ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses largely on the role of cinema in the production and circulation of ideals of male sexual desirability in part due to the development of the Hollywood star system and subsequently through the figure of the ‘sex symbol’. The chapter is also concerned with a male body that has become almost ubiquitous across the media landscape and has become what might be described as the industry standard or expectation in cinema and television. This is of course the athletic, muscular body that we return to repeatedly in this book as an exemplar of the increasingly international, cultural standard of male sexual desirability.
