Guys Have Bellybuttons, Too

Not long ago, I did an online search using the phrase "are bellybuttons sexual". Being a gay navel fetishist, I'm always cruising the interwebs looking for new material.

I was dismayed to see that the overwhelming proportion of articles were about women's or female bellybuttons. Little or nothing appeared to be said about guys' which, frankly, pissed me off.

A number of years ago, a physician and a satirist, both men, wrote the volume, Why Do Men Have Nipples? (authors Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner). I never read the book, but could imagine their response – if it was credible – included something about the fact that when the human body is forming inside a female, it carries body parts (like a "template") that both genders can use. Of course, one (two?) of those parts is nipples. Men's nipples are not for nursing and do not give breast milk. They do, of course, in addition to the ample pectoral muscles around them, given considerable pleasure – to the guy who's having his tits and nips felt up, as well as whoever is fortunate enough to be feeling them. The point here, of course, is that both males and females both have tits, and although their visual form is different, they can both be quite pleasurable to look at and/or feel.

So I'm here to ponder a similar question, or to make a similar point about bellybuttons. Guys have them also. Always have. Yet females' navels have dominated cultural attention, whether approved or hidden, particularly here in the States (where I reside):

Barbara Eden of the TV series "I Dream Of Jeannie" famously had her navel visible in her outfit as a genie from a magic lampCher caused a stir on CBS with outfits that prominently featured her bellybuttonMadonna had no problems showing her bellybutton in videos on MTVBritney Spears made a lot of guys' crotches stiff by baring hers in the 90s

And there's many other examples, not just of entertainers, but also in the world of fashion. When the bikini took the fashion world by storm in the late 1940s, the bared female bellybutton raised a lot of eyebrows – so much so that the American film industry largely banned the open display of navels by women on the big and small screens. Eye-rolling? That's how things were back then.

Be that as it may, guys have always, as I've asserted, had navels also. Perhaps one reason that guys' bellybuttons have largely escaped public imagination is that with a male-dominated society – and their desire to be entertained exclusively as they wish – only women and their navels would be permissible on the open channels of film and TV. They were, I'm betting, "safe" enough to show without incurring the full wrath of organized religion. The notion that there could be a female gaze – that men could be objects of beauty – was largely relegated to the corners of mass media, in publications like Playgirl magazine (which targeted a heterosexual female audience). A "gay gaze" would not come along in the mainstream until (I would say) the 1980s when gay males demanded their seat at the table of political power.

But males had their own garments that – unwittingly or intentionally – showcased the male bellybutton. Originally called a "half-shirt" – so named because it was usually a short-sleeve shirt cut in half horizontally – it showed the male navel in the clear without any attempts to hide it. For a while during the late 1970s and much of the 1980s, many younger guys who were in good shape, enough to have flat abs at least, wore these shirts for several reasons – for comfort (especially in hot climates) and to showcase their physical fitness. In some edge cases, such shirts were also for gay guys to attract others.

These shirts would eventually take on the name "crop-top" because they were literally cropped – cut short – and they were "tops" – or shirts. As such shirts for (mostly straight) males grew in popularity up until around the 1990s, a lot of guys were fronting their abs and their navels.

Let's not forget that this was in addition to other guys who chose to go shirtless completely, a luxury that women in the US never had in the mainstream. That's always been the case, and such guys have always had their bellybuttons visible in a variety of situations – boxing matches, football games, swimming and diving meets, Ironman and similar athletic competitions, fashion shows (especially featuring underwear or swimwear), and (of course) adult video (R-rated, X-rated, and "hard core" stuff). No efforts have ever been made to cover up men's bellybuttons in modern times (1960's and later) in the States.

And yet...guys' navels are usually an afterthought, if they're even thought of, at all. It wasn't until the 1990s that guys bellybuttons began to make their way to mainstream visibility, outside of the athletic arena.

Why is this? Let's consider the ways that guys' bodies can differ from women's bodies. Guys' bodies can be hairier – in some cases much hairier. This hirsute look can "choke out" a navel from being visible. In some cases, a light coating of body hair can accentuate the outline of a bellybutton. Or the hair can "flow" through the middle part of it, especially if the navel is an innie.

Another consideration is muscle tone. I've personally observed where a guy's rippled ab section has caused the navel to sit in one of the folds of musculature. Or maybe all the "meat" of the midsection has a kind of compressing effect horizontally on the bellybutton so it's flattened.

And then there's the outie which are considered less flattering on females in many circles (but not all!) but which are more likely to be found on guys, especially those with low body fat. On some guys – models and athletes perhaps especially – a large, round or oval outie is an attention grabber. It's been estimated that about 10 percent of the general population even have outies but that still means that males have such navels also.

So...suffice it to say I've proven that guys have bellybuttons also, even if culturally such body parts aren't paid much attention. But still the question remains: why isn't there as strong an interest in guys showing off their bellybuttons?

Well, in addition to the "male gaze" bias the culture has, there's another big one – homophobia. In the States, there's a perpetual pursuit of masculinity. This psychological stance vilifies anything – and I mean anything – that's considered feminine or gay in nature. So, things that are small and possibly delicate are written off as undesirable. Small and dainty? Gay. Cute nicknames like innies and outies? Gay. On the midriff area which lots of guys only consider for women? Definitely gay. In fact, arguably in the mainstream, the only guys who are allowed to show their navels these days from under a croptop are those going to a gym (lifting weights) or playing college football (although the NCAA banned the croptop from legal uniform for play, some players will still pull up their jerseys to let their stomachs show).

I'm going to go on record here as declaring my opposition to sexist and homophobic views of the male bellybutton. I happen to like looking at them, other gay guys do as well (I've seen posts on social media) and of course, some women like them also. A bared male midriff where the guy's bellybutton is clearly showing, and there's no "ripples" or body hair, is among my favorite erotic sights ever. Frame such a bellybutton in a real croptop (compare, see my other essay about "not-tops" which attempt to be trendy without revealing the navel, perhaps for reasons listed above) and my day is made.

The rare times that straight guys seem to be okay with bellybuttons is as a comedic device. There's usually no sexual angle to it (unless that's part of the humor). Even that would be better to me than a snarling, seething bully who thinks navels should only be shown on women, and for such guys' sexual pleasure exclusively.

I'm going to dismount with this hopeful entreaty: Normalize the male bellybutton as capable of being just as sexy (or more) as females'.