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Copyright of Imagofagia is the property of Imagofagia - AsAECA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Expressions such as ‘a piece of a man is better than no man’, and monna ke kobo, re a apolelana [a man is a blanket, he is shared among us] (read: women) afford hearers a small glimpse about female perceptions on a male body and/or male sexuality. Several African proverbs shed light on the underlying assumption that a male body, despite the man’s marital status, can be shared with many women. Also, a glimpse, at certain texts in the Hebrew Bible (cf. Es 2) appears to give readers an impression that a male body, including a married man’s body, can be shared with other women. In a nutshell, patriarchal heteronormativity coupled with unhealthy notions of masculinity, seem to take it for granted that a male body is a collective space, not necessarily for female pleasure in marriage, it may be argued, but first and foremost, for the satisfaction of male desire, the entrenchment of the normativity of the male species as well as the endorsement of dangerous notions of masculinities. Contribution: Can the pursuit for equality, human and/or woman dignity and reciprocity succeed amid the preceding dynamics of the intersection among power, male sexuality and unhealthy notions of masculinities as revealed in the affirmation and celebration of the notion of the ‘male body as communal space’ especially in the context of heterosexual unions? The preceding was the main question that this essay sought to answer.

Belgian designer Raf Simons is internationally known for his leadership in avant-garde menswear and his willingness to break with conventional perceptions of masculinity. Nevertheless, his intervention in this field has not been the subject of a thorough academic investigation to date. Focusing specifically on the revisioning of the male body and men's fashion in Simons's critical fashion practices, this article aims to offer an original reading of the designer's work. Drawing on queer theory, I will theorize the image of the interzone, which has been dear to the designer's modus operandi, as a queer trope that allows Simons to critically engage with masculinity, identity and body politics. By building a theoretical bridge between the fields of fashion studies and queer theory, the article seeks to expand the literature on Belgian fashion and the Antwerp fashion scene, providing a perspective on its relationship with masculinities, the body and queerness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article troubles the intervention of the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator from the National Health Service (NHS) website (www.nhs.uk) through a situated experiment involving my body. Specifically, it demonstrates how the assemblage of online location, the BMI calculator, and my male body are entangled in generating political effects for my healthy eating, healthy weight and wellbeing. By exploring the NHS website's online intervention tool, I present how evidence-based repertoires allow the production of collateral realities of my body governed by my BMI result. This provokes a discussion about how different effects of numbering governance are possible through applying care-based intervention practices and through a situated intervention. One response to the outcomes of this analysis might be the possibility to change the logics and mechanics of an Internet-based intervention from exercising specific, fixed and standardised norms to more carefully enacting care as situated and relational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a theoretical review of the approach to the generation of knowledge adopted by feminist epistemology and gender studies, in the aspect of the study of the male experience as a product of gender relations, the author reflects on how to approach the male body as an object of study in relation to sexuality and desire. She seeks to question how feminist epistemology and gender studies of men are related and illustrate the relevance of studying the male body from this epistemological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social is the property of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the era of digital chat, dating apps, webcams, and cybersex, the presence of male nudity in the media is so commonplace that we may not even notice it. Nowadays, flipping through the pages of fashion magazines, it is not rare to see eye candy men displaying their luring lips, sweaty skin, oiled muscles, big chests, sculpted gluteus, and genitals without inhibition. This exposure of male naked bodies is the result of a long cultural process in which fashion photography has played a significant role. Fashion photography has brought to light and pursued the legacy of the pioneers who bravely took the first photos of male nudes, becoming the privileged stage for this genre. Furthermore, it has been able to reflect the changes in men’s attitude towards the male body, emerging from relative invisibility to become the main indicator of subjective identity. This chapter focusses on a selection of fashion photographers who have worked with the male nude over the last four decades: Bruce Weber, Herb Ritts, Terry Richardson, and Steven Klein. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the author analyses the topic with reference to semiotics, sociology, men’s studies, and the history of photography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cult of a slim and beautiful body is no longer characteristic only for women. The male body is becoming more frequently subjected to the pressure of modelling. The use of different regimes increasingly intends to fulfil the requirements of attractiveness and physical perfection, also among men and boys. The discourse of disciplining the male body and its expectations also influence socially acceptable ways of performing gender. Employing a qualitative analysis of bodybuilding motivational films' content, the author points out the key elements of the body project image in such materials. The possibility of identifying bodybuilders with experts in body modification, resulting from the specificity of the discipline, allows one to believe that the regimes and training tools presented by them can influence the perception of the body modelling process by men. The author presents four elements used to develop an image of the male body project - (1) conditions necessary for the project, (2) tools used in the project, (3) ways of controlling and evaluating the project, (4) side effects of the project. Based on them demonstrates how motivational bodybuilding films can affect changing ways of performing masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of women and gender relations promoted by feminist movements have had a steady progress, which has allowed recognizing many of the phenomena, characteristics and experiences of women, while studies of men have been late and narrowly limited themselves to studies on violence as a characteristic of masculinity. However, it is essential to recognize how masculinities are constructed, and explore their changes and the social mechanisms that give them continuity. It is necessary to examine them, map them, recognize their diversity and identify the practices that favor both their continuity and as their change. Recognizing different forms used to materialize them, reproduce them and inscribe them performatively in the bodies of men will allow us to point out those guidelines that support the success of public policies that promote equality between women, men, girls and boys, as well as the eradication of gender violence. In an effort to learn about an example of diverse masculinities, I conducted postdoctoral research among heterosexual men who strip for other men (strippers), I wanted to know how masculinities conform in environments that favor the overturning of patriarchal practices and that contravene heteronormativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The male body in the Hindi cinema much like its female counterpart, is malleable and ductile, amenable to the hegemonic concerns. The article posits that Hindi cinema has normatively presented idealized male bodies which are symbolically aligned with the changing aspirations of the nation: enervated, lean male bodies as stark reminder of the Mahatma Gandhi's idealized body in the colonial era; well-fed bodies raised on the "promise of socialist plenty" of the Nehruvian era; bulky, muscular bodies as shaped and demanded by the discourse of Hindutva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of Manuel Abreu Adorno's Llegaron los hippies (1978) and Rafael Franco Steeves's Alaska (2007)--two authors that have been mostly overlooked by critics of Puerto Rican literature--the essay argues that there is a literary tradition interested on a representation of vulnerable heterosexual male bodies that embrace a performance of a mongo masculinity, that is, male bodies that use failure as a survival tactic. Therefore, these bodies exhibit the emptiness at the center of a letrado and popular discourse anxious about a colonial shame that has been associated with racialized and sexualized subjectivities, including what has been defined as a docile masculinity. Instead, the mongos choose life over the patriarchal imperative to dominate others. This literary analysis contributes to the discussion of masculinity studies in Puerto Rico by establishing a dialogue with previous scholarship on gender and sexuality phenomena in the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In July 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that all gay men join the “pre exposal medication Truvada” as a valid resource to prevent HIV. The PrEP, prophylaxis consists in taking a combination of antiretroviral medication once a day, in order to prevent HIV infection. The WHO promotion of a policy that recommends all HIV negative gay men to join the PrEP, may be seen, in the context of contemporary biopolitical techniques and strategies, as a form of control and medicalization of homosexual bodies and practices. It´s important to explicit the life-related effects linked to a measure like the PrEP program, considering this as a paradigm shift in HIV/Aids strategies. The shift involves the gradual substitution of the “condom use” recommendations for the use of permanent prophylactic medications, and may be understood as a move away from the abstinence paradigm – sexual behavior control – to a more contemporary form of individual medicalized body biocontrol, as outlined by Foucault in his later texts. This measure also exposes a delicate aspect of the social conduction of the HIV/Aids epidemics: the stigmatization related to the gay community as the ultimate risk group. Affirming that every homosexual should take the PrEP pill, may have the effect of perpetuating the idea that gay men are the main vector of this disease. Among the misconceptions that this may involve are the perpetuation of prejudice related to Aids and gay men, leading heterosexual populations to believe that they are not connected in the epidemic chain.

In July 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that all gay men join the "pre exposal medication Truvada" as a valid resource to prevent HIV. The PrEP, prophylaxis consists in taking a combination of antiretroviral medication once a day, in order to prevent HIV infection. The WHO promotion of a policy that recommends all HIV negative gay men to join the PrEP, may be seen, in the context of contemporary biopolitical techniques and strategies, as a form of control and medicalization of homosexual bodies and practices. It's important to explicit the liferelated effects linked to a measure like the PrEP program, considering this as a paradigm shift in HIV/Aids strategies. The shift involves the gradual substitution of the "condom use" recommendations for the use of permanent prophylactic medications, and may be understood as a move away from the abstinence paradigm - sexual behavior control - to a more contemporary form of individual medicalized body biocontrol, as outlined by Foucault in his later texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]