Disney Dicks And Male Objectification
On Monday, Jezebel published Disney Dudes' Dicks: What Your Favorite Princes Look Like Naked. From the title alone it's pretty clear what to expect — but if you'd rather not look at cartoon dicks (we strongly urge you otherwise, it's fun!) Tracie Egan Morrissey and illustrator Tara Jacoby do their best to describe and depict the various Disney prince phalluses.
Some are proud and respectable, like Prince Charming's:
Obviously, the perfect guy has the perfect dick: like eight or nine inches, thick — but not too thick otherwise it's painful — rock hard with a nice throbbing vein. He's groomed perfectly in a way that's considerate of lovers without being too gay porn-y about it. He's standing in front of the fireplace that Cinderella no longer has to rake, arm draped over the mantle.
Others are less impressive, like Gaston's ("small dick — very tiny — pube-less and uncut"), or just decidedly average, such as Prince Eric's ("Nice medium-sized, half erect dick with the foreskin pulled back a little. Pale with a pink head.")
What wonderful time to be alive! Finally, in the year 2014 we as a culture can enjoy some cartoon cock conceptualization.
Unfortunately, Daily Beast reporter Emily Shire doesn't agree. A day after Jezebel's Disney dick story, Shire wrote a rebuttal. Won't someone think of the men, she argues:
There is something deeply hypocritical about Jezebel running a spread about sexually objectifying Disney's princes because the site has lashed out at the Mouse for doing the same on multiple occasions. […] It is less often discussed, but Disney also exerts body pressure on boys, stressing a fit and chiseled physique as the true way to convey a heroic masculinity and attract women. […] And that physical insecurity can apply especially when it comes to the part of the male anatomy so glorified and critiqued in "Disney Dudes' Dicks."
— Full Frontal Disney: Feminism's Nudity Double Standard, The Daily Beast
Shire might have a point were it not for the deep systemic privileges that men enjoy, argues Kat Stoeffel, on New York Magazine's The Cut blog. Stoeffel takes this line of thinking a step further, and asserts that not only is male objectification harmless to men; but it helps women free themselves from the constant oppression of men's opinions:
Shire has missed what makes exerting that pressure so fun. "Not being objectified" is just one of the many advantages of being male. When we selectively revoke this freedom from body scrutiny, we don't do anything to diminish the meaningful economic and reproductive advantages men enjoy. […] Put another way: We will stop Dong Watch once there's a female president, zero wage gap, and Swedish-level paid parental leave; once tampons, birth control, and abortions are all available free and on-demand. […] Male objectification isn't about making men feel bad. It's about not caring how men feel. Or at least, putting it aside long enough to think about what we desire.
— Why We Objectify Men Without Guilt, The Cut
It's worth pointing out that in this mini-Disney-dick news cycle, not a single prominent male voice piped up in protest. There was no mansplaining (though maybe this very post counts?), no dude-written "actually" blog post. Probably because most men looked at the post, had a laugh or two, closed the tab and went on with their day — because if there's anyone who thinks more about dicks, it's men.
