Five rea­sons to cel­e­brate male objec­ti­fi­ca­tion in Mag­ic Mike XXL

It’s come to our atten­tion that cer­tain cor­ners of the inter­net are grum­bling about the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the hot male strip­pers jump­ing joy­ous­ly and gleam­ing glo­ri­ous­ly across the plot of Mag­ic Mike XXL. The big weapon in the cyn­ics’ arse­nal is that if the strip­pers’ gen­ders were flipped that fem­i­nists would be cry­ing ​‘misog­y­ny’.

Maybe this would be the case. Maybe it wouldn’t. It’s a hypo­thet­i­cal aimed at mak­ing peo­ple ques­tion their desire to lap up every inch of toned male flesh on dis­play in this bril­liant, sex­u­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic main­stream mar­vel. With that in mind, here are five rea­sons (one for each of the lead strip­pers) we should cel­e­brate the objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the male form in Mag­ic Mike XXL.

Find­ing peo­ple on a screen or in the real world phys­i­cal­ly attrac­tive is part of the visu­al plea­sure of cin­e­ma and the joy of life. In life it’s an inte­gral part of form­ing and main­tain­ing sex­u­al rela­tion­ships and in cin­e­ma it’s a sur­face stim­u­la­tion that often com­ple­ments the deep­er bass notes of a char­ac­ter. To say that attrac­tive actors are auto­mat­i­cal­ly shal­low per­form­ers is as reduc­tive as say­ing that unat­trac­tive actors have no place on screen. Back in the real world, the fact that one ele­ment of being in a lov­ing longterm rela­tion­ship means occa­sion­al­ly look­ing at your part­ner and think­ing, ​‘Oh hell yes’ should be proof for­ev­er that objec­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t equate to dis­re­spect. When you look at a friend or a lover or even a stranger and feel a rush of appre­ci­a­tion it is nat­ur­al and not evil. It’s how you han­dle and do or don’t impose your appre­ci­a­tion on a per­son that can lead to unpleasantness.

Pic­ture the scene: A girl walks home alone at night. The street is desert­ed. Except she hears foot­steps and turns to see a young, strong man. As she approach­es she feels his eyes drink­ing her in. As she gets clos­er he says, ​“Hey baby, look­ing good. Wan­na go for a drink?” Now imag­ine that it is day­light on a busy street. An old man croaks, ​“Hel­lo gor­geous,” before suc­cumb­ing to a cough­ing fit. One sit­u­a­tion is threat­en­ing and one is not. The first man has the phys­i­cal and social pow­er to impose him­self. The sec­ond does not. When male com­menters ask, ​‘Would Mag­ic Mike XXL be okay if it was about female strip­pers or would it be misog­y­nis­tic?’ they miss the point.

You can’t just gen­der flip a sce­nario as if men and women are in the same boat. Men still hold dis­pro­por­tion­ate pow­er over women because of the momen­tum of his­tor­i­cal lega­cy. Let’s not pre­tend that because there are no misog­y­nists in your friend­ship cir­cle that the prob­lem of inequal­i­ty has been fixed. Indeed, part of the com­e­dy of Mag­ic Mike XXL and that the per­form­ers rev­el in is that they are men (men!) sell­ing their sex­u­al­i­ty. Com­e­dy in art comes from play­ful­ly riff­ing on the sta­tus quo. The joke in Mag­ic Mike XXL is that these guys are doing some­thing that is very much against the cul­tur­al grain.

It would be remiss of us to be ruled by gen­er­al­i­ties. Men oppres­sive­ly sex­u­al­is­ing women is social­ly pre­dom­i­nant but of course it hap­pens the oth­er way around. Harass­ment and worse is always wrong and the extent of this wrong is gen­der-neu­tral and peo­ple on the receiv­ing end of it need to be heard and pro­tect­ed. But the key thing is none of the char­ac­ters in Mag­ic Mike XXL are being oppressed. They are a tootin-tootin posse of pro­gres­sive­ly-dri­ven enter­tain­ers that feel empow­ered rather than oppressed by the screams of sex­u­al endorse­ment that emanate from the women that they entertain.

Sure when Mag­ic Mike, Big Dick Ritchie, Ken, Tito and Tarzan take off their clothes and show us their moves they are sex­u­al­ly appeal­ing (as much for their phys­i­cal tal­ents as for their appear­ances) but a lot of the run-time is ded­i­cat­ed to them hang­ing out togeth­er, shoot­ing the breeze and show­ing that they care for each oth­er, the women they meet and for their futures. They are not paper-thin wank bank effi­gies but autonomous beings that have cho­sen to be liv­ing, breath­ing sex­u­al fan­tasies as a job because – as they say – women are ​“queens” and deserve to be giv­en what they want.

Yes, this log­ic is too good to be true and is des­tined to stay filed under the ​‘mag­ic of cin­e­ma’, but the fact that it moti­vates char­ac­ters is a tes­ta­ment to their auton­o­my. Some that have crit­i­cised the film have done so on the grounds that the female char­ac­ters – once again – do not match up to the devel­op­ment of the male ones.

Film4’s Cather­ine Bray point­ed out to us after a packed Leices­ter Square screen­ing with a very engaged female-dom­i­nat­ed audi­ence that the excite­ment in the room was expressed though gig­gling and gasps not stony, per­vy stares. The biggest thrill of Mag­ic Mike XXL is hear­ing women glo­ry­ing in final­ly get­ting what they want from a main­stream block­buster. The nov­el­ty is a buzz for the audi­ence and for those enabling it. Chan­ning Tatum made a sur­prise vis­it to our screen­ing and from the scream­ing in the room you would have thought that we were at a One Direc­tion concert.

A lady in the audi­ence cried, ​“Will you just mar­ry me?!” ​“I don’t know what you just said… but yes,” respond­ed Chan­ning, mak­ing the lady’s night/​life and stay­ing on brand with the film’s affir­ma­tive sex­u­al­i­ty. ​“The only prob­lem is it wasn’t in 3D,” said a film-goer after­wards in a queue for the bath­room. This film is giv­ing women a chance to give voice to their sex­u­al­i­ty and while there are a mil­lion cyn­i­cal come­backs to that thought, the fact is that many women in this world are taught to be pas­sive and sub­mis­sive and to repress their desires. Mag­ic Mike XXL polite­ly says do not be afraid of this side of your­self because we aren’t.