Beefcakes Are The New Cheesecakes

We are in the midst of a new era of movie beefcake, of sexy men with muscular bodies willing to strip down for a more than willing audience. There are very few female sex symbols in Hollywood at the moment; most of the tits and ass on the silver screen is male.

This rather shocking revelation occurred to me as I was leaving the recent Man of Steel movie. As a long-time comics geek, I’m used to Lois Lane being a hot babe. Sure, she’s also always been a brilliant and courageous investigative reporter, but comics illustrators have delighted in drawing her showing off a little leg. She was often depicted in classic cheesecake fashion, in other words not pornographically, but with a helping of pin-up girl titillation. Superman was the one in the skintight costume, of course, but he wasn’t drawn to be foxy the way that she was. Though this has changed a bit now, the classic depiction of Superman that comics fans associate with the character had no racy body language, nipples, body hair, or bulge; he was powerful, broad shouldered and masculine, but was as desexualized as a Ken doll.

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