Manhood: The Bare Reality

Product Information

Sex and gender are delicate and nuanced issues for all of us and can be intimidating topics to teach.

Which is why Laura Dodsworth’s new book Manhood: The Bare Reality, in which 100 men reveal all, took me by surprise. From veteran to vicar, from porn addict to prostate cancer survivor, men from all walks of life share honest reflections about their bodies, sexuality, relationships, fatherhood, work and health in this pioneering and unique book. The emphasis was on comfort and openly discussing bodies and manhood, rather than any pressure to show off the penis as a glorious, huge presence, and each man was kept anonymous while sharing their stories. The more I looked at myself, the more I felt quite tender and I actually think my vulva is quite pretty now. The vulva is like a landscape and we generally only know one route through it – that route is sexual and pornographic.It comfirmed some of the things I believed about men, but also showed a more vulnerable side to them.

As part of the project, Laura took her own photograph, partly to test how it worked, but in doing so, she was able to process some of her own thoughts about being a woman. I realised that when I had been batting this project away, I had been batting away taking a really intimate look at myself. Prior to cancer, the majority of dialogue with my close male friends included random bantering, ‘roasting’ each other, and discussing movies, but nothing of real substance. I think this is why men sometimes have a higher incidence of some of the serious illnesses because we don’t like to complain about being ill.

I was surprised that I wanted to do Manhood because I thought my next project would be about women but I felt this gap.

They’re like pillow talk, the conversations that you imagine men have with their partners, although a lot of men in the book told me that they don’t have these conversations with their partners. My last book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic ,was a Sunday Times bestseller.women bravely share un-airbrushed photographs of their breasts alongside honest, courageous, powerful and humorous stories about their breasts and their lives. During the course of creating Bare Reality, I felt very connected to my sense of womanhood,” Dodsworth tells me.