As you begin Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body, you read author Susan Bordo spilling her morning coffee over shocking sex advice from a naked man. Initially, I rolled my eyes and decided to assume that I was going to read about the tragedy of how men are now objectified and exposed in advertising like women. Flipping through the pages looking at the scantily clad images, I'm not really shocked; this essay was written fifteen years ago; I see these kinds of images going to the mall. What was shocking, however, was the way Bordo, a female philosopher born in 1947, wrote about these images. I felt myself blush as I read "he seems slightly erect, or maybe it's his non-straight waist, either way, there is a substantial presence there that is palpable (he looks so touchable , you want to put your hand on it) and very, very masculine” (113) Can she write this in a scientific essay? Her essay is written in a fresh and unique style, full of incomplete sentences, personal comments. , cinematic references, and unashamed sexual language and imagery It can be difficult to read because of these aspects alone, but I feel that the true tension of the essay exists in Bordo's critique of materialism and. the way we allow fashion, advertising, and images to define our sexuality Bordo first introduces us to the concept of the gaze by comparing the reactions of philosophers and lovers Jean-Paul Sarte and Simone de Beauvior to the gaze. Beauvior believes that “for a woman the absence of her lover is always torture; he is an eye, a judge… far from him, she is dispossessed”; Interestingly, Sarte has an opposing view, according to which a lover's gaze is hell because "the other person has stolen 'the secret' of who I am." I must fight back, resist their attempts to define ...... middle of paper ...... accept the unconventional style of the essay and the images that do not seem appropriate for the classroom. As a reader, you must be willing to step away from how you perceive gender and sexuality and allow Bordo to show you that the way you act, think, and expect others to act is not original. Your views are conveyed to you strategically; companies are banking on the fact that their images will force you to change, ensuring that you spend to look like what you see. As a consumer in a capitalist society, we like to think that we know the system, that we are not affected by the images we see. The essay does not allow us this luxury, it makes us question our ideas of what is masculine and feminine and the roles to which our culture confines us. Bordo demands that we dig deeper and ask ourselves if our materialism, our desire to be like what we see, defines who we are and how we expect others to act..