay particular attention to how Bordo controls the pace and direction of the essay, where she prolongs the discussion and where and when she shifts direction. Think of this as a way for her (and you) to get work done. And think about it as a way of organizing the pleasure of the text.
This is a long essay divided into subsections. The subsections mark stages in the presentation. The subsections allow you to think about form in relation to units larger than the paragraph but smaller than the essay. As you reread, pay attention to these sections. How are they organized internally? How are they arranged? How do they determine the pace or rhythm of your reading, the tonality or phrasing of the text? Which is the slowest, for example? Which is the loudest? And why? And where are they placed? What do they do to the argument?
Take time to reread and to think these questions through. It has become common for scholars and teachers to think about the pleasure, even the “erotics” of the text. This is not, to be sure, the usual language of the composition classroom. Write an essay in which you describe the pleasures (and, if you choose, the problems) of Bordo’s writing. Describe how it is organized, and how it organizes your time and attention. Describe how it works (or doesn’t) for you as a reader, how it works (or doesn’t) for her as a writer and thinker. You can, to be sure, make reference to other things you are reading or have read or to the writing you are doing (and have done) in school.
3.
Bordo assumes, always, that the representations of men’s bodies are generally read (or viewed) in the context of the similar use of women’s bodies — in art, in advertising, in visual popular culture (including film and television). For this assignment, choose two sources — one ad directed, you feel, primarily to men and another ad directed primarily to women — or you might look more generally at all of the ads in two magazines, one directed (you feel) primarily to men and another to women. Write an essay in which you use Bordo’s essay, and its claims, to think through your examples. You will need to take time to present your examples (including, ideally, the images) and Bordo’s understanding of the role of gender in the ways images of the body are designed, presented, and read. How, that is, can you both present and extend Bordo’s work on gender and advertising?
4.
Bordo says that when she saw the Calvin Klein ad, “I had my first real taste of what it’s like to inhabit this visual culture as a man.” Throughout the essay she makes reference to her “subject position” and to the subject position of other viewers, both real and imagined — viewers younger or older, viewers of another race or ethnicity, men, viewers who are gay rather than straight. As you prepare to write this essay, reread the chapter (see the “Questions for a Second Reading”), and pay particular attention to those moments when Bordo speaks to the effects of particular ads, and when she speaks from her or from another subject position. Think carefully about how she is “reading” and responding to these images. Think with equal care about what you see and how you respond; think, that is, about how you might articulate the reactions from your “subject position” or from those that Bordo has not yet been able to imagine. Choose one or two of her examples and write about them as she sees and understands them, but also as you see or understand them. How do these images look to you and at you? How might you speak back to Bordo? Make sure to develop both positions with care and detail. And, at the end, think about how you might best explain the differences.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
1.
In “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” Bordo refers to John Berger and his work in Ways of Seeing, although she refers to a different chapter than the one included here. In general, however, both Berger and Bordo are concerned with how we see and read images; both are concerned to correct the ways images are used and read; both trace the ways images serve the interests of money and power; both texts are written to teach readers how and why they should pay a different kind of attention to the images around them.
For this assignment, use Bordo’s work to reconsider Berger’s. Write an essay in which you consider the two chapters as examples of an ongoing project. Berger’s essay precedes Bordo’s by about a quarter of a century. If you look closely at one or two of their examples, and if you look at the larger concerns of their arguments, are they saying the same things? doing the same work? If so, how? And why is such work still necessary? If not, how do their projects differ? And how might you explain those differences?
2.
Like Bordo, Susan Griffin in “Our Secret” (p. 231 of the print book) is working as a feminist social historian. She takes familiar social practices (advertising, representations of the past and of the self) and attempts to help readers see them differently, not as simply natural or arbitrary but as practices that have important social and political consequences. Read this text alongside Bordo’s. Write an essay in which you explore and describe the reading and writing strategies employed by the two writers you have chosen. As researchers, how do they gather their materials, weigh them, think them through? What do they notice, and what do they do with what they notice? What makes each project historical? What makes it feminist? How might the two texts speak to each other? Looking at characteristic examples drawn from both writers, what might you conclude about the relative value — to you and to history — of each writer’s project?