Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America
by Lynne Luciano
Hill and Wang

It was not long ago that Naomi Wolf had America talking about "The Beauty Myth." Women, Wolf argued in her 1991 book, are made to feel insecure about their appearance and taught to equate love and happiness with attractiveness. Manipulated by the fashion, plastic surgery, cosmetics and diet industries, women spend billions of dollars every year on beauty-related products and services, and a significant minority develop eating disorders or elect major surgery, all in an effort to conform to an unattainable standard of beauty.

Is the same insecurity now afflicting American men? Buffeted by images of fit models in advertisements and confronted with G. I. Joe dolls possessing impossible musculature, with traditional notions of manhood swept aside as women achieve ever more equality in the workplace, are men falling prey to the beauty myth as well?

Probably not. Had she come to that conclusion though, Lynne Luciano could not have written "Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America." Luciano wants us to believe that men are becoming as obsessed with their appearance as women are with theirs. Men, she tells us, spent $500 million on cosmetic surgery in 1996 and $3 billion on grooming aids and fragrances in 1997. Shocking, yes? Not at all — that $500 million represents a mere 11 percent of cosmetic surgeries performed in 1996; the $3 billion equals approximately $22 worth of grooming products per American male, hardly a number that inspires a vision of men huddled before their mirrors in the morning, desperately trying to make themselves more attractive. Neither number is particularly significant — especially when compared to figures Luciano cites elsewhere in the book, such as the $33 billion spent in 1990 alone on diets and diet aids, or to the $8 billion a year spent by Americans on pornography.

It is not just in her numbers that Luciano fails to make a convincing argument. The sweeping and fuzzy nature of many of her statements repeatedly undermine the book. She writes, for example, that "From earliest childhood, the connection between having an erection and being a man is hammered into boys," and that "The more educated and sexually liberated a woman is, the less likely she is to find the [Charles] Atlas physique attractive — perhaps because she feels less of a need to be protected by a strong male!" These things may be true, as may be Luciano's repeated assertion that once what a man did mattered more than what he looked like, but it's impossible to accept these statements without supporting evidence. Luciano is a professor of history; surely she knows, or should know, that her argument would have added weight with references to sources such as studies or interviews.

"Looking Good" lacks such academic niceties. In trying to build her case, Luciano often mentions the impact she believes feminism and modern women have had on men's perceptions of themselves — yet the only text she references in the body of the book on this matter is the women's magazine Cosmopolitan.

Feminism may have altered traditional gender roles enough that women now have the economic clout and freedom to consider a male sexual partner solely for his physical qualities, much as men have considered women for centuries, but Luciano, as much as she tries, never succeeds in presenting this as a cogent argument. Perhaps because she knows there's no argument to be made there. Men may be undergoing cosmetic surgery in increasing numbers, bodybuilding and paying close attention to their diets, but their reasons for doing so are not because the sexual marketplace has been upended and is now dominated by independent, financially secure women. If that were so, we would see an increase in the number of trophy husbands.

But Luciano's book cannot be dismissed entirely. As a general history of male body image, "Looking Good" offers some fascinating glimpses into the trends men have subscribed to previously. Dieting in the 1950s was considered effeminate even as doctors warned it necessary to counter the already-then rising numbers of obese Americans. In response, men followed programs like "The Drinking Man's Diet," which suggested a typical meal of two martinis with paté, followed by steak with wine, and then a glass of brandy for dessert. No-effort workout products like the Relax-A-Cizor and Tone-O-Matic sold briskly even though they caused heart problems and hernias. Hair loss has always been of concern to men, and while contemporary males may choose hair transplantation to alleviate baldness, ancient Romans were smearing boiled snakes on their heads.

What such bits of trivia tell us is that contemporary men are no more or less vain than they have ever been; they are merely using the new technologies and techniques available to achieve the same goals they have always sought — a youthful appearance and professional and sexual success. If there is a shift in how men perceive their appearance, if the beauty myth is claiming men's psyches as it has women's, then "Looking Good" offers no insights into the phenomenon.

— Jessica Chapel (jnc at flakmag dot com)