Rating: 
Summary: Script behavior no more acceptable for men than women
Review: A potent reminder we are all on one planet, "together". We share many experiences and prejudices as men and women of different races and backgrounds. No one is exempt. Some will profit and capitalize on our differences in order to keep the lines from crossing. Yet for the most part the majority of us are looking for commonality that will bond us together. As in the movie, "Shirley Valentine," your original anger towards the expectations the man has of his wife and world turn into a greater understanding that the script men are handed from generation to generation needs examining and redefining. While some men will cling to the alpha male image...many are looking for the balance in their lives where they too can be strong yet vulnerable. Where they can live not just perform. Where manliness no longer is defined by such narrow parameters. Where a man and woman can argue, debate, love and agree and share strengths and weaknesses alike.
Rating: 
Summary: Opened my Eyes
Review: As a man who read this book, I'm already breaking the stereotype of manliness. Bordo correctly characterizes the male species as one who does not indulge in self-analysis. However, her analysis of the male body and character is surprisingly accurate, especially coming from the female perspective. After reading this book, I find myself analyzing the marketing of male hygene products in prime-time commercials. I was also enlightened as to the impact homosexual culture has had on opening the door to male exhibition. This book not only helped me to understand my own place as a 21st century male, but it also helped me to understand the female perspective on the male body. Men have been looking at an acquiescent female nude in pop culture for so long that we fail to see the double standard. The time has come for more books like this one that could possibly spawn a renaissance of the beauty of the male form.
Rating: 
Summary: Patronizing writing style diminishes this book
Review: Bordo makes some good points, and the subject matter is fascinating, but the breezy chattiness of her prose is off-putting, and there is a condescending "wink, nudge" tone to this book that is annoying. If you can look past that, this is an intriguing and well-considered book.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written and accessible intro. to gender representation
Review: Bordo's effort is a perceptive and engaging overview of the convoluted representations of the male body active today and of their historical roots. She begins by tracing the evolution of representations of the body and of masculinity in film- with considerable insight and appreciation for the complexity of her subject- before moving on to a more polemical examination of "the double bind of masculinity" today: the incoherent standards that would have men be both 'primal' or 'brutal' and 'sensitive' or 'restrained', and the various reductionisms, biological or otherwise, that attempt to naturalize determinations of differences in gender roles. While her style is non-academic, her even-handed treatment and broad analysis make this book a good read for both gender theory buffs and general public consumption. I, personally, am considering buying a copy for my sixteen-year old brother, to help him make sense of the brutal tensions underlying the performance of masculinity in his public high school.
Rating:
Summary: Good Information and sometimes entertaining
Review: I thought that Bordo did a lot of good research and brought up relevant topics. She includes good information but it sometimes feels like she's getting paid on a per page basis--dragging out simple topics for pages and pages. I get it already. Also, the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" stuff got boring. Of course we get the puns--ha ha--we're talking about sex, but c'mon, we don't need someone to point out every pun in the book. It's a worthwhile read and you will go away with some good info, but there is probably another book out there that gives the same info in a shorter and more entertaining way.
Rating:
Summary: good balance between academic and popular
Review: So I'm a graduate student in sociology and I read this book because one of my teachers suggested it for a project I'm working on. And it was relevant to that, but I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of it in everyday conversation. It's mostly very smart, but also easy and fun to read. If you're an academic, it's not super driven by theory or a desire to be "science," and if you're looking for something fun to read about the male body it's probably a little academic for you. But if you're looking for something in between, something written by a very smart social analyst that doesn't talk about Foucault or quantitative data on every page, then this is a good choice. I have to say that the chapter on men and women's bodies was a little bit of a let-down. On the one hand, it's a really good idea of a thing to think about, but on the other hand, I kind of disagree with the strength with which she argues that men really do want only skinny women. I'm just not sure it's true, and this is an area in which a little more empirical rigor might have been to her benefit. But that's a minor quibble, and as a whole I really liked the book.
Rating:
Summary: good balance between academic and popular
Review: So I'm a graduate student in sociology and I read this book because one of my teachers suggested it for a project I'm working on. And it was relevant to that, but I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of it in everyday conversation. It's mostly very smart, but also easy and fun to read. If you're an academic, it's not super driven by theory or a desire to be "science," and if you're looking for something fun to read about the male body it's probably a little academic for you. But if you're looking for something in between, something written by a very smart social analyst that doesn't talk about Foucault or quantitative data on every page, then this is a good choice. I have to say that the chapter on men and women's bodies was a little bit of a let-down. On the one hand, it's a really good idea of a thing to think about, but on the other hand, I kind of disagree with the strength with which she argues that men really do want only skinny women. I'm just not sure it's true, and this is an area in which a little more empirical rigor might have been to her benefit. But that's a minor quibble, and as a whole I really liked the book.
Rating: 
Summary: A dreary trudge through personal agendas
Review: Susan Bordo obviously knows how to write well; she also demonstrates a respect for research. Perhaps expecting more illuminating philosophy from these givens makes this endless tome all the more disappointing. Bordo seduces our attention with a few sentences at the beginning of each chapter, only to fizzle out with dreary recountings of her own experiences with the Male Body. While she has a few good moments in defining the spectrum of male/female role-play, this overworked dissertation is a difficult book to complete. And it is hard to make this topic boring.....
Rating:
Summary: The Double Bubble Bind of Physique
Review: The author has accurately characterized the perpetual dilemma of a nation at once embarrassed by its own sexual parts and unduly thrilled with having them revealed in pornography to the extent that neither males nor females are realistic about sex. Men are far more likely to be dependent upon the "ideal female sexuality" as exposed by media empires, at the not so subtle conditioning of Hefner and his Playboy editions over the years, while women are taking the "fast track" to the same attitudes, a unique opportunity to reveal sexual gender conditioning at work. While it might be possible to blame the Puritans for this "sordid affair," in reality, it has not been targeted so blatantly at men until recently, instead preferring to ignore their sexuality as evil and dirty owing to their own inability to exceed their inhibitions. All the while, women are challenged and encouraged to exceed theirs, the double bubble that fuels the taboo of pornography as well as realistic portrayals of gender differences. Sexless men often produce sexually aggressive women for some reason as women perhaps feel more comfortable to be revealing. Since there has never been a time when men were free to reference their sexuality or their sexual parts, it is as yet unknown whether a more accurate balance of propriety may eventually become the norm. Definitely it is a logical probability, however, based upon the attitudes of those in other countries who accept both their sexuality more easily, and are less brainwashed in their acceptance of the sexual diversity in gender as well as in the diverse physical characteristics of either gender that does not limit sexual ideals only to the plastic idealistic models of beauty so prevalent in the U.S., size wise, color wise, or in other aspects of appearance, certainly, a healthier approach to gender than defining beauty and sexual attraction only to the Kens and Barbies of the world. This would and does constitute sexual appearance selectivity and discrimination as presented and as applied.
Rating:
Summary: Critical and compassionate.
Review: This book is the male version of Jean Kilbourne's "Can't Buy My Love." Both look at media representions of gender and how they perpetuate stereotypical myths about males, females, and homosexuals. They also show how advertising and other image makers use the body to exploit consumer desires and insecurities about their own body. Thus, in Bordo's words, what we see in the twentieth century "is the recognition that when we look at bodies (including our own in the mirror), we don't just see biological nature at work, but values and ideals, differences and similarities that *culture* has 'written,' so to speak, on those bodies." What is most compelling about Bordo's work is that she extends her analysis beyond the media and extends it to literature, history, and various institutions that influence our ideas about the male body. She shows overall how myths about the male use sexist images that have been used against women for years. She does this using very lucid, insightful, and humorous writing.
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