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Femininity in the Closet
2004-01-11 9:09 p.m.

Amusingly and irritatingly, whenever some product, trend, or "issue" crosses over in terms of gender or sex, there's a big ruckus and media circus surrounding it. If something starts out associated with women, for example, and then suddenly is introduced into men's lives, we just can't leave the shift alone. There must be observations discussed, fingers pointed, predictions made.

An irritating and frustrating example of this would be discussions about "improvements" anticipated when more and more men start entering into traditionally female careers, like nursing and teaching. The converse is almost never true - we hardly hear about how much women are doing for the profession of engineering, for example, since there have been more women pursuing careers in the field. While it seems women are simply tolerated as a "new presence", emphasis is often placed on examining how more men in a given realm will add to a trade or profession, making it better than it ever possibly could have when women dominated it.

Watch and see if you don't believe me. There is a stigma associated with femininity. And I don’t just mean women, I mean femininity. If femininity, as a set of conventional gender characteristics, includes all things passive, emotional, fragile, empathetic, and nurturing, and masculinity includes all things strong, stoic, brave, and virile, weak people are seen as feminine, whether they’re women or men. We say “you throw like a girl”, when what we really mean is “you throw poorly”. We say “take the skirt off” when what we really mean is “you aren’t being strong enough right now”. Our culture looks down on people who are emotional, it doesn’t associate nurturing with strength or difficulty.

So when those conventional gender roles blur, what happens?

A more amusing example of such a feminine-masculine crossover would be that dreaded, horrible word, supposedly trademarked by the NY Times (nice try, mijos): Metrosexual. That fast-becoming cultural ideal has been overdone, played out, and parodied since last year. While finding all of the fab-five queer eye glory amusing and somewhat empowering, I still have to question why it took a bunch of feminized men to make popular the idea of aesthetical importance for straight men. If aesthetics and beauty are something usually associated with females or femininity – as an effeminate man is associated more with femininity than masculinity – then straight men wouldn’t ever have the first clue about anything aesthetic, right? Media might like to pretend that’s true. It might be a stance many straight men, in the interest of protecting their bona fide masculinity. Their DNA simply doesn’t allow for them to figure out beauty on their own. It takes a woman – or the next best, more tolerable thing, a gay man – to help the big dumb ape straight man understand that it’s a good idea to wash his face with something besides dish soap.

Thinking about it that way, it’s easy to see skewed logic; most men I know are able to care for themselves in some capacity and certainly are aware of and concerned with their physical appearances, especially if they are under 30. There seems to be something about that generation that believes it’s ok to see a “stylist” rather than a “barber”. But it still seems that even they have been caught up in this “let me get advice from someone feminized-but-not-quite-female so that I will still appear somewhat manly even though I’m much prettier now” dynamic.

I've tried to ignore it, go with the flow, and watch it for whatever it will become, really I have, but I could no longer do so today when one of my bestest-friends, who happens to be the fashion editor of the Star-Ledger, hit us up during brunch for our thoughts regarding a new male makeup line.

We're not just talking fab-five skin care or investment in hair product, either, we're talking concealer, pressed face powder, eyeliner, lipstick. Think RuPaul on a down day, only straighter.

Last fall, during the showing of his Spring Men's Couture 2004 line, Gaultier introduced a new, different type of line: cosmetics. The line, interestingly entitled "Tout Beau Tout Propre", is still in the works but already selling samples in many Manhattan locations, and more modest, down-played copycat lines, like one put out by XCD can be found at your local CVS. A sampling of some of Gaultier's products, as excerpted from different reviews:

"The Tout Beau line is created to enhance male beauty. Make-up for men. Five products to address skin, lips and nails. No more chapped lips, thanks to three nourishing and protective sticks. Two soft-coloured sticks, one for light, the other for dark skin, enhance the natural colour of the lips."

"The Sharp Eyes pencil, looking like a fountain pen, turns out to be a two-in-one weapon for seduction, camouflaging dark circles under the eyes, while on the other side a soft blueblack kohl for perfect lines."

Well! In case any of this cosmetic looks a little too close to lipstick and eyeliner for the man’s liking, he should rest assured that the "virile packaging" will help disguise any inkling toward feminization that might be growing inside of him. (The concealer comes in a zippo-shaped case and the eyeliner looks like one of those fancy $1,000 pens that execs get for x-mas.)

But I have to ask, what exactly is wrong with the blur of that line? This is what: those feminine characteristics which are associated with women – emotionality, passivity, beauty, nurturance – still equate with weakness to many people. To the point, in fact, that many women I know who wish to be viewed as powerful unfortunately attempt to expel those characteristics, even if the characteristics are obviously a part of them. Some insist they’d never be good mothers publicly and often, some insist that they’d never let emotions interfere with any career goals or “important things”, some insist that they don’t care much about their appearance and are more interested in their intellects, health, etc. Of course shades of these statements must be and certainly can be true, but the emphasis and frequency with which some of these are vocalized, even by myself, makes me think they’re being said more than just simply because they’re true – they become stances, excuses, or “undeniable proof” of these women’s strength. It’s frustrating to me, because I always wonder what is wrong, inherently, with possessing such feminine characteristics. Why should I hide my desire to be nurturing, or my emotions?

Keeping in mind that it’s difficult for women to admit they have feminine characteristics, imagine how difficult it would be or will be for men to admit they do. If the last thing men want to be is likened to a woman, as it’s virtually the same thing as being likened to worthlessness, according to the confines of our culture, then men must be very careful about how they approach this newfound interest in their appearances. What will make it all OK, I’m wondering? Male cosmetics endorsements from Football players? Trump, Rathers, and the Governator admitting that they use mascara and just love it to death? FHM and Maxim magazine incorporating a “Top 25 Beauty Picks!” segment into each month’s issue?

On one hand, this cosmetics line is just more of the same: men becoming feminized yet insisting through packaging and marketing that they most certainly are not - that it’s not foundation they’re using, but Improver, it’s not lipstick they’re using but tinted stick conditioner. And the packaging they’re using is not fluffy and pastel, or even gender-less, plain and plastic, but metal and dark – manly casings for manly make up. Mission accomplished: Men can become more feminine in the purest sense of the term: more concerned with beauty, more in tune with aesthetic, more familiar with “weapons of seduction” in an acceptable sense, while still maintaining their distance from the dreaded, demonized femininity that our culture views with repugnance.

On the other hand, I’ve read a lot lately about how difficult it’s been for men to cope with these new, demanding pressures of appearances. It seems that the standards set by the fab-five and all the media emphasis that has followed suit is breeding a new crop of self-esteem problems for men. Well then, let me be the first to say

WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

In all fairness, I’m warning everyone that I’m about to become a stereotype of myself, if I haven’t already. That out of the way, if I read one more GD article about how hard it is for men to “deal” with such “pressures”, I’m going to ralph, for sure. It’s not that I don’t believe it to be true; quite the contrary. It’s not that I don’t sympathize or empathize – it’s not that I don’t have concern for the psychological well being of people. It’s the faux-revelations I have issues with. Once again, since this type of expectation – one of beauty – has crossed over into a “men’s sphere”, there’s much media attention and question about what it’s doing to self-esteem, as if this were a new dynamic all together. Please, do ignore that it has gone on endlessly for women, and seems to get worse with each passing decade.

What I wonder, in my sometimes misguided and naive optimism, is will this encourage some empathy toward the personal prisons women build for themselves when it comes to appearance? Will it somehow destroy the control production and marketing seem to hold over us, breaking the media’s ability to convince us we’re hideous and unlovable (unless, of course, we use their product) through adverts and “entertainment”?

It might not be “new”, this idea of men being so concerned with appearance that they’re becoming obsessive, but perhaps so much new attention will bring into our cultural discourse the idea that some standards have reciprocity. Perhaps, in other words, this means that men’s demands of women’s appearances will no longer have that same powerful, cultural hold that they used to.

Some of my size 38-40 waisted male friends, for example, could very publicly and frequently discuss their rule of "size 4 and no more" for the women they were looking to date, while any of my larger-sized female friends would often assert that they couldn’t have high expectations for an especially fit significant other – be it male or female – since they themselves weren’t the pinnacle of perfect physique. Two ridiculous extremes, but two powerful examples of how far from balanced we often are. While I’m not especially into Reviving Ophelia myself, moments like those did force me to look at the differences in how esteem gets fostered for girls and boys, how we grow with those ideas into adulthood, and then how we use such ideas to be destructive – to ourselves, to others, to fostering any kind of harmonious, understanding relationships.

Will our new Metrosexuals be able to offer those other stereotypical feminine qualities of understanding, caring, and empathy to accompany their new, stylized and meticulously primped bodies? Or will that just be crossing too much of a line, blurring the gender-power infrastructure to the point of discomfort?

Will our new pretty boys, walking, essentially, in women’s shoes for a bit, gain a new respect for women, understanding that there is, in fact, strength behind femininity? Will women be able to find that strength as well, daring to allow themselves to be openly feminine, if so desired? Will we, as a result, stop associating feminine characteristics with weakness, and all things bad?

Will we still say “you throw like a girl” when we mean “you throw badly”? What does a metro-sexual throw like, anyway? Would he be conscious of his manicure while throwing?

As amused, curious, and enthralled as I’ve been watching the trend, one non-gendered issue resurfaces that makes me pretty uncomfortable: marketing and advertising controls our cultural trends. Queer Eye, and shows like it, are essentially huge advertisements, albeit fun ones. As soon as the Times used the phrase “Metrosexual”, it was in most advertising copy the next week. The spread of a trend, the attention culture pays to it – it’s all too closely tied in with the profit that companies make off of it. So is it really that we’re suddenly interested in prettier men? Or is it what we’re being sold? Or do we not know the difference anymore?

You know that I heart notes!, so please feel free to leave me one about this.

Xoxox,