I’m really enjoying my new course on “The Body and the American Tradition”, especially the discussions that we are having around Susan Bordo’s recent work, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private.

This week, we’re working on what Bordo calls “the cult of hardness”. The phrase generally calls to mind penises, but the concept extends beyond that, to all parts of the body — and even to the psyche — itself. We fetishize hardness in our culture. Ads for drugs that guarantee harder, longer-lasting erections permeate our culture. Ads for gyms that promise to get you that “hard body” are even more ubiquitous. This is obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with our popular culture, and is already much commented upon. (And those of us on the political left note drily that we associate muscular hardness with political virtue and skill, hence the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose absolute absence of physical softness seemed to suggest a mental toughness much desired in our state capitol). The impact on the self-esteem of men of all ages, the increase in their individual and collective anxiety, is easy to quantify through the sale of gym memberships, diet pills, as well as Viagra and its competitors.

But what bothers Bordo — and bothers me — is that we have begun to demand that hardness of women’s bodies as well. Men have long been expected to be “hard”, “tough”, “impervious”. They have long been expected to perform sexually with constantly ready penises, though in an earlier generation, the fact that most men fell short of that mark was not discussed with the frequency with which it is today. But today, “softness” is out for women as well, and that is radically new. (Think of the journey from Chris Evert to the Williams sisters in tennis). What I try and argue to my students is that this obsession with creating hardness in women’s bodies is part of a larger war on the feminine within our culture, and it is a war that is advanced with a seductive logic: “Being a vulnerable woman in this world hurts. Get hard, and the hurting stops. Men won’t protect you, not anymore, not today. The prince ain’t coming; get your own damned horse and learn how to ride it. Above all, you need to protect yourself. And protecting yourself involves becoming stronger, more masculine, more autonomous, harder.”

Bordo writes of her own experiences with a fitness regimen to tone and strengthen her muscles:

“I remember the way having definition in my upper body made me feel when I walked past men — not just more attractive, but more powerful. Their eyes did not penetrate me and reduce me to something weaker and smaller, but glanced over me with admiration, as though I were an equal… my feelings of invulnerability and power had everything to do with my having banished my then-hurting femininity from my body. I no longer felt that my body revealed my soft, bruised feelings, but instead radiated independence, toughness, emotional imperviousness.”

I try, somewhat recklessly, to go to a place that Bordo doesn’t go, and I connect the increasing obsession with hardening women’s bodies to a larger notion within our culture that men cannot be relied upon. My female students have had it drilled into them that they must get an education and become economically self-reliant so that they never, ever, have to make the mistake of relying upon a man. As women increasingly move into male-dominated spheres of life (not a bad thing in my mind, so save the brickbats), they have begun to unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) develop bodies that more closely resemble those of their brothers. Those features of the bodies (like curvy hips) that suggest reproduction need to be aerobicized away. The body fat that symbolizes the ability to nurture must be dieted off, and replaced by lean sinew and muscle — great for self-defense, lousy to snuggle against.

Collectively, I argue, men have played their part. Because so many of us have behaved so badly (or allowed other men to behave badly) we have made it necessary for our sisters to take self-defense classes. We have made it necessary for them to become harder, tougher, less vulnerable. Our failings have become their mandate for transformation into “superwomen”.

Of course, plenty of folks in our culture — particularly in communities of color — reject this new ideal. But advertising, popular culture, sports and other public areas of life make it clear that the obsession with hardness is growing for both genders. This is not, I think, something to be celebrated. Bordo writes:

“A culture that idealizes, fetishizes, is addicted to the hard and impenetrable, is a cold and unforgiving place to be.”

Amen, sister.