John Mercer

Clarissa Smith

Sexualised Masculinity: Men’s Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture explores evolving portrayals of masculinity in contemporary media, focusing on the increasing eroticisation of the male body. This book examines how traditional and digital media – from films and television to social media platforms and fashion – have transformed the ways masculinity is represented and perceived. Through a wide array of case studies, it highlights how male bodies are now sites of erotic value, challenging long-standing norms and expectations. By exploring both global and local media, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith provide insights into the shifting landscape of gender and sexuality, offering a critical perspective on how masculinity is consumed, performed, and commodified in today’s world. This book is essential for students and scholars in fields such as gender studies, media studies, cultural studies and social history, and is particularly relevant for those interested in understanding the intersections of masculinity, media and sexuality in the 21st century.

Men’s Bodies in 21st Century Media Culture

Sexualised Masculinity

Niall Richardson

Angela Werndly

Sexuality is an integral part of our lives, and our identities. But how do we study it? Written in a lively and accessible style, Studying Sexualities aims to introduce students to the critical study of sexuality, taking a look at the major theories, media representations, and cultural practices. After having carefully explained the key theoretical and empirical debates on the subject – outlining Foucauldian Constructionism, Psychoanalysis, and Queer Theory - the authors draw on their own original research to address timely topics related to gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Contemporary examples used within the book include discussions of sex shops, cybersex, and sex toys, the TV series Sex and the City, Will and Grace and The L Word, and the immensely popular Twilight books. Studying Sexualities is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on Cultural, Media, Film, or visual Studies, or Sociology and Sexuality courses, who are interested in researching the fascinating complexities of sexuality today. NIALL RICHARDSON is a lecturer at the University of Sussex, and CLARISSA SMITH and ANGELA WERNDLY are lecturers at the University of Sunderland, UK. This book is the culmination of their considerable teaching and writing experience within the field of sexualities. Their specific research interests include feminism and popular culture, queer theory, the body and consumption.

Theories, Representations, Cultures

Studying Sexualities

Feona Attwood

Susanna Paasonen

Alan McKee

This is a concise and accessible introduction into the concept of objectification, one of the most frequently recurring terms in both academic and media debates on the gendered politics of contemporary culture, and core to critiquing the social positions of sex and sexism. Objectification is an issue of media representation and everyday experiences alike. Central to theories of film spectatorship, beauty fashion and sex, objectification is connected to the harassment and discrimination of women, to the sexualization of culture and the pressing presence of body norms within media. This concise guidebook traces the history of the term’s emergence and its use in a variety of contexts such as debates about sexualization and the male gaze, and its mobilization in connection with the body, selfies and pornography, as well as in feminist activism. It will be an essential introduction for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies or Visual Arts.

On the Difference between Sex and Sexism

Objectification

Brian McNair

The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality is a vibrant and authoritative exploration of the ways in which sex and sexualities are mediated in modern media and everyday life. The 40 chapters in this volume offer a snapshot of the remarkable diversification of approaches and research within the field, bringing together a wide range of scholars and researchers from around the world and from different disciplinary backgrounds including cultural studies, education, history, media studies, sexuality studies and sociology. The volume presents a broad array of global and transnational issues and intersectional perspectives, as authors address a series of important questions that have consequences for current and future thinking in the field. Topics explored include post-feminism, masculinities, media industries, queer identities, video games, media activism, music videos, sexualisation, celebrities, sport, sex-advice books, pornography and erotica, and social and mobile media. The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality is an essential guide to the central ideas, concepts and debates currently shaping research in mediated sexualities and the connections between conceptions of sexual identity, bodies and media technologies.

The Routledge Companion to Media, Sex and Sexuality

Michael Higgins

John Storey

A lively and informative set of perspectives on the key themes that shape modern Britain.

The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture

Against the claims of increasing sexualisation of culture, one truism is constantly rehearsed – that women have little taste for pornography. In One for the Girls!, a new basis for understanding women’s pleasures in sexually explicit materials is offered focusing on the production and consumption of For Women magazine. This thought-provoking book argues that theories of harm, women’s subordination and accounts of effects or transgressive potentials have deflected attention away from the lived experiences and practices of pornography; drawing on rich empirical detail, One for the Girls!, brings them sharply into view. The book examines the ways in which pornography has become a favoured repository of social fears and debunks the myth of the ‘evil pornographer’ producing images of objectified women for troubled male viewers. By focusing on an individual publication, this book illuminates the ways in which pornography is a social product and subject to a range of institutional practices which influence its styles and presentations. Significantly this book moves beyond the usual rehearsal of claims about readers’ vulnerability to ideologies hidden in the text and uses readers’ designations of ‘sexy’ and ‘pleasureable’ to underpin an alternative theorisation of pornography. Exploring readers’ responses to nude male pinups, explicit stories and sexy articles, the book traces the patterns of response hidden behind the title ‘porn reader’.

The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women

One for the Girls!

Against the claims of increasing sexualisation of culture, one truism is constantly rehearsed - that women have little taste for pornography. In One for the Girls! a new basis for understanding women's pleasures in sexually explicit materials is offered focusing on the production and consumption of For Women magazine. This thought-provoking book argues that theories of harm, women's subordination and accounts of effects or transgressive potentials have deflected attention away from the lived experiences and practices of pornography; drawing on rich empirical details, One for the Girls! brings them sharply into view.

The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women's Porn

British culture today is the product of a shifting combination of tradition and experimentation, national identity and regional and ethnic diversity. These distinctive tensions are expressed in a range of cultural arenas, such as art, sport, journalism, fashion, education, and race. This Companion addresses these and other major aspects of British culture, and offers a sophisticated understanding of what it means to study and think about the diverse cultural landscapes of contemporary Britain. Each contributor looks at the language through which culture is formed and expressed, the political and institutional trends that shape culture, and at the role of culture in daily life. This interesting and informative account of modern British culture embraces controversy and debate, and never loses sight of the fact that Britain and Britishness must always be understood in relation to the increasingly international context of globalisation.

Martin Barker

How did audiences across the world engage with the blockbuster TV series Game of Thrones? This book presents the findings of a major research project that gathered the responses of more than 10,000 people. Its findings challenge many conventional approaches and open up new ways of thinking about the value of contemporary 'fantasy'.

How Audiences Engage with Dark Television

Watching Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones was an international sensation, and has been looked at from many different angles. But to date there has been little research into its audiences: who they were, how they engaged with and responded to it. This book presents the findings of a major international research project that garnered more than 10,000 responses to an innovative 'qualiquantitative' questionnaire. Among its findings are: a new way of understanding the place and role of favourite characters in audiences’ responses; new insights into the role of fantasy in encouraging thinking about our own world; and an account of two combined emotions – relish and anguish – which structure audiences’ reactions to controversial elements in the series.

Clarissa Smith

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