Wonderjock Wins the Battle of the Bulge

This is just a quick follow-up to my Wonderbra post. Aussiebum has released the Wonderjock, a sort of counter to the Wonderbra. But instead of pushing up cleavage, it is designed to bulge out the contours of your penis.



Unlike a bra, which has become a rite of passage, the Wonderjock is nothing more than a tool to make a man's dick bigger. Exploiting the cultural male fear of emasculation (and of a little appearance), the Wonderjock presents a troubling message of the (hyper)sexualization that is often associated with the masculine self.

More disturbing is the aspect of shame and deception that Aussiebum's marketing campaign is offering. While the Aussiebum models have no qualms about stripping down in public, they appear happier when their bulge is larger than life. Playing off the male fear of having a smaller-than-average penis, the ads shame the viewer and intensifies feelings of intimidation and inadequacy. Only through the deception that the Wonderjock offers can confidence be obtained.

The road to becoming deemed a legitimate male is an arduous one that begins even before birth. But one of the determining factors in having masculinity attributed to a child by a doctor is, once again, linked back to penis size.



In Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling explains that, to be deemed a legitimate male, a child's penis must be at least 2.4 cm. If the penis is smaller than that, despite maybe have XY chromosomes and/or testicles, the child may have their penis removed, to be be reared as a girl. And this is besides the cases where the child has ambiguous genitalia, ranging in size between a large clitoris or a small penis.

The Wonderjock is just another product that is projecting negative connotations onto masculinity and the male body. Unlike the Wonderbra, which has branded itself onto femininity (albeit that being a problem as I pointed out), the Wonderjock is making no such attempts. It simply exists to shame men to buy their product. To do so makes men feel bigger and bolder, despite the large role deception plays in the process.

*Again, this post has been created from an oral that I presented in my Communication Technologies and Gender class on the gendered implications of the Wonderbra. I added the segment on the Wonderjock as a balance to the often ignored stigmas that men face. In no way am I trying to downplay the importance of Women's Studies or of Gender Studies, but offer these pieces on masculinity in order to add to the multifaceted sphere of the fields.