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So today on a whim I was looking through my old "not safe for work" Half-Nekkid Thursday posts (which you now sort of have to know to look for.) I sort of forget how much time and effort I used to put into those photos (even the nominally spontaneous ones) and I also forget that considering what I had to work with (i.e. my physique and almost zero input on non-cliche-porn depictions of hetero men) some of them came out really, really well.
Anyway, one in particular caught my eye (item #1,above) because I really, really liked the light and shadows, the lines, and my behind and just for the heck of it I installed it in place of my old gravatiar image (Item #2, above.)
But then I immediately got cold feet.
I'm not sure why. My site's already pretty much hopelessly branded as "nsfw" even though it's been years since I've actually been that "unsafe" (again you have to know where to look for my HNT and other photos, and many of the old photos are no longer there at all.*) And I actually think it's really important to push for more casual acceptance of erotic imagery of heterosexual men. And in a lot of ways the old image isn't any less "erotic" than the new one. (Also, while we don't usually think of it that way, item #3 even more directly implies heterosexual activity.)
But just for the heck of it, rather than just guess I thought I'd ask you which of the three candidate gravatars you'd rather see at the top of my page. Feel free to chime in in comments. Also feel free to explain why.
Thanks!
* For the record, since I stopped posting a photo a day my traffic has declined nearly 85% from its peak. !!! Since my posts had become mostly about politics, sociology, and gender long before I stopped posting photos I'm pretty sure not doing photos has a lot to do with the dropoff.)
Introduction: For a number of years I participated in the Half-Nekked Thursday self-photography meme. About a year or so ago I began winding down and I can't even remember the last time I participated. Maybe because it's finally spring here (even if an unusually cold and wet one even for the Pacific Northwest) or maybe it's because I've really started perking up since beginning a course of Welbutrin about a month ago, or maybe it's because I don't think I'll ever shake the "NSFW" designation for my poor politics and sociology of sex, gender, and relationships, or maybe it's just for the heck of it. But I was thinking about it the other day took a few experimental over-the-shoulder photos. And made a surprise discovery about my physical apperance that I thought was worth bringing up.
So we're all aware that there's, um, controversy about whether or not people in general, and women in particular, should remove their pubic hair. All fine and fair enough -- there's considerable differences of opinion, much involving appearance-related pressure, others involving "pre-pubescence," others involving other esthetics such as sensation, texture, conformity, and even cleanliness.
So! Not much agreement there.
There's another, stealthier area where agreement about body-hair removal appears to be much closer to universal. It's in an unusual place. And it appears almost exclusively on only one biological sex.
Check out the following keyword searches (from , May 11, 2011.)
Image captured by Figleaf (hey that's me) Posted under a Creative Commons license.
Wild, huh? Considering the controversy it's not surprising that there would be more than million hits on the key phrase "hair removal pubic." One million hits!
Wilder, and perhaps weirder, there are seventeen million hits on the key phrase "hair removal back."
You can mix and match key phrases, adding for instance waxing, shaving, laser, and other removal-related terms to the base terms "pubic" and "back" and get fairly consistent results. Back hair -- typically an age-related development that tends to signal middle age in men (along with ear and nose hair) has very, very few advocates, adherents, or aficionados.
Sigh. Which means it's very likely that instead of spending time contemplating my cute but manly butt in the photo below (c'mon, it looks cute!) your attention may instead be drawn in more of a shoulder-ly direction. And if it does your attention may further be drawn to a not-quite-lush but growing dusting of back and shoulder hair.
Based on 's results I'm guessing odds are about 17 to 1 that if you do notice the back hair you won't find it very appealing. But I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.
"Image captured by Figleaf (hey that's me) Posted under a Creative Commons license.
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)
With her typically blunt Aspergers-fueled style Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist offers suggestions for men in the workplace.
This is not grand stuff. Okay. I mean, women are doing better in school than men, outearning men, and look, now even Time magazine says women don’t need marriage as much as men do. So it’s not like women are in trouble. But still, men could do some stuff to make life better for women at work. Here are some suggestions: ...
4. Show your forearms.
If you are going to insist on making the workplace sexual, at least do it in a way that appeals to women. Women like to look at mens' forearms. That’s right. In the same way that men like to look at womens’ cleavage. It must be from the days when women were looking to mate with a guy who was strong enough to kill a lion. Or something.Source: Brazen Careerist
The emphasis in item #4, I think, would be on the if. If you're not interested in making the workplace sexual (other items in her list steer away from it) then by all means don't. But! It's actually pretty nice to get that sort of information out there.
We men tend to look at the world, and each other, from a constructedly masculine men's perspective. So generally speaking we assume that women are going to be interested in parts of men that men think they ought to be...
...and then when women don't respond the way we imagine they ought to we say they're all mysterious and viva la difference and all that.
Personally I don't know about the lion-killing forearm hypothesis, but then Trunk admits she's just guessing too. If I was cooking up "evolutionary psychology" guesses it would be that women care about men's forearms because that's where the muscles are that let us gently roll our fingers around or across the clitoris before, during, after, or instead of intercourse. Men, who because we seem to care a great deal about penis size, typically imagine that's the main thing women care about as well. Which, if I may digress yet further, would explain why a) men are so inclined to send penis photos to random Craigslist recipients and yet b) are rarely rewarded with enthusiasm when we do.
Aaug, here's another brief digression that's still about men's assumptions that it's our perceptions that shape what's sexy: you know how women sometimes wear certain clothes, or else wear them a certain way, and we just assume they have to know we're going to interpret it as sexual? Well, if you're a man, next time you think about rolling up your sleeves or leaving them down ask yourself if you understand what it might mean to the women around you. I mean, do you have to "know" what you're doing, right? You have to have thought about it, right? No? Bingo! If you're not "asking for it" then maybe neither are they.
My main point, though, is that to the extent that Trunk's right that women are now doing better in school, that in many demographic slices they're earning more than their male counterparts, and that they're no longer as dependent on marriage, then at some point men are going to have to start facing up to the fact that we're not inherently the "wallets with legs" to women that MRAs and (some) evolutionary psychologists imagine we are. (What did I say about men thinking our assumptions are universal ones?) Sooner or later, since humans and not just men and not just women are "visual creatures," it might be a good idea for men to start thinking about our own visual appeal.
In which case be grateful for Penelope Trunk's suggestion.
I'd just add that this advice really resonated for me. Back when I was regularly participating in Osbasso's Half-nekkid Thursday photo meme one of my most popular entries was... an off-the-cuff photo of my forearms!
Who knew?
Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)