Editing Elvis Presley (section)

=== Sex symbol ===
[[File:Girls Girls Girls Poster B.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|alt=Film poster with Presley on the left, holding a young woman around the waist, her arms draped over his shoulders. To the right, five young women wearing bathing suits and holding guitars stand in a row. The one in front taps Presley on the shoulder. Along with title and credits is the tagline "Climb aboard your dreamboat for the fastest-movin' fun 'n' music!"|Poster for the film ''[[Girls! Girls! Girls!]]'' (1962), visualizing Presley's sex symbol image]]
Presley's physical attractiveness and sexual appeal were widely acknowledged. "He was once beautiful, astonishingly beautiful", according to critic [[Mark Feeney]].{{sfn|Feeney|2010}} Television director Steve Binder reported, "I'm straight as an arrow and I got to tell you, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him. He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it wouldn't make any difference; if he'd walked in the room, you'd know somebody special was in your presence."{{sfn|Ashley|2009|p=76}} His performance style was equally responsible for Presley's eroticized image. Critic [[George Melly]] described him as "the master of the sexual simile, treating his guitar as both phallus and girl".{{sfn|Rodman|1996|p=58}} In his Presley obituary, [[Lester Bangs]] credited him with bringing "overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America".{{sfn|Rodman|1996|pp=58–59}} Ed Sullivan's declaration that he perceived a soda bottle in Presley's trousers was echoed by rumors involving a similarly positioned toilet roll tube or lead bar.{{sfn|Garber|1997|p=366}}

While Presley was marketed as an icon of heterosexuality, some critics have argued that his image was ambiguous. In 1959, ''[[Sight and Sound]]''{{'}}s Peter John Dyer described his onscreen persona as "aggressively bisexual in appeal".{{Sfn|Dyer|1959–1960|p=30}} Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in ''Jailhouse Rock'' within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image".{{sfn|Farmer|2000|p=86}} In the analysis of [[Yvonne Tasker]], "Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display."{{sfn|Tasker|2007|p=208}}

Reinforcing Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with Hollywood stars and starlets, from [[Natalie Wood]] in the 1950s to [[Connie Stevens]] and [[Ann-Margret]] in the 1960s to [[Candice Bergen]] and [[Cybill Shepherd]] in the 1970s. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging him to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind.{{sfn|Stein|1997}} Presley never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.{{sfn|Kirchberg|Hendrickx|1999|p=109}}