Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The media has socially constructed images of ideal beauty—from Barbie and Ken to Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, and the current television and film stars of today. The only constant has been that beauty is still viewed as important in having friends, in being popular, and in succeeding in today’s competitive fashion/beauty marketplace.

Much research has been conducted about the negative portrayals of women in fashion magazines, commercials, televisions shows, and films. Women’s images have been used over the years to sell products and services (for example, Virginia Slims cigarettes, Maidenform lingerie). Indeed, women’s bodies have been toyed with and altered by the fashion magazines, advertising agencies, and beauty corporations to create different images that will be idealized by the public. Thus, the media have played a huge role in creating, formulating, and executing “what is fashionable” and what is “popular” through the objectification and commodification of women and women’s bodies.
Introduction.

This analysis will deal with the same ideology, but it will uncover how bodies are gendered and, specifically, how men and men’s bodies are being objectified and commodified in order to sell products, services, and images of the ideal to the consumer. This is definitely not a new phenomenon but, with the rise and intense popularity of reality television as a culture phenomenon, men are taking on new roles and responsibilities that were once deemed specifically female roles (such as modeling).

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: This paper aims to examine one particular phenomenon that is linked to both the mainstreaming of bodybuilding within American popular culture and the rise of Internet culture: the bathroom muscle-shot. A tour of popular social networking sites such as MySpace.com and TheFacebook.com turns up enormous numbers of these self-conscious self-portraits: photographs of teenage boys and twenty-something men stripped to the waist, flexing and showing off for the flash of a digital camera inside their own bathrooms.
In examining a range of these photographs, �Male (Semi)Nude in Bathroom� will attempt to historicize them. This new sub-genre of self-portraiture calls to mind a long tradition of images�photographic and otherwise: classical greek nudes, pictures of strongman Eugen Sandow (a late 19th century vaudeville sensation who billed himself as the world's strongest man and whose act included a session where audience members could touch his muscles), Bob Mizer's postwar (roughly 1940-1970) homoerotic photography for the "Athletic Model Guild," and photographs of the male body in contemporary men's magazines such as Men�s Health. I will be examining the ways the current images differ from their precursors; I will also examine how they are related to the rising prevalence (since at least the 1990s) of male body image anxiety, the pressure that teenage boys and twenty-something men feel to have�and display�the �six-pack� abs, peaked biceps and hairless chests popularized by the mainstreaming of bodybuilding culture. My work here borrows from the methodology that David M. Lubin uses in his book Shooting Kennedy, where he argues that all images in American culture draw -- even if only unconsciously -- on a huge archive of pre-existing images.
I will also consider the production and circulation of these images in light of Mark Simpson�s argument in Male Impersonators that to be a man in western culture now means spending lots of time and money sculpting oneself into the object that can be desired by others, a position that had, for centuries, been a solely feminine one. Ostensibly, these images might be seen as something private, an aspiring bodybuilder�s visual record of his own physical development. But of course these aren�t private images: they are posted online, in semi-public and public spaces. So who then, is the audience for these images? Who consumes them, how do they circulate and what kind of �cultural work� do they perform?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As Katharine Franke has pointed out, sexual harassment reinforces gender hierarchies: it serves to masculinize its perpetrators, feminize its victims, and regulate gender and sexuality by punishing gender-nonconformists. In this article, I observe that doctrinal and informal legal responses to same-sex sexual harassment (SSSH) apply what I call a “heterosexual defence.” SSSH is legally permitted when the harasser is ostensibly straight, but prohibited when he is gay. Thus, I contend, the law of sexual harassment itself serves as a practice of gender and sexual regulation: it reinforces the gender stereotypes and sexual hierarchies that Title VII purports to disallow. In prisons and jails, where Title VII does not apply and other legal rights are not enforced, officials routinely refuse to protect men against SSSH. Instead, they tell the harassed or abused prisoner to “be a man” by fighting his harasser, or they refuse to protect him on the basis that he “must be gay.” Prison rapists, by contrast, are viewed by prisoners and guards as supermasculine “jocks”, “daddies” or “booty bandits”, and their actions typically go unpunished. Legal and institutional responses to SSSH thus tend to privilege harassers as “straight” and discount their targets as “gay,” and treat them accordingly. The heterosexual defence thus protects straight men’s honor against sexual affront by gay men, and authorizes ostensibly-straight men to police other men’s conformity to heteronormative models of masculinity by harassing them. Straight men are also legally protected against sexual harassment by out gay men, while gay men and other purportedly less-masculine men are excluded from harassment protections. Thus, as feminist observers have noted regarding the law of male-female sexual harassment, the gender conformity of target and harasser determines a plaintiff’s entitlement to a remedy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines 94 male victimization narratives from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for a better understanding of men’s experiences and perceptions of unwanted sexual contact and coercion. The study delineates both the similarities and gendered differences between men’s and women’s unwanted sexual experiences, and focuses especially on men’s accounts for not reporting incidents to the police. The study’s findings suggest that social definitions of “real” rape and normative constructions of masculinity contribute to both the lower reporting rates for men and a higher incidence of shame and embarrassment indicated by men who experience sexual victimization.

Publication Type: Symposium Paper
Abstract: This paper reports on qualitative and quantitative analyses (concept mapping) of interviews we conducted with 150 full time workers about sexual harassment allegations between male workers. Consistent with the law, our results showed both male and female workers relied more on the offensiveness of the conduct than intentions of the alleged harassers to determine what constituted sexual harassment. Concept maps of descriptors of alleged victims and harassers emphasized which side of a power relationship that the harassers and victims occupied in order to classify them into types of complainants and perpetrators. Policy implications are discussed.