Flesh

Like, this is really bugging me. So what's with us MEN. I mean is there something in our heads that tell us 'Oh hello give me the one with the flesh please'?

Man flesh.

It's this whole thing about seduction and who can bare more without baring it all. A tea towel to hide your crotch? Sure, we'll pay you half a million to run that ad. More common nowadays are 'naturist' shots where the well greased body is set amongst lush greenery or some everyday object like a lawnmower or your neighbour's letter box.

It has become so normal now that you can't escape from it. Gay publications are plastered with ever increasing amounts of flesh, be it hairy or smooth, white or black, brown or green, they come in all forms. Even advertisements you see along Chapel St., if they're specifically targeting gay men then you can sure as hell bet that there will be some man flesh on it.

Take for example the million and one party banners that have 'the perfect body' smack right in the centre of the poster. I mean seriously, not everyone goes to a party just because its poster has on it a man with a hairy chest and pointy nipples.

Saunas are another classic example. Beautiful bodies, perfect bronzed tans, winning Colgate smiles planted all over their advertisements. When you step into a sauna, you find anything but that, usually fat old men with falling teeth/ dentures who don’t take the time to mow their chest hair so it clumps up like lawn grass. The words ‘misleading and deceptive conduct’ are too mild to be used here.

Try opening AXNational or DNA. Pages and pages of nude or semi nude men from the front to the back, your eyes can’t help but look at their bodies and check out their have and have-nots. It’s like soft porn, these magazines. Informative at some point, yes, but do they really have to include so much skin together with the article 'Top 10 Resorts' or 'Breakfast Recipes'??? Take Men’s Health for example. Their goal must be to get people exercising and lusting after a perfect body that they will never have.

GQ has very little flesh in it in comparison, and much more text that’s mostly crap and not worth reading. So as you get closer and closer to straight men’s magazines, you get less and less man flesh. Smell a correlation?

Printers probably stock up huge amounts of red and yellow ink just so that they can cope with the volume of flesh printed.

The people in these magazines/ posters are usually well built or slim built with nice curves and well manicured hair (both on the head and in other places). Seduction is the key; poses play an equally important role in grabbing the unwary gay man's attention, using the (usually) brown colour of man flesh and the careful positioning of lights to accentuate his butt crack. Talk about propaganda! No wonder so many gay men have insecurity issues re their bodies (me included).

If you want your blog to do well in cyberspace but have zero writing skills, paste a lot of nude pics on it and no it doesn’t have to be amateur pics, any porno star will do. The word will spread like bushfire in the blogosphere and the hounds will come running. Voila. One million hits in five months you say? Done.

So are we gay men really flesh hungry, or is the world feeding our appetite with more than we can digest?