Man Made: A Memoir of My Body Book

Ken Baker was a working-class boy from Buffalo, New York, who dreamed of playing professional hockey; his idea of masculinity was formed by a father who chain-smoked, warned his sons that "girls will ruin your life" (he had to marry the author's pregnant mother), and sneered at doctors' warnings to mend his bad habits--"You gotta die of something." But Baker had a tumor in his brain that flooded his body with the female hormone prolactin; he leaked milk from his nipples and could hardly ever have an erection. His wince-inducing memoir pulls no punches and uses no euphemisms in telling what it was like to be a sexually dysfunctional man in a sex-saturated society. Female readers may take a certain grim satisfaction in learning that men, too, can feel vulnerable and sexually exploited, but most will simply marvel at Baker's willingness to reveal the gory details of his failure-riddled sex life. Although he makes some high-minded claims about the insights he gained from his ordeal ("I was able to journey to a biological place few men will ever know.... My manhood today is stronger because of it"), what's really gripping here is his blow-by-blow account of what it felt like to dread sex instead of chase it, to approach intercourse as a test rather than a pleasure. We can only be relieved that surgery restored him to hormonally normal masculinity at age 27, although the girlfriend who stood by him through it and then listened to him explode with testosterone-charged rage when she complained about his subsequent insensitivity might disagree. Baker's slick prose reflects his background in celebrity journalism (he worked at People and is now a senior writer at Us), but there's no denying the fascination of his bizarre story. --Wendy Smith Read More