Objectification of men in media

[Erttheking]

Objectified men do not look like this.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/9/99065/3772690-4991895913-37294.jpg

I have yet to find a woman who looked at that picture and said "Yeah I wanna fuck that."

Objectified men look like this.

http://i.imgur.com/GaNdaFQ.jpg

Objectification is not determined by the amount of skin that is shown. It is determined by the way that character is treated in the narrative. If the character is just a fuck toy who is there to look good, he is objectified. That's why the men in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure aren't objectified. They're sexy as fuck, but they have actual agency...cept maybe Speedwagon.

This link explains it well.

http://madlori.tumblr.com/post/96644265130/vixyish-yondamoegi-dreamsofjade

 

[Dizchu]

I think men get objectified more in media, just not sexually. When people complain about damsels in distress as being mere plot devices... oh boy. I'd rather be a damsel than one of the hundreds of nameless goons the protagonist guns down. They rarely even have any desires of self-preservation, in favour of just lunging at the hero pretty much expecting to be slaughtered. That's actually more objectified than the hypothetical scenario of a stripper begging not to be killed as the player character murders her in a game, because at least she wants to remain alive.

However in terms of "sexual objectification", females have historically been subject to it more. That said, the issue isn't as prevalent in video games as many might think. If anything, it's more pervasive in advertising. Even the sexual objectification of men is more pervasive in advertising, we've all seen those Hollister bags with a ripped guy with his face cropped out.

Personally I don't see much of a problem with it in narrative media, though it does go hand-in-hand with sloppy storytelling. As I said, advertising is where it's most troublesome.

 

[Silvanus]

Oh, yeah. Definitely agree.

Probably irrelevant to your point, but... "NB"?

I'll certainly agree that either can be pretty unhelpful, too.

'NB' is short for 'nota bene', which just means 'note well', or 'take note of this'. It's not a common thing to see though.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Well? I guess men are objectified in gay porn. But obviously, that?s kinda niche.

Bodybuilders, maybe? I mean, when you look at them in a magazine or something, you don?t give a shit about their personality or their history or anything, do you? Both men and women, regardless of sexuality, likely think, ?Woah, he?s got some pretty big muscles?. And the guy on the receiving end of this admiration probably takes pride in this, just like how some female swimsuit models probably do as well.

 

[gLoveofLove]

Alright, well, this is gonna be slightly complicated. Objectification - in this instance, Sexual Objectification, is based on the character having zero input in their presentation. They are placed in such a way that makes them sexually appealing, with zero relevance to their character what-so-ever. Characters like this are Objectified, or short-hand Sexualized (I realize I made a mistake in my initial post where I said Thor was subject to 'Sexualization' - he's Sexual, but he isn't sexualized.)

Sexualisation is not synonymous with Objectification. It's not the same thing as Sexual Objectification either. A lot of those characters listing were sexualised, as stated, but that does not mean that they were objectified. It's a slightly different issue.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

A pair of points come up that got a random eureka moment out of me. I didn't dwell on them, this thing just kinda happens.

1: It happens to men, but they aren't as upset about it.

2: Men get objectified by being the disposable grunts.

First, and foremost, yes, it's usually men that get the violence done to them in videogames, in war, etc. I'm not really trying to take that away. ... well, kinda, I am. I would be open to more female troopers in games, and in life.
It's still true, regardless.

Men rarely complain. This is also true.

But while males are the majority of fodder, here's the thing. Who's usually the one gunning down, or throwing the fireballs, or swinging the melee weapon dealing with the fodder?
Who's generally the most competent person in the entire plot doing the things that only they can do? Who're the ones that generally are foretold to be in legends, and do legendary things? To the point that it often relegates others to bit parts?
Who's generally the ones getting laid, getting love stories, and being fawned over?

Basically this. While it's true males are the majority of fodder, they are also the majority of the most powerful people in the story's universe. They do the sort of things that go down in legend.
Thing is, not every male is equally powerful, so we have fodder.
This leads to the potential notion of the whole "power fantasy" thing. Here's a lone guy making every other guy in existence look not quite as competent. It makes the main guy the alpha, and who doesn't want to be the best at what they do, and adored for it? Or at least get some recognition?

I dare say if there's no power fantasy in it, it's possible someone's either numb to it, takes it for granted, or both thanks to the high saturation in media, and history.
It doesn't have to be interactive media, it's the cheering people get from it in general. Guys get celebrated for what they do pretty often across media. They're the heroes, they're the zeroes, they work in every area of the spectrum of personality. They're villains, heroes, lovers, fighters, fodder, parental figures, child figures, and so forth. And they're often in such roles.

What I'm getting at is that males often get a shitton of positive to make the bitter pill of negative go down easier. So what if they're most of the fodder when their hero guy is taking out the fodder?
They get it coated in chocolate, and icecream coz they're so often praised that it balances out all the negative stuff to the point that they don't get vocal about it.
So what if Thor gets shirtless once or twice when hes beating the piss out of some foe in a glorious way? Hell, who cares if Hulk gets shirtless if he's acts so awesome that he's praised for just being him?!
<youtube=MMpCCo8Evnc>

Look, I'm not here to say who has it worse, or better, here. Honestly, I'm here to put thought to text, and ramble.

 

[wadark]

It depends on the definition for objectification in a non-literal sense. The op seems to describe scenes of gratuitous male nudity or partial nudity. But a scene here or there is hardly objectifying.

In general the term objectifying has very little to do with physical appearance, though that can certainly enter into it. To be objectified, I think, a character has to be created in such a way as to not have any (or very little) purpose or drive of their own. A character who exists solely for the benefit of the audience or the main character.

This can certainly include depictions of nudity (a la DoAX), but can also be a personality trait or simply the characters circumstances (a la princess peach). These are characters who have very little in the way of their own driving force, goals, or to be frank: reasons for existing. DoA girls pretty much exist to be looked at and ogled, princess peach is the plot macguffin that Mario gets to rescue in every game.

 

[Glongpre]

We should just say both genders have their pros and cons and leave it at that. We should be helping each other, using our strengths to fill the weaknesses of others!!!

 

[TheSmileyManGuy]

I'm gonna go with yes for this one.

This is my evidence for why I think men ARE objectified in our media (Sorry I can't embed, but its on Vimeo, not YouTube) :

Male Objectification - a Supercut [http://vimeo.com/68266579]

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Basically every episode of "Arrow".

I like the show, but it's basically a rule that, in every episode, there must be at least one scene of Stephen Amell working out with no shirt on. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever (except to show that he's a bad-ass, which he basically shows in every episode anyway) and is very clearly nothing more than eye candy for the female (and a small percentage of the) male audience.

 

[Erttheking]

Basically every episode of "Arrow".

I like the show, but it's basically a rule that, in every episode, there must be at least one scene of Stephen Amell working out with no shirt on. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever (except to show that he's a bad-ass, which he basically shows in every episode anyway) and is very clearly nothing more than eye candy for the female (and a small percentage of the) male audience.

Yeah, but at least he does a hell of a lot more than just stand around looking pretty.

And the show does balance it out with Sarah showing off her ta-tas a fair bit.

 

[xochiquetzal]

I find (as a woman) that usually when a man is sexualized the audience gets like a shot of the man and his torso then shot of a woman/women looking at him. usually to try and excuse the sexualization. like "don't worry straight man! you are not looking at Thor... Jane is looking at Thor! you are not gay" and even then the camera is static and far away rather than up-close and personal as to not "give the wrong idea" to the male audience.

When it happens to women it's more or less just a shot of her ass without the reverse shot of a man looking because the makers of the product assume that A) the audience is male and therefore stupid, and B) you need a shot of the woman's ass, otherwise you will throw your popcorn to the ground and storm out of the cinema. sad really.

And that's not even touching upon the ever preset 'toxic masculinity' side of objectification and idealization of men in the media and how the constant policing of what a real "Man" is supposed to be like being spoon fed to young boys leads to them getting terrible, destructive, self entitled tendencies that limit who they can be as grown ups and how they can perceive themselves. and then that shit filters in to reality where all the boys who grow up with that crap basically have to go through the plot of fight club metaphorically before they can have real meaningful relationships with women and the rest of the world.

Bottom line is content creators objectifying/idealizing men for other men is a problem. but it's not the same problem as content creators who objectify women for men.

 

[raikagetaicho]

I am confuce this is a gaming site or a gender study site.

 

[Theodora]

Yes, men get objectified just like women. It happens. Anybody that says it doesn't is stupid. The difference is, men don't piss & moan about it because, at the end of the day, we just don't care.

Yeah, those moaning women, it's not like they spent centuries being oppressed by men or anything.

Coming over here, taking our Playboys and our sportsball.

OT: objectification happens, but not even nearly on the same level as women. That doesn't lessen it in any way, but I'm not going to pretend the White male demographic is hard done by at any point in the near future.

How can you say it doesn't "lessen," it but then belittle it by saying its not the "same level as women?" How is it less or not the same level?

Plus we are talking about Males in general. Or are all males white now in the topsy turvy SJ Universe?

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I am confuce this is a gaming site or a gender study site.

Well this is the off topic form. That said people have a interest in how different genders are represented in media and this includes games.

I don't think we even have as much of a handle on what male sexiness looks like. You know because so much of our media is done from a prospective that doesn't find men sexy. Your going to get a lot of personal examples rather then one clear dentition.

One little nugget you can use is that if you can't see a characters face they might be objectifide.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Since romance novels are coming up a lot in this thread and I'm wondering how many people have actually read a romance novel, I think, for the sake of discussion, a distinction needs to be made.

Any romance novel worth it's salt first and foremost is a novel, they put effort into the story and the story just happens to contain a lot of sex scenes. The people, even the guy on the cover are characterized. To put it bluntly, an objectified character makes for bad storytelling.

The issue here is not with the novels themselves, but with the cover art, the advertising component and it's laughable how often sex is used to sell a product (even when the product may not have anything at all to do with sex).

 

[BoogieManFL]

I think it happens almost as often as it does for women, but most people don't really care or think it's that big a deal. So much that most probably don't even notice it happening right in front of them.

And to be honest, I think men can be objectified even if they aren't the focus, when things are done to women in media that is obviously meant to target men. Such as the Game of War commercial that has Kate Upton in it. There is only one reason she is in the video and we all know it. Sure, in a way she is being objectified but it's relative. She's being paid for it and she chose that life for herself where such a thing is in a sense, required.

While playing Mass Effect 2, there were several camera angles that blatantly were focused on Miranda's ass. Yes, nice bum and all, but that was the sole purpose of the angle. Not because it was just the right place to put it for the situation. The fact that it was directed at me as a hetero male gamer slightly annoyed me.


Men's brains react when they see women, I think much more so than when a woman sees a man, and the fact that so much advertisement and media is designed to target that biological fact. I find a bit objectifying.

 

[Veylon]

On the other hand at least these "objectified" men tend to look fit and strong. Frankly I wouldn't mind if objectified women looked powerful and capable. When Thor fights it looks like he's doing damage. Compare that to Black Widow in Avengers, who looks like she's doing a gymnastic dance routine while the enemies around her throw themselves on the ground in second hand embarrassment.

I, too, would be much happier if our society could stop equating "sexy" with "ill-dressed bonerack". I kind of feel embarrassed as a man that the bar has been set so low for us. As though we couldn't find a woman likable unless she's got big tits and is half-naked.

Ahh, Patriarchy - the wonderful thing that's terrible for allgenders!

No kidding. It not only reinforces gender roles for women, but for men as well. Men can't cry, or enjoy certain things, or be open with others, or a whole host of other things. It's certainly not as oppressive towards men as women, but I don't feel like it's doing me any favors in my life.