Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

An Ancient Religion

. . . [M]ost folklore material concerned with the hare, whether informed by sympathetic magic or not, appears to support its connection with an ancient religion: the worship of the Mother Goddess, the deity that Robert Graves has characterized as the White Goddess. The whole of the complex witch-connections of the hare can, in fact, be regarded from one angle as the vestiges of the worship of the White Goddess. Both the hare and the cat were sacred to her, and in the superstitions, which are the squandered legacy of the old religious beliefs, the hare and the cat have become the witches' familiars.

– George Ewart Evans & David Thomson
The Leaping Hare

p. 221

Image: Amanda Clark.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Bel Homme XVIII


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Monday, July 9, 2012

Rethinking the "Normal" Penis (Part II)

Following is a second excerpt from "Hung Like a Horse . . . or An Acorn," chapter five of Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt's Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies: Sex, Brains,and Body Guys. For Part I of this series, click here.

________________


Dominant culture believes that only certain kinds of penises can bear the burden of representing masculinity and male sexuality. Such beliefs, however, negatively limit our ideas about desirable masculinity and sexual performance. A single norm such as the "large floppy penis" or the six-inch erection is the genital equivalent of the elevation of the body guy in current media narratives: a representational strategy highly invested in maintaining a belief in the importance and near magical powers of one type of man and penis, neither of which in reality possess the power representation attributes to them.



Urologists acknowledge that men with short, fully above-the-scrotum penises are normal, and we would all agree those are not large floppy organs. There is nothing wrong with those men. The problem is with singular notions of what a flaccid penis is.

The same is true with Michelangelo's David. The art historians [mentioned in Part I] were in a near panic to explain how, because of fear of battle with a giant, he could be considered normal even though he was only two and four-tenths to two and eight-tenths inches. In fact, two and eight-tenths inches is nearly double the size of some of the normal men in a recent urological study who were measured several times, presumably far from the battlefield (Shamloul). In that study, a number of men who were only one and six-tenths inches flaccid were considered "normal." Indeed, this study tells us in medical terms what anyone would see in [a] visit to the locker room. Even if David had a one and one-half inch penis that rested entirely above his scrotum, showing just a head and no shaft, there would be nothing to explain. We only think something is wrong because we expect to see something that conforms to a norm. The real question is why aren't there more, not less, men with one-and-a-half inch penises in the world of art, photography, and movies, because such men are everywhere in life?

. . . [Also] even if we thought penis size would tell us about the quality of a man's lovemaking, why do we put so much emphasis on the size of a flaccid penis since there is little correlation between flaccid and erect sizes?

. . . Kinsey (Bill Condon, 2004) is a film that provides a mature representation of a character with a small penis. The biopic-style film tells the story of the well-known twentieth-century sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson). In the scene with frontal nudity, Kinsey's assistant, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), disrobes to sexually arouse Kinsey in a hotel room the two share on a business trip, revealing a shorter than average flaccid penis.

Indeed, he succeeds in seducing the bisexual Kinsey. Sarsgaard's penis directly challenges cultural assumptions about the desirability of the big penis, in that early in the film we see Kinsey and his newlywed wife visit a doctor to discuss their sexual problems, whereupon they learn that Kinsey's large penis is the source of her pain and their difficulties. . . . [The doctor] initially assumes that the problem is caused either by an abnormally small three-inch erect penis or a five-inch erection, which lies at the very low end of the normal range, as if he cannot imagine that an average or large penis could be the cause of such a sexual problem.

Sarsgaard's flaccid penis, on the other hand, in not only noticeably smaller than the four-inch normative flaccid penis of medical measurement but also of representation. He is at the far extreme of Kinsey, who is unusually well endowed, yet his character is highly sexual and attractive, seducing both Kinsey and later his wife. He in fact turns out to be bisexual, like Kinsey, but his small penis does not mark him as deficient, unattractive, or pejoratively deviant. Indeed, he is marked as confident in that during his seduction of Kinsey he never projects a sense of embarrassment about his body or that he will fail in his seduction – which he doesn't! He is self assured throughout.



See also the previous posts:
Rethinking the "Normal Penis" (Part I)
Soft

Hard

Not a Weapon or a Mere Tool

Body and Soul

Images 1-4: Subjects and photographers unknown.
Image 5: Peter Sarsgaard in Kinsey (2004).
Image 6: Ronald J. Griswold.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Blue Hare


Image: "Blue Hare" by Edward Foster.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Bel Homme XVII


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

"Let Us At Least Hope . . ."

Writes Jill Mason at the end of her book The Hare:

Hares can never again be such a source of superstition and myth as they have been in the past. Modern scientific research, technology that provides concrete information about the universe, and a British population that is becoming far removed from countryside matters has led to a detached, rational and, perhaps, clinical approach to all things. As a result, much of the mystery and romance is now missing, and a hare is regarded as a less 'magical' creature: it is now just a hare.

Let us at least hope that hares will always be part of our countryside, even if they are no longer part of our culture.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Morning Light XLVI


Subject: Chris Brown.
Photographer: Arnaldo Anaya-Lucca.