Girls on top: How men became the new object of desire
Three interesting events took place this year - Eric Lenard’s 50 Grayscale sales surpassed fifty million, the August issue of the British Elle first appeared with a man’s cover, and Brad Pitt became the advertising face of Chanel No.5 perfume. If suddenly it seemed to you that there is no connection between these events, then it is not. We asked Nastya Corpuscula to explain how pop culture redefines the relationship between women and men.
Sex sells - this formula worked smoothly when it was necessary to sell something to men, as a rule, cars, yachts and perfumery. But it turned out that sex sells well to women. Manufacturers finally realized that they had found a new approach to the target audience. The video Ambercrombie & Fitch, in which models from their stores (without T-shirts!) Are fooling around with the song Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe, in four months gathered fifteen million views. No matter how gay people try to present themselves as the main addressee of this video, there are more women in this world than gays, and it was they who made up the majority of viewers of the simple, almost amateur, clip, the main advantage of which is that there are a lot of young guys with textured torsos and in a good mood.
And literally in a month the first female gloss with a man on the cover came out. British Elle acted very carefully - the number was timed to the opening of the London Olympics, and David Beckham was chosen as her face. One. Without Victoria. Naked to the waist with all his tattoos.
In this female hallucination there are clothes, cosmetics, handbags, shoes, other aunts in dresses worn for the occasion - and there are practically no men.
Men are not uncommon on the pages of women's magazines and appeared on the covers more than once, but for the first time a man appeared there as the only hero, and not as an accompanying character for his wife or partner. Women's magazines are very conservative and they have the irony to adhere to the concept that it is necessary to have a heart-to-heart talk with a woman, and this is possible provided that this conversation takes place between us girls. Therefore, the cover on the fly announces who we have in this month is an imaginary girlfriend and role model. Although in reality the girlfriend is always the same, and her name is a collective author who conducts a dialogue in the form of a monologue. In the sense that we did not ask, and she is already responding. Magazines, they are not for reading, they are food for the eyes, hallucinations that are transmitted to the brain through the organs of sight and touch. And in this female hallucination there are clothes, cosmetics, handbags, shoes, other aunts in dresses, worn on the occasion that never comes, photos of things called must have, that is, "to be" with the emphasis on the first syllable. Everything in the representation of fashion editors is beautiful. And in this realm of beauty there are practically no men.
Therefore, women began to buy men's gloss for the sake of the same thing men buy it for - to look at pictures with sexually attractive people of the opposite sex, because there are obviously not enough of them in women's magazines, but there are men in them. Why the hell should we look at women? What have we not seen there?
The rule "girls love about love, boys about war" it's time to adjust
Now Brad Pitt persuades women to buy perfumes. True, the video caused complex feelings to the public. But now it is obvious - the producers of goods have revised their views on the question "what does a woman want." Moreover, women buy 85% of all goods and services. But surprisingly, they also buy 50% of the goods intended for men.
Film studios and TV channels also quickly realized that films and television shows, traditionally focused on the strong half of humanity, are almost a great success with women.
When the CW channel started the production of the Supernatural series, he hoped to increase the male audience in this way, and as a result received a very active female fandom. According to the IMDB audience rating, women put on the show an average of 9.2 points, while men only 7.4. In this case, women voted five times more than men, it is a rarity for IMDB, where usually the male audience is more active at times. There is such a big gap in ratings except that Sex and the City has 8.1 and 5.8, respectively. Let me remind you that this is a series where two brothers struggle with evil spirits, the romantic line is completely absent, and female characters die one after another. When the female viewers put a relatively high score on Twilight, this is understandable. But at first glance, at first glance, they like “Avengers” and “Thor” more than men, and Snyder’s “300” receives almost equal ratings from women and men, although it is difficult to suspect the first of them that they genuinely love the genre "Greek-Roman Rubilovo with Swords".
Previously, in every police film there was a scene in the stripbar and everyone understood that it was necessary for the sake of a saint - boobs
The rule "girls love about love, boys about war" is time to adjust. Girls also love about the war, if there are muscular men. And if they take something else off of themselves, then it’s altogether excellent. In the "300" of these men was a whole army. Who will beat whom - the Spartans of the Persians or the Persians of the Spartans - did not matter, the main thing was to look at. The romantic line is also not important anymore, there are other films about women's feelings. This is Sparta!
The girls watch some “Troy” in the same way that the boys used to watch “Emmanuel” - here she goes so beautiful and gives everything; in the female version it sounds like this - here they are so beautiful they run around and kill everyone and they’re not at all into having sex with other women because the world must be saved. And the film industry began to exploit this interest in the male body. If before each police film there was a scene in the stripbar and everyone understood that it was necessary for the sake of the saint - for the boobs, now the rare blockbuster does without the appearance of the main character without a shirt to indulge the beautiful half. Secondly, “Twilight” even some kind of confrontation was outlined - Lautner’s strong press against Pattinson’s sunken stomach.
But at the same time, Twilight themselves opened a new genre - the romantic franchise for girls. Bella Swan's predecessors for the multi-volume film epics were militant and belligerent: Sergeant Ripley, Lara Croft, Ellis from Resident Evil. They were older and physically stronger, and were busy with some very important matter. And then the whole story comes down to the fact that the schoolgirl wants to sleep with a guy who does not agree, and her soul does not lie to the other. The heroine of another film studio, Katniss from The Hunger Games, cannot decide what she is experiencing and to whom. She also shoots a little bow. Both projects address the topic of teenage languor.
Roughly speaking, Twilight and the Hunger Games is such an American Pie, but on the girls' side of the fence. But the topic found a response not even among schoolgirls, but among women over thirty, the highest marks on IMDB were Twenty-four to forty-four years old women, and one of them wrote fanfic, then published it as an independent trilogy, and now we we have "50 shades of gray" and the term "mother's porn." The unprecedented success of the stupid and poorly written novel of the English housewife made me start talking about a phenomenon that had been quietly growing over the last ten years - about a new female sexuality.
Twilight and the Hunger Games is American Pie, but on the girl side of the fence
Girl lists of the sexiest actors on the net, collections of the most attractive guys on YouTube, the rise of popularity of the LJ community cabellissimo, where they publish photos of famous beauties, finally, Friday guys in social networks began to crowd Friday guys "with cubes" - all these are signs of one the same trend. Women began to perceive the man as a sexual object. They began to criticize his appearance precisely in terms of her sexual attractiveness. When choosing a partner, other qualities are still taken into account - social status, welfare, character, but its own niche guilty pleasures emerged, which includes all sorts of cute nonsense such as chocolate, pink socks, teen TV shows, videos with cats and handsome men. Ordinary men, of course, became nervous. But they have nothing to fear yet.
Every year, Maxim and FHM selected their 100 most beautiful and sexy women on the planet. This news even fell into some topics of the blogosphere day. Wow, Bar Rafaeli ousted Rosie Huntington-Whiteley from first place. But domestic news sites ignore the hundred of the sexiest men in British Glamor, although the voting has been held for the third year already. For the first time, there were only fifty names on the list; in the next two years, it was already a hundred, compiled from surveys of readers.
The female hundred is more democratic in terms of external data, age and sexual orientation. Men's magazines set an unspoken age line at forty years old - at thirty-nine Cameron Diaz was still beautiful and sexy, and at forty already sorry. And in the list of Glamor, Justin Bieber and unknown to me clones of Roma Acorn coexist with men over fifty - Colin Firth, George Clooney and Chris Meloni. Among the favorites of the female audience are two open gay men - Matt Bommer and Chris Colfer. Girls are less critical to beauty standards - among their favorites are people with irregular looks: Jeremy Renner, mandatory Benedict Cumberbatch, and both Doctors - Matt Smith and David Tennant.
Extreme boldness, which in this part can go male gloss, is drawn housewives: Marge Simpson (appeared in Playboy) and Lois Griffin (entered the top Maxim). But it is doubtful that Hellen Miren was brought there. The point is not some hypothetical injustice of gender standards of beauty, just women look at the question more widely, fortunately for men. And the first place this year was received by the same Pattinson, which testifies in favor of not very high requirements to the object. But this is only for now. Because the competition is growing, Hemsworth and Hiddleston take the stage. And it will be hard for the average compatriot to compete with them.