Teen Shirtlessness

So the other day I went to a lecture by Theresa Rebeck in Bryant Park with a fellow IMS member. We were hoping that she would talk about playwrighting since we are both playwrights, but instead she talked about her new novel, "Three Girls and Their Brother," whose premise actually intersects some of the interests of this blog. Funny, no? Ms. Rebeck was intrigued by the increasing sexualization of young women in the media, the so-called "It Girls" and has written a novel about three normal girls in Brooklyn who become propelled to iconhood and the effects that propulsion has on their family. I'm looking forward to reading it. So over the course of her talk, she discussed some very theoretical stuff about the camera and the male gaze in popular media, and I got excited because this is exactly the secretly intellectual motive behind our fun IMS club. When someone asked her about "It Boys," she seemed to feel that boys aren't sexualized and objectified in the same way as girls are. While I would agree that it is certainly not the same, in terms of volume, I do think that the camera is being increasingly shifted to the feminine point of view. I stood up and offered the above teenage shirtlessness as proof of this point - Zac Efron.

Now I don't even have the heart to look up his birth year on IMDB since he is definitely younger than Henry Cavill and even 1983 made me feel a little bit ill, but I will say that he is living proof that the male gaze does not reign supreme anymore. Yay for IMS! I'm certainly not advocating for more teenage shirtlessness any more than I'd like to see one more teenage girl rise to fame by taking sexy pictures. I'm just saying that it is nice to have female desire acknowledged by the camera, too. Ladies like to look at pretty things too!

So now I am going to look at the shirtless pictures of Clive Owen that another IMS member sent me and feel happy. He is an appropriate age to take his shirt off. Until the next time, I am...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS