Desmond Morris - The Naked Man: A study of the male body

C ONTENTS

About the Book

Following on from the international success of The Naked Woman, bestselling zoologist Desmond Morris turns his attention to the human male. The Naked Man is a study of the masculine body from head to toe, exploring how biological features have been modified, suppressed, or exaggerated by customs and changes in social fashions.

Packed full of scientific fact, engaging anecdote and thought-provoking conclusions, including a controversial chapter examining male sexuality, The Naked Man is a must read for anyone interested in this far from rare, but nevertheless endangered species.

About the Author

Desmond Morris was born in 1928. Educated at Birmingham and Oxford universities, he became the curator of mammals at London Zoo in 1959, a post he held for eight years. In 1967 he published The Naked Ape which was to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. An accomplished artist, television presenter and film maker, Desmond Morriss works have been published in over thirty-six countries.

Also by Desmond Morris

The Biology of Art

The Mammals: a Guide to the Living Species

Men and Snakes (co-author)

Men and Apes (co-author)

Men and Pandas (co-author)

Zootime

Primate Ethology (editor)

The Naked Ape

The Human Zoo

Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour

Intimate Behaviour

Manwatching: a Field-guide to Human Behaviour

Gestures: Their Origins and Distributions (co-author)

Animal Days (autobiography)

The Soccer Tribe

The Giant Panda (co-author)

Inrock (fiction)

The Book of Ages

The Art of Ancient Cyprus

Bodywatching: a Field-guide to the Human Species

Catwatching

Dogwatching

The Secret Surrealist

Catlore

The Human Nestbuilders

Horsewatching

The Animal Contract

Animalwatching: a Field-guide to Animal Behaviour

Babywatching

Christmas Watching

The World of Animals

The Naked Ape Trilogy

The Human Animal: a Personal View of the Human Species

Bodytalk: A World Guide to Gestures

Catworld: a Feline Encyclopedia

The Human Sexes: A Natural History of Man and Woman

Cool Cats: the 100 Cat Breeds of the World

Body Guards: Protective Amulets and Charms

The Naked Ape and Cosmetic Behaviour (co-author) (in Japanese)

The Naked Eye (autobiography)

Dogs: a Dictionary of Dog Breeds

Peoplewatching

The Silent Language (in Italian)

The Nature of Happiness (in Italian)

The Naked Woman

P ICTURE C REDITS

The page references below correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created.

Evolution: 1 above Corbis/Albrecht G Schaefer; 1 below Alamy/Christophe Diesel Michot. Hair: 1 above Alamy/Mediacolors; 1 below Rex Features. Or No Hair: 1 above left akg-images/Gilles Mermet; 1 above right Aquarius; 1 below Alamy/Paul Doyle. Brows: 1 above Rex Features/S Gaboury/DMI; 1 below Rex Features/Sipa Press; 2 above Alamy/Woodystock; 2 below Alamy. Ears: 1 above left National Portrait Gallery, London; 1 above right Rex Features; 1 below Alamy/HB Photo; 2 Rex Features. Eyes: 1 above left Aquarius; 1 above right Rex Features/Henry Lamb/BEI; 1 below PA Photos; 2 above BRO/CO/Camera Press, London; 2 below Rex Features/Everett Collection; 3 above Rex Features/Image Source; 3 below Gettyimages/Evan Agostini. Nose: 1 above Gettyimages/Dave Hogan; 1 below Alamy/Pictorial Press Ltd; 2 above left Gettyimages/Stephen Jaffe/AFP; 2 above right akg-images/Ullstein bild; 2 below akg-images/album. Mouth: 1 above Eye Ubiquitous/Hutchison; 1 below left akg-images/Ullstein bild; 1 below right Rex Features/Sipa Press. Beard: 1 above akg-images; 1 below left Corbis/Renne Lynn; 1 below right Eye Ubiquitous/Hutchison; 2 above left Corbis/Torlief Svensson; 2 above right Alamy/Mediacolors; 2 below akg-images/Ullstein bild. Moustache: 1 above Louis Quail/Camera Press, London; 1 below photo12.com/Keystone Pressedienst; 2 above Rex Features/Joel Rieman; 2 centre Eye Ubiquitous/Hutchison; 2 below Rex Features/Sharok Hatami. Neck: 1 above left Dan Chung/G/M/Camera Press, London; 1 above right Rex Features/Henry Lamb/BEI; 1 below Gettyimages/The Image Bank/Art Wolfe. Shoulders: 1 above Alamy/Chris George; 1 below left akg-images/Ullstein bild; 1 below right Corbis/Pierro Perrin/Sygma. Arms: 1 Photo12.com/Collection cinema. Hands: 1 above Corbis/Jason Reed/Reuters; 1 below left Rex Features/Image Source; 1 below right Corbis/Reuters. Chest: 1 above left Alamy/Woodystock; 1 above right Alamy/don jon red; 1 below Alamy/Guy Moberly. Belly: 1 akg-images/Ullstein bild. Back: 1 above Alamy/Patrick Steel; 1 below left Alamy/Michel Friang; 1 below right Corbis/Markus Cuff; 2 above Rex Features/Tony Kyriacou; 2 below Eye Ubiquitous/Hutchison. Hips: 1 above left Corbis/Frank Carroll/Sygma; 1 above right Rex Features/Offside; 1 below Rex Features/Sipa Press. Buttocks: 1 above left Rex Features/Huw John; 1 above right P A Photos; 1 below P A Photos. Penis: 1 left Attributed to the Triptolemos painter, dating from about 480 B.C.E.: Munich 2314, Antikensammlungen; Beazley, ARV (n. 3), 1: 362, no. 14; illustrated in Reinhard Lullies, ed., Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Deutschland. Mnchen Museum antiken Kleinkunst 4 (Munich: Beck, 1956), plate 197; 1 right Alamy/Jean-Christophe Godet; 2 left Alamy/Visual Arts Library, London; 2 right Rex Features/Farhad Kanuga. Legs: 1 above left Alamy/www.gerardbrown.co.uk; 1 above right Paul Massey/Camera Press, London; 1 below Rex Features/Guiliano Bevilacqua. Feet: 1 above Corbis/Reuters; 1 below Snowdon/Camera Press, London; 2 above Alistair Berg/Camera Press, London; 2 below Rex Features/Tim Rooke.

I NTRODUCTION

The role of women in modern society and their treatment as females in a male-dominated world has been the subject of close examination and debate for many years. The feminist movement of the 1970s gave new focus and direction to this debate with a great deal of research in the next four decades devoted to the human female, including my own book The Naked Woman published in 2004. While many wrongs have been righted, at least in the West, across the globe women are still often treated as property and prohibited from sharing in social, economic and political power systems. All major religions have favoured the male over the female and have done so for at least two thousand years. One has to go back a very long way to find the great Mother Goddess and the Earth Mother, and even further, to the tribal societies of primeval times, to find women at the very centre of human society, with the men on the periphery, out hunting for food.

So it is little wonder that authors, examining the male and female gender today, have concentrated mostly on the beleaguered female. Few books have dealt with the male of the species, and investigated his strengths and his weaknesses. He has been viewed as the entrenched enemy, the cause of all social ills, and his special qualities have been largely ignored. As a starting point for reassessing the nature of the human male, this book first looks at his evolutionary success story, and then goes on to study the masculine body from head to toe, looking at each bit of the male anatomy the eye, the ear, the beard, the chest, and so on reporting on the biological features in each case and then describing the many ways in which these features have been modified, suppressed or exaggerated by local customs and by changes in social fashions. It is not a medical text it does not go inside the body. It deals only with the surface features. In a sense, it is a natural history of the Naked Man, a zoological portrait, viewing him as a fascinating specimen of a far from rare, but nevertheless endangered, species.