Andrew Siribohdi said:
The mainstream generalizes that men are attracted to women with large breasts, skinny waists, and large butts (note that this is a generalization and does not apply to every man, especially those with different sexual orientation). What are physical attributes women generally find attractive in a man?
The foundational flaw is that we're talking about types, which, you know, means that we're already in generalised territory (as you say). A singular "type" doesn't work for men or for women. You even see this in the "power fantasy" argument. Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix are both male power fantasy. Spider-Man and The Hulk are bother Male Power Fantasy. A big part of the power fantasy is, well...Power. Batman has been portrayed pretty much from a walking slab of meat to a slender ninja type and he still gets the admiration of men.
People point to the ripped man in a speedo as male power fantasy, but that's not the only type of body designed to appeal to men.
James Bond is also a form of power fantasy. And he can be sexy as Hell (partially depending on the actor and the direction of the script). He doesn't run around in a speedo and he's not necessarily ripped. Hell, sometimes he's not even particularly fit.
Now, apply this to women. Or to men's interest in women. Or women's interest in men.
Also, this whole thing implies men and women approach sex and sexuality in the same or very similar fashions, a statement that should be treated as debatable at best. Isn't that where a lot of the misunderstandings and stereotypes come from?
Eamar said:
Now that's out of the way... objectification. You have to realise it's about so much more than just body shape: it's about how they're posed/shot (the camera gratuitously lingering on Miranda's ass in Mass Effect 2 and 3), the character's motivations and reasons for existing (for example, female characters are often the token love interest - they only exist so the male lead can get some). The differences between how male and female superheroes are posed in comics is really striking. Honestly you'd have to be blind not to see it.
It would actually be funny if the camera did that to some of the men. Funny to see the reactions, that is. I mean, there's the trite joke that you spend all your time looking at the backside of a dude in a game, but it'd be interesting to see how people reacted if the camera....Hovered, almost longingly on a dude's parts.
viscomica said:
Well, yes men can be objectified too. I think once I heard a joke about teenage girls making instagram albums (or something of the sort) called "eyecandy" or "omg chris hemsworth shirtless" and that if teenage boys dared to do something like that about girls it would suddenly stop being ok.
Are you aware of the internet? I'm just saying, what you described as the hypothetical alternative example is pretty much the boilerpate standard for the internet as a whole.
Vault101 said:
The difference is a "make power fantasy" is not seen as an object of desire, Kratos is not there for our viewing pleasure
Nor do women likely ever come up in the thought process.
Not that a marketing guy or designer thinking "I bet chicks will love this!" would mean anything.
mecegirl said:
Plenty of women find Dwayne Johnson attractive and he's huge.
To further the point, Dwayne got a damn good response from women back when he was a much smaller Rocky Maivia in the then WWF. I mean, he was still big, but now he's kinda...Comic book big. Which I think would further demonstrate it's probably not the physique per se. At least, not just the physique.
Lieju said:
It tells you nothing about the story (which is not surprising since the pictures probably weren't taken specifically for a book), or the character of the hunky guy.
Well, that's a problem with the industry as a whole. I can't remember the last time I saw a cover that aptly said anything about the book I was about to read. 90% of the time, characters don't even look like their description.
However, the intent of romance novels is to titillate. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I sort of expect it from them in the same way I expect porn to attempt to do the same. When it comes to other books, you see the same thing--often with women--where the book itself not about sex. I used to feel dirty because I'd be reading a fantasy novel and the cover would prominently show a leather-clad ass that had nothing to do with the book at all. I mean, if I was reading smut it'd be one thing. But the covers were often smuttier than smut.
I think that might be a bigger issue. Romance novels are largely what it says on the tin. Novels, comics, video games are ostensibly more than something to fap to.
Again, don't take this as endorsement of objectification, but....
balladbird said:
No one can claim with a straight face that characters like Nathan Drake have no female fans who lust after them. Well, they can, I guess, but all it would take is a cursory fanfiction search to prove them incontestably wrong. However, he wasn't created to be so, or rather, he's appealing to ladies because that's yet another trait men aspire to possess, and he's pretty much a creation designed to help males live out their fantasies of being a badass, suave, quick-witted rebel without a cause.
Interestingly enough, the definition of objectification of men in most media is "something women happen to enjoy as well."
michael87cn said:
Those comics are designed for men. Women can read them if they want to but they are drawn to appeal to men, simply put.
The problem being that this is the mentality behind most media in general. So women get romance novels and the occasional big teen book that all the men lose their heads over?
Women have their ridiculous things too. Like the books in the picture in the OP, with men that behave nothing like real people, but subservient pets. It's silly, but that's what human fantasies are like.
The difference, again, being scope. Women have their niche genres, and men have...Well, basically everything else.