A reprint from July 2008.

There’s been an interesting discussion going on beneath this post at Feministe. As part of a riposte to some rather silly criticism of Third Wave, sex-positive feminism, Jill last week put up a number of pictures of hot shirtless men. (It’s reasonably work-safe to visit.)

Some commenters (both men and women) criticized the decision to put up the photos. They asked the usual questions: isn’t it reflective of a double standard if we denounce men for objectifying a narrow range of beautiful women, while celebrating when a feminist woman posts pictures of handsome, ripped, relatively young men? Isn’t it problematic to celebrate a narrow ideal when we live in a culture in which body dysmorphia and self-loathing is rising dramatically in the male population?

Jill responds to the criticism in this comment. When the question of poor male self-image is raised, some commenters leap in to make the perfectly legitimate case that all things considered, women today suffer far more from a culture that fetishizes a very narrow notion of perfection. That’s true enough, but the damage done to young men by our contemporary ideal of the “cut, be-sixpacked” physique is very real.

But this post is not an attempt to revive some sort of suffering Olympics discussion about male v. female body image issues. Rather, I’ve been thinking about something I learned twenty years ago about desire, the ideal, and insecurity. In college, I lived for a while in a co-op on the northside of the Berkeley campus. There were 37 of us in the house, nearly as many women as men. One of my best female friends in the house lived in a “single”, and I often visited with her in her room. (I had a triple for most of my time in the co-op). Debbie had a huge poster on her wall — an ad for the “Bowflex Man.” If you remember the ’80s, you remember the ad. I’ve done a Google image search, and can’t find it, but the picture is indelibly carved on my brain. A young, dark-haired man is pulling off his shirt, lifting his arms over his shoulders. His body beneath is tanned and spectacularly toned. A Bowflex machine is in the background. Half the dorm rooms on campus seemed to have this picture up; it was more popular than that college staple, Robert Doisneau’s kissing Parisian street couple. Here’s the picture:

Anyhow, Debbie had this picture in her room, over her bed. At one point, Debbie and I made a brief attempt at a romantic relationship. It lasted only a few weeks before we realized we were better off as friends. But I remember that when I was naked in her bed the first time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of masculine perfection just inches away. I was not terribly out of shape in college, but in both color and texture was a bit doughy around my middle. I certainly wasn’t “Bow-flex boy”. And after we had finished fooling around, as we lay in her very narrow single bed, I made a rather joking, obviously insecure remark. It’s been more than twenty years, so I don’t remember exactly how I put it, but it was something like “I can’t believe you want to be with me when you’ve got this guy to look at.” Continue reading →

This post originally appeared in October 2006, and seems appropriate to reprint now.

I want to address two comments by Fiona below last week’s post on Mark Foley and working with teens.

First Fiona asked:

Do you ever worry about being sexually attracted to your students or youth group kids? Don’t you ever think you might be tempted to cross the line? You write as if you are immune to temptation. Just because you don’t act on it doesn’t mean you don’t feel it!!

Then in a follow-up:

Do male youth leaders like him (Hugo) behave because they don’t have sexual desire, or do they have sexual desire but just control it? It makes a difference to me as an 18 year-old, and it was something my friend who was in his youth group always wondered.

A couple of other commenters weighed in, but I want to address this immediately.

I know that I tend to write a great deal about the importance of male self-control.  My emphasis on self-discipline, I realize, suggests that I spend a great deal of time "wrestling with temptation."  I’ve often made statements along the lines of "Virtue is not the absence of desire, but restriction in the presence of desire." 

I realize that this is a problematic line to take as a youth leader.  I make it clear that I am trustworthy and safe, but I don’t explain whether it is a struggle to be so.  While Kip (another commenter) advises I don’t answer the questions Fiona asks, I think it is vital to do so.

No, I have never experienced sexual attraction to the kids in my youth group.  It is with considerable confidence (and a sigh of relief) that I can make that statement! Never, ever, have I experienced physiological or emotional arousal as the result of an interaction with a teen who was under my charge.   I don’t know what to attribute this to, but I suspect both chronological maturity and spiritual conviction play a part in this.   At nearly forty, I can say that quite happily it has been years and years since I have experienced strong attraction to someone that young.

One thing I’ve been blessed with: a consistent track record of being attracted to women my own age.  When I was 16, I thought about my fellow teens.  In my college years, I was attracted to other students.   Unlike some of my peers, when I was in college I had little interest in older women (honestly, I found them intimidating beyond words!)  I certainly lost interest in high school-aged girls not long after leaving Carmel High.

I’ve been getting a lot of email lately (again) about my posts on older men, younger women. I’ve got some points I’ll probably address in another post on the subject soon.  But I realize that my experience as a teacher and a youth leader is not the only factor that makes me so inherently mistrustful of age-disparate relationships.  There’s another factor at work, and that is my own conviction, rooted in my experience, that emotional maturity always means being most strongly attracted to those in one’s own age group.

When I was in college, I remember having a discussion with a male friend of mine.  "Sean" and I were talking about my friend’s father, who had recently left his mother for a younger woman. Sean was understandably disconsolate.  But one thing he said haunted me for a long time.  I’ll paraphrase:

Dad left mom for someone only a couple of years older than us. (We were 20 or so at this time).  I don’t find women my mom’s age sexy at all.  It seems my dad doesn’t either.  What if I get married, get to be my dad’s age, and find out I’m still attracted to girls in their early twenties?  What if my sex drive doesn’t mature along with the rest of me?

Boy, do I remember when Sean asked that question in bold!  I had no answer for him, beyond a feeble "Man, that would suck."  But it frightened me.  All around me I saw evidence of men in their forties and fifties who were strongly attracted to young women in their teens and early twenties.  It wasn’t just a media phenomenon; in my early years of taking women’s studies classes, I heard countless anecdotes from my female classmates about harassment at the hands of much older men.  It made me angry, it made me cynical, but it also terrified me.  Sean was right about me too: when I was 20, I didn’t find women twice my age to be at all sexually attractive.  What if I felt the same way when I too was 40?   For whatever reason, that fear nagged and nagged at me.

Continue reading →