All over the Western world, a new breed of leisure publications that deal with various intimate aspects of men’s lives have recently invaded kiosks: men’s fitness magazines. These publications have now abandoned the closets of gay men and the lockers of professional body builders to be conspicuously displayed in dentist’s waiting rooms or on coffee tables next to football magazines.
Amongst these, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness have proved to be particularly successful over time, in terms of popularity and sheer sales.1 They constitute a particularly significant segment in this kind of literature and deserve closer examination. I will examine the differences in both editorial and advertising materials that assume a certain range of diversity within the target readership. Muscle and Fitness is more specifically geared toward professional body builders, while the other two are geared toward an audience of men who, although conscious of their bodies, are also interested in other aspects of their masculinities. Launched in 1988, Men’s Health, owned by Rodale, is definitely the most popular, claiming a circulation of 1.7 million, with 22 editions in 30 countries.2 Rodale, a family owned company, publishes magazines, such as Organic Gardening, Prevention, Bicycling, Runner’s World, and Backpacker, and has established a public image of health consciousness and commitment against tobacco and hard liquor. At the end of 2002, both Men’s Fitness and Muscles and Fitness, originally owned by Weider Publications Inc. and founded by the bodybuilder Joe Weider in the 1940s, were bought by American Media, which already owns many tabloids, such as National Enquirer and Star, and also operates Distribution Services to place these periodicals in supermarkets. In other words, bodybuilding has gone mainstream.
The enthrallment with the body image, previously imposed mostly on women, is now becoming a common feature in masculine practices and identification processes, to the point that the expression “the Adonis complex” has been created, referring to the more pathological, obsessive forms of this phenomenon.3 Recent literature on body images has developed in the frame of theories that consider multiple masculinities as constructed collectively in culture and sustained in all kinds of institutions (the school, the gym, the army, the workplace). Connell writes,
Men’s bodies are addressed, defined and disciplined, and given outlet and pleasures, by the gendered order of society. Masculinities are neither programmed in our genes, nor fixed by social structure, prior to social interaction. They come into existence as people act. They are actively produced, using the resources and strategies available in a given social setting.4
Masculinities are not fixed or defined once and for all; they do not represent embodiments of discrete states of being. They vary in time and place, in different historical, social, and cultural environments. As practices, they sometimes articulate contradictory desires, emotions, and ideals, denying the very notion of a static and defined identity. These concurrent masculinities are not equivalent: some tend to be considered more desirable than others, even when they are not the most common, and thus become “hegemonic,” a standard against which men embodying other kinds of masculinities assess their self perception and often also their self-esteem.5 Body images play a fundamental role in defining what the dominant masculinity model should look like. Nevertheless, men’s bodies are not blank pages that become the receptacle for all kinds of power and social determinations: they are actual agents, and they interact with other aspects of the social practices determining masculinities. As Connell emphasizes,
To understand how men’s bodies are actually involved in masculinities we must abandon the conventional dichotomy between changing culture and unchanging bodies... Through social institutions and discourses, bodies are given social meaning. Society has a range of “body practices” which address, sort and modify bodies. These practices range from deportment and dress to sexuality, surgery and sport.6
The growing attention to the male body—it has sometime been argued—is, at least partially, a result of the mainstreaming and the normalization of gay culture.7 Nevertheless, also in heterosexual contexts, male strong bodies have traditionally served as metaphors for sexual potency, power, productivity, dominance, independence, and control. Both discourses are somehow articulated in the contemporary hegemony of the muscular body type (also known as mesomorphic, as opposed to ectomorphic, slim, and endomorphic, overweight), often in connection with a phenomenon sometimes defined as “re-masculinization.”8 Until a few decades ago, the aspiration for a muscular build was a prerogative of a small circle of professional and amateur bodybuilders, who were also involved in different forms of competition, giving to the whole scene the veneer of a sport. In time, after large sections of the gay community embraced the muscular body as desirable and prestigious, the same attitude became more and more visible, also in heterosexual—or should we now say metrosexual—circles. A renewed attention to the body and its appearance goes well beyond the concern for its athletic potential, which was a normal element of the sport subculture, uniting all men, gay and straight, in the same awe for the bulging muscle. These phenomena explain the growing success of men’s fitness magazines, which, at any rate, carefully avoid dealing with issues of sexual preference, and ban any hint of homoeroticism, which is, nevertheless, always lurking behind the glossy pages of the magazines.
The growing prestige granted to the muscular body places increasing pressure on men to take greater care of their looks.9 Men seem to adopt different strategies to make sense of their bodies when they do not meet the hegemonic expectations; the three predominant ways to adjust the discrepancy between the ideal and the real body have been defined as reliance, where the individual works on his body to reach the model; reformulation, where each individual adjusts his conception of hegemonic masculinity to meet his abilities; rejection, where the individual totally refuses the hegemonic model.10 In the case of reliance, usually great amounts of energy, money, and time are invested in gaining the desired body image, often with anxious undertones that reveal a certain preoccupation with control over one’s body. In this context, food plays a fundamental, though often concealed, role. Diets and eating habits are interpreted as a key element in the construction of a fit body.
Needless to say, the food and supplement industry has tapped into these trends to acquire new consumers for highly processed products that ensure growing revenues for a sector structurally plagued by intense competition. 11 Many of the advertising pages in these magazines often play with a sense of inadequacy, or with a desire for emulation in order to increase sales, proposing behaviors and values. These constructs hinge on dedication and effort that help to form the constructs of hegemonic masculinities.12
On the first page of Muscle and Fitness, we find an ad page by Animal for “Hardcore Training Packs.” Next to a hip bodybuilder, wearing a woolen hat and a grungy sweater, we read the sentence: “Shut up and train,” followed by a small print copy text:
Every day you train is judgment day. Each rep, each plate matters. You don’t make time for talk. All you care about is moving weight. Nothing else. This is hardcore. This is Animal. Can you handle it?13
A few pages later, the same man is shown, while lifting heavy weights, with an expression of near pain on his face. The text states:
Go hard... or go home. Balls-to-the-wall training. You sweat. You push. It hurts. In here, there’s no room for crybabies, no place for talking trash. Just raw lifting. This is the real deal. This is Animal. Can you handle it?14
In the same magazine, another ad shows a weight lifting bench with pillows and a blanket in an empty room. The text reads, “Obsessed is just a rod the lazy use to describe the dedicated.”15 Amen, one would fervently respond. What we face here is a fullblown cult. The new religion requires total dedication, in anticipation of the final ordeal when all believers will present themselves to the Big Trainer to have their thighs and deltoids carefully measured. Good results can be attained only by severe, unrelenting, and even painful workouts.
Nevertheless, followers are offered ways to cheat a little, as in any religion. The magazine pages are full of ads for protein drinks, integrators, engineered nutrition items, and dietary supplements that can help adepts to reach their goals. Exercising is necessary, but science can help to the point that one can grow muscle while sleeping, as with products such as SomnaBol-PM, Night charger, or NitroVarin-PLS.16 Nonetheless, the ad specifies that there is absolutely no need to stop taking regular proteins during the day.
As a matter of fact, most advertising in Muscle &Fitness is related to nutrition, meeting the readers’ needs to ensure the correct intake of substances required to bulk up, and expressing the food and supplement industry’s necessity to increase sales. The technical terminology it uses aims itself at readers who are supposedly familiar with choline bitartrate (for serious mental energy and acuity, we are told) or glutamine peptides, who are extremely aware of their daily protein intake, and who would never ingest the wrong kind of proteins. We are made privy of “the ugly truth behind the collagen.”
Pigs feet, cattle hide, crushed bone, fish skin. How did they ever end up in your chocolate protein bar? Easy. After those bones and skins get soaked in lime to remove all hair and grease, seared with acid until they disintegrate and then molded into edible gelatin or collagen, they become part of countless protein bars, even the best sellers.17
The text, advertising the VHT 100% real Protein Chocolate Rum Cake, is placed next to a full page picture of a meat grinder where a cow skull, a not-at-all-bad-looking fish, a bone, and a pig foot are being cranked in what is clearly an impossible fashion. The effect is quite overwhelming, even if for a non-American, the pig foot and the fish actually look appetizing. But the correlation with death, clearly expressed by the skull and the bone, would make even the most adventurous eater flinch. To balance the disturbing effect of the image, the text is followed by a very reassuring chart that explains how the protein efficiency ratio is much lower in collagen than in, say, milk protein, beef protein, or best of all, in whole eggs. The advertisement clearly tries to convince the potential consumers to buy a product that provides the necessary nutrients, all the while avoiding any contamination with the less appealing aspects of food, namely death and corruption.
The assumed goal for this magazine’s target readers, it is clear, is gaining muscle mass. The three page advertisement for Cytodine, “The Single Most Revolutionary Advancement in Bodybuilding History,” recurs to the old routine of the before and after pictures, except that the before pictures portray bodies that would make the average male seethe in sheer envy. The same trick is deployed a few pages later, where we are told that an Idrise Ward-El was able to lose 20 pounds of fat and gain 25 pounds of muscle with the help of Muscle Tech supplements, like Cell-tech.18 The before picture of Mr. Ward-El shows us a stocky but muscular and good looking black man, who, in the after picture, actually boasts huge muscles (and no longer wears glasses). At this point, it is necessary to note that Asian men are conspicuously absent from these magazines, both in the editorial and the advertising material. The underlying but unexpressed assumption is that Asian men are either not interested in achieving a muscular body for cultural reasons, or physically not able to do so.
Muscle &Fitness readers are hardliners and dedicated body-builders. The advertising is overwhelmingly concentrated on nutritional items. The few exceptions are pages for sports gear. On the other hand, advertising in both Men’s Fitness and Men’s Health, with a greater emphasis on fitness and general well-being, also promotes colognes, after shave moisturizer, razors, a juice processor, trekking shoes, even cars, fashion and hi-tech. The advertising in Men’s Health definitely appeals to needs other than fitness or muscle building. As we will see, even women become a center of interest. It is relevant to point out that in all three magazines, the advertising pages for nutritional products can be classified in two typologies: the ones where each item is promoted exclusively for its nutritional value without any reference to taste, and others where flavor plays a certain, if peculiar, role.
Only one advertisement in the three magazines refers to the idea of actually cooking food. The headline is: “Trim, tone, define, &sculpt! Your complete Diet, Training, Nutrition and Fat Free Cook Book Collection.” We are informed that the cook, a black woman who smilingly displays her amazing biceps, besides being a master chef, was a contender in the Miss Olympia body building competition. She’s not alone: the other author is a white nutrition consultant with a health science degree. The ad interestingly uses a woman, as muscled as she is, to evoke the idea of the kitchen, while the scientific side of the cookbooks, guaranteeing good results, is the work of a man.19 This element—as we will see—often recurs when the preparation of food is mentioned. The fact that the cook is black and the scientist is white adds further layers to this advertisement, revealing race biases that are otherwise invisible in this kind of literature, probably based on the assumption that part of the readership is composed of black males.
The scientific seal that seems fundamental to these ads is particularly evident in those belonging to the first typology, advertising nutritional supplements. Long lists of components are given in uncompromising terminology, aimed at convincing readers that the products are actually systematically engineered to improve their muscle mass. Pictures and details of muscled persons, and images of the advertised items, usually accompany written texts. Since their names are difficult to remember, and in the end they all sound the same, it is important to display the actual box or flacon in the ad, to make sure that readers will be able to recognize it when they are shopping at their local health shop. Most of the products in this typology do not make any reference to the act of eating. Sometimes a flavor is given to them, especially when it comes to drinks and bars, but it is not relevant in the economy of most ads.
On the other hand, the second typology employs the element of taste to make the advertised products more appealing, even if only to ensure a certain variety of flavors for the same product. The important elements are still nutritional, but consumers can turn to taste to avoid boredom. Even in this second category, there is little, if any, reference to actual food. Some ads display fruit, milk, or chocolate next to the supplement. Designer Whey promotes a peach flavored bar with the catching title “Finally! Because we’re so sick and tired of chocolate.” The paradox is that the ad does not refer to real chocolate, of course, but the ersatz flavor that can be found in other bars.20 The Maxxon bar ad boldly refers to the actual act of eating and munching, usually not even considered, almost repressed. We see four images of the bar. In the first one, it has just been bitten, then more and more chunks of it disappear, supposedly in the watering mouth of a reader. Under each image, we read “Crunch... crunch... crunch...” and finally “Mmmmm!” In this unusual case, the supplement is not mysteriously incorporated in the body to increase muscle mass, but it is actually chewed.21
Labrada Nutrition promotes a Carb Watchers Lean Body Banana Split Meal Replacement Bar. In the ad, the bar is actually dipped in a banana split, with whipped cream, cherries, and even chocolate prominently displayed. This is probably the most risque image in the three magazines, but the impact is, of course, balanced by the copy that points out that the bar provides 30 g of proteins and just 4 g of sugar. The suggestion is that, by choosing that product, health conscious consumers are allowed to sin with their minds and mouths, but their bodies will not even notice it.22 Pages promoting everyday food products that one would find at a corner store or a supermarket are absent in Muscle &Fitness. While in Men’s Fitness, we find only a few representations, Men’s Health publishes ads for Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Wendy’s, V8 vegetable juice, and Stouffer’s frozen meals, and nutrition supplements become much less frequent. The readers of the latter magazine appear to be considered by the advertisers as full blown eating creatures, even if the products, not necessarily flat-belly friendly, refer to a kind of food consumption that does not include any actual cooking.
From this semiotic analysis of the advertising pages, we can already draw a few conclusions about the relationships among food, nutrition, masculinities, and muscle building, with body images playing a paramount role in the choices of what these men—for whom the magazines are meant—eat. Taste and sensual appreciation don’t play a central role. Different flavorings are added only to ensure variety to meals that otherwise would be always the same. The key element here is nutrition: how much protein the body absorbs, and how much fat it is able to burn. Readers seem to show a certain need to be reassured in their quest for fitness, and the agency that guarantees this sense of protection is science, connoted as exact, matter of fact, serious, and above all, masculine.
Science, considered as a legitimate masculine way of thinking and approaching reality, also plays a very important role in the editorial features concerning food and nutrition, second in importance only to the stories about fitness and muscle building. In the three magazines, we find sections with nutrition advice: all of them quote the sources the news is taken from, and in Men’s Fitness, we even see the face of the experts that give the tips.23 Despite the continuous reference to science, the general discourse is far from adopting an actual scientific approach: tips are just tips. Readers are offered bits and pieces of unrelated news about this specific nutrient or the other, without any systematic connection/24 As it often happens in diet and nutrition communication, editorial staffs opt for clear, simple, and ready-to-apply pieces of advice, avoiding any difficulty intrinsic in the subject matter.
In Muscle &Fitness, readers are told to decrease their consumption of Java coffee for a leaner diet, since in an experiment made in Norway, “the intake of chocolate, sweets, cakes, sweet biscuits, pastry, and jams increased when coffee intake was higher, and decreased when coffee intake was lower. The opposite effect occurred with fish dishes, other drinks, as well as with physical activity.”25 No explanation is given about the phenomenon, not even tentatively. On the other hand, in Men’s Fitness, we readers are told to take caffeine before a workout, because “caffeine stimulates the release of free fatty acids, which are utilized for energy when you exercise, leading to fat loss.”26
Another feature in Men’s Fitness is dedicated to soy, endorsed for its muscle-building and protecting capacity.27 The whole story is an attempt to explain that eating soy and soy-derived products will not transform readers into “bandy-legged yogis with torsos the shape of Coke bottles.” As a matter of fact, after reassuring bodybuilders that the phytoestrogens, contained in soy and similar to estrogens, do not constitute a problem for masculinity, the author affirms, “real men eat tofu, in moderation.” In the Nutrition Bulletin section, Men’s Health invites readers to add fish oil to their diet to avoid the risk of developing both an irregular heartbeat and insulin resistance, to eat strawberry and black raspberries to reduce risks of cancer, to drink soda to help quench appetite, milk to reduce the risk of colon cancer, and wine for better breath.28 Readers are presented a mass of unrelated information that seems to play with their health fears. “Smart strategies” are proposed to fight any kind of problem connected with food.
In the Weight Loss Section of Men’s Health, readers are taught what to order at an Italian restaurant by two juxtaposed pictures.29 One is a serving of lasagna with antipasto and two breadsticks (959 calories), the other is eggplant parmigiana with a side of spaghetti with marinara sauce and two slices of garlic bread (1,246 calories). Frankly, both look quite unappetizing. The text states the obvious, underlying the necessity of limiting caloric intake, without providing the reader with any actual advice or information about better and healthier eating.
As in the case of the advertising pages, the goal of editorial features dealing with nutritional models and attitudes is usually not to follow a balanced and constant diet that can ensure body fitness in the long run, but rather to obtain fast results that are immediately visible on the body. The focus is on food as building material for a better-looking, longer-living body, rather than as a source of pleasurable experiences or a marker of cultural identity, let alone a cherished and hated instrument for caring and nurturing. Each magazine presents some sort of diet. For example, Muscle &Fitness introduces King Kamali, a 6 meal, 7 snack daily program that has, at its core, heavy and hard training. The program mixes fresh food, such as fruit or chicken breast, with protein powders and meal replacements.
The same issue of Muscle &Fitness also dedicates a long feature to a Crash Course in Nutrition for college students, with a strong caveat against consuming fast food and, in general, “sweet, salty, and fatty temptations.”30 Fast food is not bad, per se, as it often solves time and budget, problems common to many students. As a matter of fact, the editor lists many snacks, categorized into “crunchy,” “fruity,” and “substantial,” that can help youngsters fight their hunger without fattening them up. The aim is, once again, to bulk up, to add muscle, and to lose fat. Male students are not supposed to waste time cooking, which might make them look effeminate. They are advised to “stock up on canned beans, frozen vegetables, bagged pasta, and even canned tuna to provide a basis for many nutritious meals.” One single recipe is given, and that is for batches of pasta “made ahead of time and refrigerated in a sealed container until you’re ready to assemble the meal.” As a matter of fact, all that students are supposed to do is toss some precooked or canned food in the pasta.
Men’s Fitness presents us with the 15/21 Quickstart Plan to lose up to 15 pounds in 21 days.31 For each week, a daily diet is prescribed (not proposed) that has to be repeated, unchanged, for seven days. The diet is composed of 6 meals, with two main intakes and 4 snacks. Readers are also given eight “ground rules for maximal fat loss,” such as “Eat the meals in order,” “Eat all the food prescribed,” “Don’t cheat.” The language transpires sheer severity: If you want to lose fat, you have to be totally dedicated, even ready to sacrifice yourself on the kitchen stove, for you are required to boil eggs, steam vegetables and fish, and bake potatoes. The feature is illustrated with pictures of fresh, if unappetizing, food, in light yellow dishes and bowls.
The same magazine, nevertheless, deals with the issue of daily food intake, in an article aimed at teaching readers to maintain the muscle they have earned in months of training without losing definition.32 The story features appetizing pictures of simple and nourishing dishes, just like those one could see in a food magazine. Readers are given another series of clear rules. “The idea is to control as much as possible of what goes into what you eat.” The control issue is paramount: If one does not keep one’s otherwise wild appetites in check, one can neither lose fat and build muscle, nor maintain one’s body frame. Once again, most of the dishes proposed in the maintenance menu require little or no preparation. If they do, it’s not mentioned. So readers are told to eat lean turkey, chicken breasts, or salmon, but no information is given about how to fix them.
When actual food is advertised, it is ready-made or fast food. Potential readers are not supposed to have any connection with buying, storing, and cooking food, all activities apparently belonging to the feminine. Male subjects cannot perform activities related to the preparation of food without affecting their masculine traits and the inscription of these in a cultural order that is deeply gendered. By reiteration, the norms intrinsic to these practices and processes, highly regulated and ritualized, are likely to be incorporated in the very body of the individual, which thus enters the domain of cultural intelligibility.33 They constitute the conditions of emergence and operation, the boundaries and stability of the gendered subject. Thus, the production or materialization of a masculine subject is also its subjection, its submission to rules and norms, including the ones regulating the kitchen. The embodiment of gender through reiterated practices, including food related activities, reveals the influence of power structures that, in Foucaultian fashion, are omnipresent and pervasive, not necessarily connected with specific institutions, and not always imposed on the subject from the outside.34 At any rate, the food and supplement industry seems eager to and capable of exploiting these elements to encourage readers to buy products that reinforce their perceived masculinities by avoiding gendered activities, such as buying food and cooking, while turning them into better consumers of high added value, hence more expensive, products.
Usually, no cooking is required from readers. In Muscle &Fitness, we find a feature about eating fish.35 “Bodybuilders, grab your can openers—try these 10 scrumptious, high-protein seafood recipes you can prepare in minutes.” Readers are given alternatives to the boring old tuna, such as canned or preserved salmon, clams, crab, and shrimp. Again, these dishes can be assembled more than cooked, saving time and sparing the readers’ self-esteem. On the pages in Men’s Fitness, triple-deckers become “a tower of muscle-building power.”36 The title is reinforced by the picture of a never-ending series of superposed layers of sandwich, filled with a scrumptious bounty of food. The abundance is so overwhelming that the sandwich passes the limits of the page and continues on the next one. Then, of course, limitations are given about what kind of bread, cheese, and condiments are to be used. Again, there is no cooking involved. This is real men’s food, even if it gingerly avoids mayonnaise, full-fat cheese, and fattening bread (described as “bullets to be dodged”).
Men’s Health has a section called, “A man, a can, a plan,” that gives a recipe for “Beer-n-sausage bake: a tasty, filling, and alcohol-tinged meal.”37 This is the quintessential macho meal: cans, beer, and no cooking. Well, actually there is some cooking involved. A sausage has to be grilled in a skillet and then put into the oven with the other ingredients, but we are still at a manageable level of assemblage. Anyway, everybody knows that cooking meat, as on the occasion of barbecues, is a man’s thing. Exceptions are rare. In a story aimed at promoting pork, after reassuring readers of its leanness, Muscle &Fitness entices its readers with tips for making it tastier (“fruits go well with pork”) and even gives instructions for a tropical stir-fried pork tenderloin, re-inforced by an inviting picture of the dish. It goes without saying, we are given the exact quantity of calories and nutrients per serving.38
In another section of Muscle &Fitness, Laura Creavalle (the author of the above mentioned cookbooks advertised in the same magazine) gives the recipe for a home-baked and healthy fruit and nut bread.39 The recipe is simple and quick, and while the text refers to “moist, delicious cakes that warm the hearts of young and old alike,” it also warns against the excess of fat in baked goods. It is interesting that the cook is a woman, and while she refers to the emotional connotations of food, she also puts herself under the banners of the fight against inordinate consumption of victuals.
Again, dedicating time and effort in fixing meals is perceived as connected to the nurturing role that is considered typical of females. Women re-affirm their nature by performing their role of caregiver. They are responsible with feeding not only their own, but also others’ bodies, ensuring their survival, but submitting them to the constant temptation of the unchecked, always invading flesh. This short examination of food preparation practices, as explained in the feature articles, reconfirms the conclusions deducted from the analysis of the advertising pages. Cooking is perceived as one of the most identifiable performative traits of femininity. Men should avoid participating in the transformation of food at the stove, an almost alchemical activity dangerously close to the growth of flesh, inherently difficult to keep in check.
As a matter of fact, according to Men’s Health Guide to Women, there is an occasion when a man is supposed to cook: When he wakes up after a night of sex, and he wants to fix breakfast for the naked woman dozing in his bed.40 “Once you get her into bed, these breakfasts will keep her there,” affirms the writer, who, being a woman, knows what she is talking about. The five recipes she gives are simple and quite fast. The point is to nourish the body in ways that are propitious to more sex, obviously the sole goal of all the cooking. So readers are told that the crustless quiche they are taught to prepare is “high in protein to help control SHBG, a substance that makes it harder for your body to use testosterone and arginine. Argigine is an amino acid that improves the blood flow to your penis and may also improve sexual stamina for both men and women.” In the introduction to Eggs Benedict with Broiled Grapefruit the author states:
Eggs, bacon, English muffin: the combination provides extra zinc, a mineral that she needs to stay well lubricated and that you need to keep producing semen; You’ll pick up niacin, too—a B vitamin essential for the secretion of histamine, a chemical that helps trigger explosive orgasms. And since studies have found that too much or too little dietary fat can decrease levels of libido-boosting testosterone, the recipe has been tweaked to provide an optimal 28 percent of calories from fat. The pink grapefruit? It’s for her; women like pink stuff.
Is that not a known fact? Nevertheless, readers are clearly advised to avoid thinking about women, except as objects of sexual desire, waiting in bed to be fed. “Remember when your mom used to make French toasts on Saturday mornings? Try not to think about it. Instead, think about thiamin and riboflavin.” Thank goodness science is there to help men achieve their goals and, to some extent, to reassure their apparently wobbling self-confidence. Recipes have more the function of a placebo that works like Viagra, rather than a sensual, sexual experience to be shared with one’s partner. Taste is not mentioned once.
Herbs and other natural ingredients are also supposed to help with one’s sex life.41 They surely will not hurt, and they might actually help, “whether you’re an old man battling occasional bouts of impotence or a younger man whose sex drive is sometimes slowed by stress.” A whole list is given, with specific explanations for each substance. A similar approach is evident in a feature in Men’s Health, “The Sex for Life Diet.”42
The article you are about to read is based on the simple notion that a) men like food and b) men like sex, so c) wouldn’t it be great if you could actually eat your way to more fun in the bedroom? Grunt if you agree. Or maybe just sharpen your knife and fork. With help from nutritionists and the latest research, we’ve discovered 10 superfoods that can help you at every age and stage of sex life—whether it’s seducing women in your 20s, producing Mini-Me’s in your 30s, or inducing your equipment to keep working in your 40s and beyond.
Science is invoked not only in the content of the story, but the whole argument is presented like a robust, if actually fake, Aristotelian syllogism. Men act according to logic, even when their bodies crave sex and food, and live their lives according to neat plans. In your 20s, you have fun; in your 30s, you concentrate on reproduction (not out of love, but with the goal of creating replicas of your narcissistic self); in your 40s, there is nothing much left to do but worry about your faltering pleasure tools.
In the pictures, we see a handsome couple engaged in various activities. In one, the smiling, blond, thin, and cute woman feeds pizza to her muscle-bound, tight T-shirt wearing partner. In the second, he has just dipped a strawberry in whipped cream, while she coyly averts her gaze from him, with a finger in her mouth. In the third, she holds a glass of red wine in her hand, while he smiles and leans on her. The images make a clear distinction between male food (pizza) and female food (strawberries, whipped cream, wine). Wine seems to haunt men as a dangerous world, often perceived as intrinsically feminine, that they are obliged to cope with and that causes performance anxieties. Men wander in uncharted territories, far from the reassuring haven of beer. In the article, “22 Ways to Make an Impression,” readers are given a few basic tips:43 “11. Never bring out a half-consumed bottle of wine sealed with aluminum foil. 12. When choosing a bottle of wine to take to a dinner party, spend between $10 and $15. That’s for a bottle, not a gallon. 13. When a wine steward gives you a cork, sniff it. Don’t check it by plunging it rapidly in and out of your pursed lips.”
In other words, never mimic fellatio in front of your date, as allusive to future pleasure as that may be. Why is the “wine steward” supposed to give you the cork to sniff? If that operation needs to be done, it should be his task, and he will pour some wine in your glass to swirl and, yes, sniff. The story is written for men who clearly are not used to ordering wine, and prefer eating at the local diner, or even greasy spoon, rather than at a restaurant where a somehow menacing and mysterious “wine steward” might embarrass them. We find another hint to the anxiety provoked by dining experiences in “24 Rules for a Successful Relationship,” which interestingly mentions dinner in the same sentence with the choice of living quarters or, even, reproduction.44
Put your foot down the next time both of you are making plans for dinner—or, heck, deciding where to live and whether to have children. Women rate agreeable men as more attractive than stubborn ones, but only if the nicer guys have a dominant streak. If strength and decisiveness are missing, nice guys come off as meek.
In only one instance taste is mentioned together with sex. In “9 Tricks of Domestic Bliss,” giving tips on where to have sex when at home, we read:
Use a sturdy wooden table, which is more comfortable than the floor and a better height than the kitchen counter, says Louanne Cole Weston, Ph.D., a sex therapist in Fair Oaks, California. Have your partner lie back on the table with her pelvis near the edge. Then reach for some food—anything that can be licked off is fair game. Giving your tongue something tasty to aim for can help you dwell in one spot longer—and she’ll love that.45
Cunnilingus can be fun, but it is better to give it more taste. Here, women are equaled to food, put on a table, and eaten. They don’t necessarily taste good though.
In all the examined material, a strong desire to control not only one’s body appearance, but also to curb one’s desires and appetites is evident. A fit male body becomes the material expression of one’s dominion over the self. Muscle &Fitness features a story about “taming the craving for sugary treats.”46 Sweets are interestingly connected with women, either because they supposedly yearn for them more than men do, “especially during that week of the month,” or because they control the administration of sweets in the household, and not only for children. The professional bodybuilder, Garrett Downing, tells readers,
Since I have problems with portion control, I put my wife in charge. She’s the keeper of the sweets. She’ll give me one or two cookies and hide the rest from me. Otherwise, I could actually sit down and eat an entire box... I think if you try to eat clean all the time, you get to a point where you get a little insane. Having that bit of a sweet treat brings a little sanity back into your life. If you’re training consistently and the rest of your diet is intact, occasional treats won’t do damage. When you don’t train consistently but cheat frequently, that’s when they catch up. Even when you’re dieting, you can allow yourself a treat—a couple of cookies, a slice of pie or cake.46
The woman as the “keeper of the sweet” is quite a powerful, if involuntary, metaphor. The phrase reveals an ongoing struggle between a “clean” diet and the unrelenting desire for sensory satisfaction that can lead the more dedicated man to “cheating.” Sweets—and appetite in general—are clearly perceived as feminine. This is a recurrent—though often latent and disguised—element that plays an important role in structuring the nutritional discourse in these magazines. As a matter of fact, only women appear capable of keeping men’s desire in check, probably because they are supposed to deal constantly with their own. The agency of desire, thus, becomes the agency controlling desire. This ambivalence reminds us of Melanie Klein’s theories on the ambivalent desires and fears of devouring and being devoured in infants.47 According to the famed psychoanalyst, the mother’s breast, and any other source of nourishment, that ensures satisfaction and then disappears, is perceived as both good and bad, creating frustrations in infants and cannibalistic drives aiming at the destruction and ingestion of the desired objects. Since infants experience their own cannibalistic drives as dangerous, they protect themselves by externalizing and projecting them outside, on to the breast, from which they fear retaliation in the form of ingestion. Thus, desire and hunger are perceived as potentially destructive and, for that reason, projected on the outside. This anxiety ridden dualism that characterizes the first months of life—defined by Klein as “paranoid-schizoid”— appears to be successively sublimated in the dichotomy that, according to the feminist theorist Susan Bordo, haunts Western civilization from Plato on. She writes, “the construction of the body as something apart from the true self (whether conceived as soul, mind, spirit, will, creativity, freedom...) and as undermining the best efforts of that self.”48 As it happens, when gender is applied to this dualism, women are on the side of the lower bodily drives, embodying appetites and desires that weigh down men in their attempt to achieve freedom from materiality. In the passage from the feature, “Taming the Craving for Sugary Treats,” we quoted, women are the keepers of the occasional but controlled treats that allow men to attain the perfect trained body by freeing them of excessive stress about food.46 If we follow the Kleinian hypothesis, sweet treats, of which the writer acknowledges the irresistible appeal, materialize the schizoid attitude of infants desiring their mothers’ breast and being frustrated at them when they do not get total satisfaction. The desire for limitless enjoyment cannot be met; the craved symbiosis between the child and the mother, where the infant fantasizes to get rid of all individuality, is unattainable and intrinsically impossible, because the body is always already inscribed as singular and autonomous in the cultural order, despite its inherent fragmentation.49 Similarly, the alluring and threatening sweets, symbolizing unbridled pleasure, must be kept at a distance, submitted to the woman who knows how to deal with this kind of danger.
In the development of these dynamics leading to a loss of the individual distinction that is clearly perceived as a masculine trait, women coincide with the dimension that has been defined by Julia Kristeva as the abject, “a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable... The abject has only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I.”50 As Mary Douglas has shown in her study on purity and danger, the abject is what subverts order, codified systems, and stable identities. In this specific context, sweets endanger the whole effort to build a distinctively masculine, muscular body. They belong to a dimension both wanted and, precisely for this reason, demonized, in that it could condemn the male body to lose its frontiers that were gained with such great difficulty.
As Susan Bordo has pointed out, the body is identified “as animal, as appetite, as deceiver, as prison of the soul and confounder of its projects.” It is always in opposition with the spiritual self and rationality that mirror the divine. 51 Historically, Bordo argues, women have been identified with the debasing dimension of the body, chaotic and undisciplined. Men, on the other side, are supposed to reflect the spirit. Masculinity is embodied in their control over the flesh, a metaphorical equivalent of their dominion over female unchecked carnality. The dichotomy is inscribed in the male body as a series of clear oppositions between hard and soft, thick and thin, and, of course, fit and flabby. Food is a temptation that can make man fall, unless it is stripped down to its nutritional components, purified by the intervention of scientific rationality. Within these nutrients, the main contest is between protein, the building material for good muscle, and fat, the symbol of the uncontrollable flesh. Carbohydrates are in a middle ground; they are the fuel that allows us to work out, but they can easily fall in the realm of the enemy if they are consumed in excessive quantity. The battle is fought in every man’s body, and it takes strenuous efforts. Food and nutrition often play an important role in the discourse proposed in this literature, deploying scientific language to reassure readers of the effectiveness of the advice given. This rhetoric proposes a strong desire to control not only one’s body appearance, but also to curb one’s desires and appetites. A fit body becomes the material expression of one’s dominion over the self, over the flesh and appetites that often appear as tainted by a definite feminine character. Control clearly does not imply cooking; most of the dishes proposed in those magazines require little or no preparation. Cooking food seems to constitute a threat to the reader’s masculinity; men consume, they do not get involved with the chores related to food. Men’s fitness magazines present themselves as scientific weapons, offering practical advice and helping readers to discern when food is a friend and when, more often, a foe.
* Originally published 2005
1. See also Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities. University of California Press. Connell, R.W. (2000) The Men and the Boys. University of California Press. Bordo, S. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
2. See the company’s official website, http://www.rodale.com
3. Harrison, G., Pope, Katharine, A., Phillips, R. O. (2000) The Adonis Complex. Touchstone Books, New York.
4. Connell, R. W. (2000), The Men and the Boys. Polity, Cambridge, p. 12.
5. Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities. University of California Press, Berkeley CA.
6. Connell, R. W. (2000) The Men and the Boys. Polity, Cambridge, p. 57.
7. Bronki, M. (1998) “The Male Body in the Western Mind.” Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, 5(4):28.
8. Jeffords, S. (1989) The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War. Indiana University Press, loomington.
9. Wienke, C. (1998) Negotiating the male body: Men, masculinity, and cultural ideas. The Journal of Men's Studies, (3):255.
10. Gerschick T. and Miller, A. (1994) Gender Identities at the Crossroads of Masculinity and Physical Disability. Masculinites, 2:34-55.
11. Marion Nestle (2002) Food Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1-30.
12. Naomi Wolf (1991) The Beauty Myth: How images of beauty are used against women. New York: W. Morrow.
13. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 1.
14. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, pp. 138-139.
15. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 87.
16. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, pp. 58-60.
17. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, pp. 20-21.
18. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 204.
19. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 17.
20. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 65.
21. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 70.
22. Muscle &Fitness, November 2002, p. 57.
23. Men’s Fitness, “10 ways to leave your blubber,” October 2002, pp. 46-50.
24. For the reasons behind this approach, see Marion Nestle (2002). Food Politics. University of California Press.
25. Muscle &Fitness, “Cut back on Java for a leaner, healthier diet,” November 2002, p. 44.
26. Men's Fitness, “Expert’s tip: Cut the bad stuff in half,” October 2002, p. 50.
27. Men's Fitness, “The power of soy,” October 2002, pp. 134-136.
28. Men's Health, “Nutrition bulletin,” October 2002, p. 52.
29. Men's Health, “Eat this not that,” October 2002, p. 72.
30. Muscle &Fitness, “Crash course in nutrition,” October 2002, pp. 158-162.
31. Men's Fitness, “Quick start three week program,” October 2002, p. 77.
32. Men's Fitness, “Going the distance,” October 2002, pp. 118-121.
33. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter. Routledge, New York (1993), pp. 1-23. Butler limits herself to sex, but I do think that also food can be approached in the same way. She wonders: “Given that normative heterosexuality is clearly not the only regulatory regime operative in the production of bodily contours or setting the limits of bodily intelligibility, it makes sense to ask what other regimes of regulatory production contour the materiality of bodies.” p. 17.
34. “Power must be understood in the first instance as a multiplicity of force relations, as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens or reverses them: as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunction and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulations of the law, in the various social hegemonies.” Michel Foucault (1990). The History of Sexuality Vol. I. Vintage Books, New York, p. 93.
35. Muscle &Fitness, “Go fish,” November 2002, pp. 168-174.
36. Men's Fitness, “Science of sandwich,” October 2002, 96-98.
37. Men's Health, “A man, a can, a plan,” October 2002, pp. 66.
38. Muscle &Fitness, “Pork slims down,” November 2002, p. 68.
39. Muscle &Fitness, “Home-baked and healthy,” November 2002, p. 206.
40. Men's Health Guide to Women, “How to feed a naked woman,” October 2002, pp. 56-59.
41. Men's Health Guide to Women, “Better sex naturally,” October 2002, pp. 146-151.
42. Men's Health, “The sex for life diet,” October 2002, pp. 156-159.
43. Men's Health Guide to Women, “22 ways to make an impression,” October 2002, pp. 4-5.
44. Men's Health Guide to Women, “24 rules for a successful relationship,” October 2002, pp. 166-167.
45. Men's Health Guide to Women, “9 tricks of domestic bliss,” October 2002, pp. 208-209.
46. Men's Fitness, “Sweet tooth?” November 2002, p. 210.
47. The Selected Melanie Klein (1986) Edited by Juliet Mitchell, The Free Press.
48. Bordo, S. (1993) Unbearable weight. University of California Press, p. 3.
49. Jacques Lacan, “Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je.” In Ecrits, Editions du Seuil, Paris (1966) See also Slavoj Zizek (1989) The Supreme Object of Ideology. Verso, London, pp. 121-129.
50. Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror. Columbia University Press, New York, p. 1.
51. Bordo, S. (1993) Unbearable Weight. University of California Press, p. 3.