Soldier Snapshots by Jay Mechling

Author:Jay Mechling [Jay Mechling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE MALE BUTT AND MASCULINITY

The snapshots of soldiers’ bathing I have presented so far present the nude or partially nude male body, the nudity consisting of views of the male buttocks (the “butt,” in folk speech). In the next section I shall deal with the more scarce snapshots showing male genitalia. But I need to pause here to consider the place of the naked male butt as an icon of American masculinity and strength.

The naked butts of soldiers, sailors, aviators, and Marines appear in both private snapshots and in more public, professional photographs. The prevalence of the male butt in military photography begs explanation. Certainly part of the explanation is that showing male genitalia was viewed as more “obscene,” so the naked male body often turned away from the camera with the butt blocking a view of the penis. But that explanation ignores the symbolism of the male butt.

Art historian Patricia Lee Rubin (2018) has written a large volume on the male “view from behind” in Renaissance art. As an art historian she is interested in the conventions, the rhetoric of showing the male butt in paintings and sculptures, and she argues that “rear views of well-formed men could . . . be objects of admiration and were used to characterize the heroic, the stalwart, and the brave” (2018, 9). Rubin pays close attention to the body language in the paintings and sculptures she studies, with special attention to the way the male figures stand. “In the rhetoric of representation,” she writes, “the V-legged stance stood for virility and strength” (2018, 118). Apparently, military snapshots and documentary photography of the male butt are part of a long tradition in the history of art of seeing a man’s backside as a symbol of strength.

Much of the cultural analysis of the male body focuses on the penis as a representation of the cultural phallus, symbol of male power. I shall get to a discussion of the penis in these soldier snapshots in the next section, but for now I have to puzzle out an explanation for the obvious pleasure soldiers take in photographing their buddies’ butts and for the buddies taking pleasure in showing their butts to the camera.

The butt is so common in military photographs that its meaning must be more than just “not the penis.” It is likely that the muscled male butt represents strength, not just in the individual soldier but in the nation as well. Nazi visual propaganda frequently featured the naked male body, especially the butt, and in the United States we see the same wartime use of the male butt to represent the strength of the nation in the fight. How else can we account for all the nude male bodies in magazine advertising (Cannon towels and other products) and in the propaganda photography by Steichen’s Naval Aviation Photographic Unit? The naked, muscular male torso works as well for the message of American strength.

I do not think the everyday soldier or sailor was picturing the butts of naked buddies with the message of national strength in mind.

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