This essay examines Men Undressed, an anthology edited by Stacy Bierlain and Gina Frangello, in which female writers take on the male sexual experience. The paper explores how contributors such as Nava Renek, Jennifer Egan, Lidia Yuknavitch, Sherri Joseph, and Elizabeth Searle avoid gendered clichés to craft nuanced portraits of male desire, emotional vulnerability, and identity. The essay also evaluates critical responses to the anthology, including a critique of Steve Almond's foreword, and reflects on the broader cultural and literary significance of women writing authentically about men and sex outside the conventions of erotic or romanticized fiction.
The paper consistently uses literary comparison to deepen analysis — for example, invoking D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover to illustrate the principle that good fiction individualizes characters rather than making universal statements about a gender's experience. This technique of comparative literary reference effectively contextualizes the anthology within a wider canon.
The essay opens with a thematic introduction establishing sex as a literary vehicle for exploring power, gender, and emotion. It then analyzes individual stories thematically — emotional need, transformation, exploration — before pivoting to critical reception. It closes by assessing the anthology's cultural and publishing significance. Each section builds naturally on the last, moving from textual analysis to evaluation.
One of the most intriguing aspects of reading this anthology is how sex offers its writers a compelling platform from which to work. Sex is a topic that almost always grabs a reader's attention, but it also provides an opportunity to explore even more complex subjects — emotions, the balance of power, and gender identity, among others. Sex is used repeatedly in Men Undressed as a means by which the writers approach certain human issues and seek to overcome them. The anthology creates an interesting dialogue by presenting sex as both an element of intimate and romantic relationships and as a relationship unto itself. This is something the anthology courageously explores while shaking off the puritanical morality so deeply embedded in American culture.
One of the most striking ways in which women picture male sexual desire is through Nava Renek's short story in the anthology. It features a male protagonist coming from a place of extreme emotional need — a deep desire to be loved and cared for. This makes the setting of his actions particularly interesting: he is a character who picks up women in bars, a starting point that seems prosaic and driven primarily by primal urges, but which actually originates from an intense emotional place. The main character genuinely desires his marriage to work, but its dynamics remain broken and beyond correction. He sees casual sex as his only recourse — a fleeting way to feel passion and emotional aliveness. Yet, unlike other men portrayed in the book, this character would trade all the casual sex in the world for a more satisfying marriage. In this story it is too late for both husband and wife; they both come to the realization that they are working on something that isn't succeeding, and neither has the inner fortitude to make the difficult changes that would ultimately benefit them both.
One of the more revelatory aspects of this anthology is the fact that the female writers did not fall into the trap of romanticizing sex the way male writers often do when writing about it. Male writers can create a superficial quality when writing about sex and women, just as female writers can do when writing about female sexual experience within genres like "chick lit." Adhering to these old constructs risks never getting to the heart of the matter. With women, the range of emotions can contain contradictory elements that are both fascinating and daunting — and the writers here embrace that complexity.
One of the great successes in the portrayal of the male sexual experience throughout this anthology is that it avoids clichés and stock archetypes, and refuses to divide sex scenes neatly along gender lines. The writers were aware of the cultural tendency to code certain depictions of sex as masculine or feminine — mapping roughly onto pornography versus romance novels, respectively. The female writers of this anthology were able to present sex from the male perspective without making it into a gendered archetype. Everything remained individualized. None of the writers fall into the trap of generalizing about men as a category or making sweeping statements about the male condition. The characters happen to be well-constructed individuals, as good writing demands. While the stories do present the male experience, they avoid making any single grandiose statement about male sexuality in general. This is one of the hallmarks of good writing.
A relevant comparison is D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover: Lawrence does not decree that all women experience sex in a particular way, but merely that one woman might have this type of experience. Not every woman is Lady Chatterley, after all. Similarly, the key success of this anthology is that each writer creates a meaningful commentary about the male sexual experience for the specific man she has created, without reducing him to a representative type. The writers manage to present a gendered sexual experience in a way that is believable and resonant without reducing fiction to a clinical study of gender.
One aspect of the male sexual experience that the writers appear to touch upon is the difficulty men face in sustaining long-term relationships with any degree of happiness. The longevity of relationships creates a strain that men often appear unable to address. When wounds arise in relationships, men frequently turn to other avenues — often other women or pornography. There is a strong commentary throughout the anthology about emotional and sexual issues as deeply interconnected, and about men's reluctance to confront those issues directly. There is also the implication that a man's self-worth is inherently tied to his ability to have sex, to have sex well, to have sex frequently, and to feel genuinely connected to his partner.
For example, the protagonist in "The Gold Cure" by Jennifer Egan demonstrates how the depression afflicting him is both caused and perpetuated by his lack of sexual potency. The story makes a compelling case that for many men, sexual identity and emotional well-being are inseparable — and that the failure of one can devastate the other.
Bierlain, S.; Frangello, G. (2011). Men Undressed. Chicago: Other Voices.
Interview: Thursday, October 2, 2014. [Instructor] — author.
Worley, S. (2011). What do Women Think Men Think About Sex? Retrieved from chicagoreader.com,
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