I believe that fatherly recognition of the daughter as other than a mother can be a key way for women to break out of the cycle of the reproduction of motherhood. Women raising children alone can, by imagination and sharing of experiences, send similar messages to their daughters. Such a mother can communicate to her daughter that they are potential rivals, adding that this is no bad thing. This provides the kind of differentiation from the mother that the father's recognition, fuelled by a mutual physical warmth with his daughter, can provide. Our culture should address its habit of splitting the male body into something either quite horrible or meekly pretty, nice and hairless.
Male bodies have the potential for good as well as harm.
We must start a discussion about both these possibilities, which go beyond the use of men's bodies in advertising. For sons, a good enough physical connection to the father helps to lead to the growth of what I want to call 'homo-sociality'. The implications of this are immense. I would argue that a certain kind of father-son relating, fuelled by positive and frankly expressed physical warmth, inspires the new kinds of social organisation now urgently needed by Western societies. This mode of relationship stresses community and non-hierarchical organisation, which women find more congenial, rather than aping all the worst features of the male drive for success.