Buy I'll Cover You in $20 Bills: The Male Body Beauty Business

I'll Cover You in $20 Bills: The Male Body Beauty Business

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Synopsis

Find out what really drives the men who bring us the “ideal” male image!

I’ll Cover You in $20 Bills: The Male Body Beauty Business breaks down the stereotypes associated with seventeen different professions ranging from plastic surgeon to porn star and exposes the secrets and insecurities of the men who work in them. Body consciousness is not just for women anymore—meet the men who create and sell the male image you see plastered across billboards, magazines, and your television screen!

Broken down into two sections, “Image Makers” and “The Performers,” I’ll Cover You in $20 Bills provides you with the personal accounts of seventeen men involved in the male form industry. These men share their personal life stories as well as their humor, insight, advice, and professional/personal goals.

Review

This is the (-1) title: a worthy subject subverted by undisciplined scholarship. Friends and friends of friends make up a good number of the interview subjects in this survey-lite assessment of the "ideal" male image, so the sample is certainly suspect. And Rivers is no master of either the well-turned phrase or the startling insight, so there's neither much entertainment value nor a profound learning experience in I'll Cover You in $20 Bills. The 17 interviews are at best perfunctory, following a rigid format and a stilted script. The usual suspects are rounded up: "Image Makers" include a personal trainer, a male-nude photographer, a talent scout (for strip clubs!), and an adult-film director; "Performers" include two bodybuilders, a model, two female impersonators, two male escorts, and a porn star. Only two interviews go much beyond shallow – or in the case of one of the male escorts, the spectacularly narcissistic. The first is with a straight plastic surgeon, who is quite sensible about why a nip and tuck might transcend vanity; the other is with a professional masseur who comes across as quite a complex, fascinating character.

Richard Labonte, Books to Watch Out For