That is an excellent point. But the same is true of men, but we can still tell when something is designed with the goal of sex appeal.
In Arakis case the first half of Jojo is classic buff protagonist power fantasy stuff. While the second half is designed to appeal to his specific love of fashion.
It can be hard to tell the difference between art designed for sex appeal and art as power fantasy but as someone who's seen a bit of deliberate sexualisation of men in her time, I can tell you Jojo's ain't it.
It's a complicated topic. Sex appeal itself is kind of inherently gendered a lot of the time. Which is why it's really hard to depict men as sexually appealing without it coming across a little bit gay.
If you're okay with that happening you can lean into it and go full bara. Which is unmistakably gay and unmistakably sexual. But it's very tricky to do it without it being a bit queer.
This was kinda frankly my opinion too but as a cis het man I don't feel as inclined to voice it
But it does genuinely feel like what is considered a "sexualized" male character for the female gaze typically tends to just be masculine male bodies encased with typically "feminine" tropes, like soft facial features or scantily clad revealing clothes or what a cishet man might consider "gay"
There is a certain irony in the idea that both straight men and straight women ultimately are sexually attracted to feminine traits, just on different types of bodies
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u/ASpaceOstrich 9h ago
As a woman who's into men. Araki isn't designing men to appeal to women.