Men love women’s bodies, we are told, but only after women spend an inordinate amount of time whipping their bodies into a lovable shape—by dieting, shaving, waxing, dying, perfuming, covering with makeup, douching, and starving them. Young men, we are encouraged to believe, have a lot of desire for women, but they dare not talk to each other about sex in ways that center girls’ and women’s pleasure, power, or subjectivity because, paradoxically, this kind of talk feels gay.
