Manhood: The Bare Reality

Product Information

The Bare Reality series has been featured and reviewed in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, The Independent, The Evening Standard, Metro, i paper, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Grazia, Stylist, DIVA, Gay Times, Huff Post, BBC World, ITV’s Loose Women, BBC Womans Hour, BBC Radio London, BBC London News, Channel 5 News, Radio 5 Live, Talk Radio, LBC, and many international newspapers, magazines, radio and television programmes. You see, with the easy access to the internet these days, children and teens are stumbling upon pictures of genitals online. As I read the book, I saw many interesting things, and I’m not even referring to the multitude of penises (there is also a strong narrative of what word to use when referring to the penis as throughout the book; I settled for the anatomical term in this piece).

We desperately need men to learn to be honest about their failings and hopes, their needs and desires. So, it’s important for our tweens and teens to understand that they’re perfectly normal just the way they are. There could well be an argument for the presentation of an erect penis photo alongside the flaccid one, given that this is a normal state for the penis; perhaps there is too much taboo around this - as well as the censors pen, to make it a viable proposition though. At the end of the day, as the above quoted man said, we’re all human; we shouldn’t assign certain ‘tasks’ to certain genders.Helpful for men to see “normal” (instead of porn-normal) and for hearing from men sharing their private “parts”; doubts, ponderings, experiences. Manhood: The Bare Reality by Laura Dodsworth is a book that is filled with non-sexualised colour photographs of non-erect penises that represent the diversity in size, colour and shape of this body part. All opinions expressed are my own and I was not compensated (beyond saving on the cost of this book) for this review. I think this really aligns with what “traditional manhood” is all about – keeping deep thoughts and feeling to yourself. If women are going to stand there and expose themselves in that open way, then to be one of the men who is willing to do that is a really positive thing.

Lange habe ich geglaubt, ein solches Buch gäbe es aktuell noch nicht und war sehr erleichtert, als ich dann dieses hier gefunden habe. Just as Bare Reality: 100 women, their breasts, their stories presented the un-airbrushed truth about breasts for women, Manhood: The Bare Reality shows us the spectrum of `normal', revealing men's penises and bodies in all their diversity and glory, dispelling body image anxiety and myths. You get vauge information about the men from their genitalia (it’s a penis, it won’t tell you much) but I was led to draw conclusions, that is until I read the text and was able to disconnect from the image and the person. A refreshing approach to dealing with a fairly taboo subject, with a wide variety of flaccid penises (penii? This book is a sequel of sorts to The Bare Reality, the original book in the series where 100 women had their breasts photographed and shared what it meant to them to be a woman.Topics like our physical and mental health, our worries and insecurities, our hopes and dream, and our overall emotions should become commonplace.

It’s showing that not only is this father recognizing the value of “transformational manhood,” he’s working on instilling and encouraging it in his own son. While there were a few quotes that reinforces “traditional manhood” concepts, they were shared by men who had their penises photographed a few minutes earlier and were sharing some of their deepest and darkest moments in their lives. In everything I do I desire to connect deeply with people, practise integrity, and interpret and present their stories with truth and memorable images. These days we are all less bound by gender and traditional roles, but is there more confusion about what being a man means?

It occurred to me as I read just how rare it is for non-erect penises to be subjected to the gaze of thousands of women and men. factor that a book containing 100 pictures of full frontal male nudity, and actually read what these men have to say.