Reading Sara Douglass's latest Fantasy series made me remember a rant I had planned to write for some time: the male form and media.
These days, everyone is keenly aware of the objectification of the female form in visual media (think yoghurt ad with a bikini-clad woman), and to a lesser extent, in print media (think paperback thriller with the token gorgeous long-legged Bond girl whom the main character generally has to protect).
What nobody seems to pay much attention to is the corresponding situation in novels written by, and for, women. I don't mean high-quality literature, but your everyday sort of paperback that reflects the pulse of a society more than its literary endeavours. This includes the usual romance novels, a lot of Fantasy, as well as (sad to say) almost all fanfiction, including slash. We all smirk knowingly when we come across a novel by, say Guy Gavriel Kay, where a beautiful slave girl is forced to serve (or service) an evil king. Here are all the symptoms of female objectification: woman as an aesthetically and sexually pleasing thing whose feelings and character don't matter nearly as much as the response she gets from admiring males (and other sentient creatures).
But what about male objectification? What about those much-beloved cliches like "his strong arms wrapped around her" and "his well-muscled torso straining at the shirt" or "his narrow hips bound only by a loincloth"? Of course it's bad writing, but more importantly, it is objectification, pure and simple. The man, instead of being a living, breathing individual with his own history, ambitions, fears and desires becomes an object that exists in relation to the reader, who is invited to appreciate his oh-so-dreamy green/blue/purple/cerlulean eyes and oh-so-gorgeous defined musculature.
Whether het or slash or gen, these walking idols pervade low-brow (and a lot of high-brow) literature. Obviously, they are so common because for some people there is an erotic thrill in reading about "his strong arms" protecting them -- or, often, an even simpler, sensual delight in the male body. Men, just as women, can be idealised and eroticised and made desirable to the generic consumer. And therein lies the problem.
Objectification is sexual appeal, generalised and made non-specific. All imperfections are removed, all individuality stripped away -- and with them, all humanity. The result is an abstraction, an idea. It is no different from the idea of Perfect Love in all those romantic comedies: it is a concept that cannot exist all by itself. Desirability, eroticism, allure have to come from the character's own combination of traits as perceived by another character. They can never exist all by themselves, in a generic world of "strong arms" and "dreamy eyes".
At least with films, a badly written female character can sometimes be brought to life by a thoughtful actress who endows her "Bond girl" with a sense of personality and history. In writing, there is no such luxury. The author's obligation is to write *people*, with their own thoughts and feelings -- not blow-up dolls for other characters (or the reader) to appreciate.
...And that was tonight's rant.