It’s no secret that (rightly
or wrongly) queer men are often thought of as artistically inclined,
particularly with respect to personal appearance. Researchers into GBMSM mental
health generally connect this to internalize shame for not living up to certain
(perceived) gender ideals and the concomitant but related shame many of us have
felt (and still often feel) at being different for loving in the (perceived)
wrong way in a culture that is still, despite laughable protests to the
contrary, intensely heterosexual. This, of course, is inextricable from the
development of discourses concerning camp as a positive and nonviolent form of
political resistance that attempted to parity, and thus subvert, expectations
of heterosexist society. It is also no secret that a certain subset of GBMSM,
including sometimes myself, can exhibit a rather toxic form of masculinity, as
an unfortunate response to this shame, which includes, but is not limited to, a
particularly problematic brand of misogyny and cissexism. I also recognize that
the pursuit of beauty, even if unintentionally, serves to perpetuate
unconscious and explicit ideas concerning white supremacy. It goes without
saying, as well, that ability and class has much to do with this.
These concerns notwithstanding, one of the
happy consequences of being queer, for me at least, has been the exposure to
(stereotypically constructed as female) cleansing and beauty products. And it
was my hope that straight men who were inclined to also transgress gender norms
and avail themselves of the many products available to women under our
traditional system of gender would eventually use them. To some extent, this
has happened and is happening. Nevertheless, the campaign by L’Oreal, which
offers a line of beauty products under the moniker, “Men Expert, is”
particularly objectionable and indicative of transformations in sexuality and
gender without substantial change, thereby allowing modified (hetero)sexism and
cissexism to stay intact; indeed, they stay intact more powerful because they
seem to “accommodate” social changes.
These advertisements are as farcical as they
are outrageous because the implicit ideological enjoyment they offer the
straight man who desires to purchase them is something like the following: “you
can buy our products, but don’t worry: the power of your phallus is still
intact. I know in years past you might have called someone a homo for using
such products, but now we have found a way for you to do so that will enhance
your virility, potential for violence, and capacity to dominate others. It’s
2018. You can have a facial, and it doesn’t have to be like homos do it, at the
spa, [or, because this is what we are unconsciously talking about here] at the
bathhouse. You can box before getting a facial, instead of sucking a cock”.
On one level, this is, of course, a crass
marketing strategy that only the most dimwitted, confused and self-conscious
(straight) man would be foolish enough to believe. On the other, however, it gets
to the heart of what I find hypocritical in our changing, though highly
limiting, view of sexual and gendered citizenship. I reject that straight men
ought to be allowed the, in no sense unethical on its own, impulse to self-care
and aesthetic development, without questioning the underlying masculinist
structures that have prohibited them from doing so in the past. If one desires
a facial, of whatever sort, one ought to at least question the patriarchal
images that have traditionally barred this form of enjoyment. It is unfortunate
that as capitalism has revamped the heterosexual subject as an aesthetic and
responsible one, it has also entrenched heteronormativity and patriarchal
violence at an even deeper level of libidinal enjoyment.