Book Review: ‘The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men,’ by Manuel Betancourt

Men Gaze: Handsome, Hot, and What Pop Culture Taught Us About Men (and Desires)by Manuel Betancourt

Toxic masculinity. Fragile masculinity. Like most pop sociological truisms that make headlines on social media, these are great buzzwords, but fail to grasp the nuance. Of course, slogans are not papers, but I’ve always found these terms to be simple substitutes for more interesting conversations. Yes, masculinity is often a patriarchal system that meets seemingly impossible societal expectations of men and boys, and the problems go on and on. But what about its charm? What is it about this film that so fascinates so many people, including victims of its tyrannical norms?

The Male Gazed, by queer Colombian author and film critic Manuel Betancourt, is a smart, refreshing collection of essays on the subject that deals directly and honestly with the paradoxes surrounding the subject of men.

According to Bettencourt, masculinity is a concept that is currently at war with itself. It is both a show of power and a delicate dance. It’s a stuffy, rigid-rule structure with huge potential for the romantic and, of course, gays. Bettencourt understands these contradictions and offers insight from the front as a queer human being, both a victim of the rigid conventions of masculinity and a lover of masculine erotic pleasures.

Each essay in The Male Gazed interweaves Bettencourt’s own life story with reflections on aspects of masculinity, combating the eternal appeal of the idea and its suffocating anxiety. Let’s take “Wrestling Heartthrob”, one of the most compelling essays in this collection. In this essay, the author is drawn to archetypes of high school jocks, specifically AC Slater, the singlet-wearing character played by Mario Lopez in “Saved by the Bell,” and portrays him “fighting.” increase. “This image of a wrestler, even for a wrestler as charming and reserved as Slater, cannot help conjuring up both aggression and eroticism. It is both a threat and a threat,” Bettencourt wrote. “It’s the epitome of masculinity.”