Only in the past decade, as queer theorists and profeminist men s studies scholars have taken up the subject, has there been any significant attention paid to how men s bodies are represented and what that suggests about recent developments in men s lives2. For example, while images of women have been thinner and more waifish, images of men have gotten bigger, stronger, more muscular, and more violent. Young men for the past several decades have faced challenges from women in areas that our fathers and grandfathers never had to - in education, the workplace, business, the professions. But one area where men as a group continue to hold a significant advantage over women as a group is in the area of physical size and strength, and as a result we can see that physical size and strength for many men have become increasingly important to proving manhood. This is borne out by a review of changes over the past generation in the body morphology of male action film stars, the musculature of the dolls that young boys play with, as well as the exaggerated strutting and posing of many rock and rap performers.
Tough guy posing, even though it's often just an act, also has the effect of keeping men in line.
But the pretense of omnipotence and invulnerability that is implied by these ubiquitous images of physically powerful males is not just emotionally stultifying. But it's not just poor black males and other men of color who are forced into a hypermasculine posture to compensate for their disadvantages in other areas of life. Over the past 10 or 15 years, there has been an outpouring of scholarship, books, articles, and discussion about masculinities, the gendered nature of men s lives, and how men have and have not adjusted to the changes catalyzed by feminism. This work has accelerated the long-term feminist project of shining the spotlight on the intimate workings of the dominant group, men. The purpose is not to push women aside and put men back on center stage, but to understand the ways that male dominance functions in the hope that this understanding can hasten the process of breaking down sexual inequality and improving the lives of women and men.