Obesity Objectification, Sexual
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OBESITY schmer (1888-1964) believed that a From ancient Egyptian times person's temperamental reaction patterns onwards the appearance of being well reflected physiological type, with heavy- nourished, extending to what we would set persons behaving in one way and slen- call overweight, has been a sign of power der ones another. These theories too have and wealth. Through gargantuan feats at not found general acceptance. the table such kings as Louis VI of France On average gay men tend to be and Henry VIII of England turned them- more prejudiced against obesity in their selves into mountains of flesh. By contrast sexual partners than women, whether thinness tended to connote poverty or straight or lesbian. The sexual advertise- nhrasthenia. In the nineteenth century, ments of gay papers teem with the admo- as food supplies became more regular and nition: "no fats." Still, there are a few plentiful, poor people could become fat, individuals, known as chubby chasers, and in consequence the rich began to prize who admire what most reject, typically thinness. Standards of ideal weight are preferring partners who are over 300 therefore culturally conditioned. pounds. People of these two complemen- In our society women are bom- tary persuasions, the chubbies and their barded with advertising and exhortations chasers, join Girth and Mirth clubs. In to maintain their attractiveness by keep- Japan travelers find that "well padded" ing thin, and fashions are designed to suit older men are in considerably greater those who succeed. Predictably, some demand among homosexuals than in overdo it and become anorexic. While men Western countries, a difference that tends too are enjoined to keep trim, many fail to to confirm the culturally determined achieve the ideal. Gay men are more suc- character of the preference. cessful in this struggle than straight men, Wayne R. Dynes and the styles they favor tend to show off slender bodies. Yet even within the overall "thinist" aesthetic there are variations. In OBJECTIFICATION, the 1960s and early '70s an almost emaci- SEXUAL ated look prevailed, promoted by the This expression, which became counterculture and no doubt conditioned popular only in the 1970s, denotes an atti- by appetite-suppressing drugs. With the tude of treatingothers as merevehicles for increasing popularity of gymnasia, how- sensual or ego gratification--or simply as ever, gay men began to admire a more sexual partners-rather than as full hu- hefty look, though one characterized by man beings deserving of equality of re- muscle rather than fat. spect. An individual who is so treated is a At the turn of the century some sex object. These terms were spread by researchers believed that homosexual men, adherentsof the women's movement, who being in their view a third sex, tended to sometimes rcfer the phenomenon to a have broad hips. This assumption has not mental pattern which they term objectiv- been statistically confirmed. More gener- ism, the unwarranted assumption that ally the German psychiatrist Ernst Kret- male (or patriarchal) values are simply + OBJECTIFICATION,SEXUAL objective reality, rather than cultural has the advantage of showing that confu- constructs imposed upon it. sion has been caused by conflating the However this may be, the con- neutral sense (3)-from which it follows cept has been adopted by some sectors of that the very process of cognition continu- the gay movement as a tool for internal ally and inescapably enmeshes one in criticism. In bars and othcr places where subject-object relations, without thereby encounters are intended to lead to sexual imposing any distorting or reductive ef- contact, the trcatment of other individu- fect-with [I J and (2))which entail acharge als as sex objects may be said to be reason- of emotion suffusing the object so as to able and expected. But where this proce- enhance or demean it. Moreover, the eve- dure passes over into business or political ryday sense of the word object suggests a activity, to the point that articulate and tendency to turn persons into things, persuasive individuals who do not happen though this is in no way required by sense to be goodlooking are ignored or passed (3). over in favor of men who are "cute," this While the existing terminology is seems a waste of human resources as well not ideal, it must be conceded that the a source of unhappiness to those who are psychosocial phenomenon of sexual ob- the victims of it. Some critics of the pat- jectification exists, and that when it is tern have proposed the alternative term allowed to intrude into all sorts of spheres looksism as a more convenient descriptor. of human activity where it is in fact dys- A similar phenomenon, known as ageism, functional, it may stifle the personal de- works to the disadvantage of older gay vclopment of those who are subjected to it. people. This overemphasis on sexual at- At the same time, it is necessary to recog- tractiveness is to some extent explainable nize that sexual selection is indeed selec- by the fact that gays as a group are united tion, and human beings areunlikely to free only by their sexual preference, and by themselves from this component of their the fact that they have been stigmatized phylogenetic legacy, or the ongoing phys- by the host society because of it. Still, to iological processes that underlie such se- the degree that it is prevalent in gay male lection. Thus the ideal of treating human circles-less so in lesbian ones-it may beings in terms of equality of respect, dis- serve to bolster stereotypes that gay people carding inappropriate sexual objectifica- are superficial and frivolous. tion, should be inculcated and promoted, The concept of sexual objectifica- but one should harbor no illusions about tion has been traced to the German phi- the immanence of its universal realiza- 1osopherIrnmanuel Kant 11 726-1804), who tion. This tension is one of the many in his Lectures on Ethics presented the complications of civilization itself. sexual act as the mere manipulation of an Wayne R. Dynes object by a subject, in effect masturbation b deux-unless the relationship is re- deemed by the altruism of marriage. In the O'HARA,FRANK twentieth century, the notion of objectifi- (1926-1966) cation has been widely diffused by Freud- American poet and art critic. ian psychoanalysis, where object may be Raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, defined in three ways: (1)the goal toward O'Hara served in the Navy from 1944 to which the organism's instincts or drives 1946, and then attended Harvard and are directed, be it a person, a thing, or a Michigan Universities. The most impor- fantasy; (2)the focus of love or hate; and (31 tant experiences during his college years that which the subject perceives and were probably his visits to New York, knows, in keeping with the traditional where he met a number of poets, as well as philosophy of knowledge. This analysis painters of the rising Abstract Expression- OLD TESTAMENT 9 ist school. He settled inNew Yorkin 1951, 59-92; Marjorie Perloff, Frank O'Hara: working for the Museum of Modern Art, Poet Among Painters, New York: George Braziller, 1977. where he organized exhibitions of con- Ward Houser temporary art. OIHara wrote books of art criticism (lackson Pollock, 1959; Robert Motherwell, 1965), and also sought the OLD TESTAMENT collaboration of artists in his own creative This conventional term is the endeavors. He believed that the support of christian name for the ~~b~~~ Bible, painters in particular was useful to him in which the church incorporated into its escaping the suffocation of the reigning own scriptural canon. The New Testa- academic tradition in poetry. ment constitutes the additional scriptures His plays, which were often Pro- of Christianity, and some churches sup- duced in avant-garde theatres, included plement the ~~b~~~ ~ibl~with the Deu- Love's Labour, Awake in Spain!, and The terocanonical (or Apocryphal) books. Jew- Houses at Fallen Hanging. He published ish tradition divides the Old Testament only six small collections of poems; others into three the L~~ (the first five were found only in letters to friends or books ascribed to ~~~~~j,the Prophets written on a hoarded scrap of Paper- Dur- (most of the historical books and all of the ing his lifetime, however, O'Hara enjoyed prophetical writings except Daniel\, and an extensive word-of-mouth reputation, the Writings (all the other books including and his inclusion in anthologies began to ~~~i~l~.F~~ jews it is the first five books, bring him to a wider audience. On the the Torah, that are authoritative; and in morning of July 241 19661 hewasacciden- the third of these the death penalty is tally struck by a beach buggy On Fire 1s- explicitly prescribed for male homosexu- land, the gay resort where he spent his ality (Leviticus 18:22 and 20: 13).Although summers, and died shortly thereafter. there is scant evidence for the actual en- Like his older forcement of this law by Jewish courts, it Wallace Stevens, O'Hara was influenced is known that in later christendom it cost by the French avant-garde Poets; indeed the lives of thousands of homosexual men his relation to his favorite painters recalls from the later Middle Ages to modem that of Guillaume Apollinaire and the times. Cubists. Yet O'Hara tempered his man- Negative Texts. The Old Testa- darin sources of inspiration with eclectic ment itself is an intricate body of litera- infusions of popular culture and the kalei- ture, varied and complex; each of the liter- doscope of the New York scene. His use of ary units is a product of its own time and ever~day-s~eechrhythms recalls the beat place, and a great deal of it is not easily cult of s~ontaneit~.Lessobservedb~many understood without extensive delving into critics is the fact that many of his Poems the languages and cultures of the principal are sophisticated transcriptions of the of the ancient Near East that influ- bantering "queens' talk" common among enced the nascent monotheism of Israel gay at the time.