All Eyes on Me

I am kind of fascinated by the presentation of Tenoch Huerta as Namor in the new Black Panther movie. Not just because of the Central American aesthetic; that was definitely unexpected, though very welcome to me, seeing as it’s gorgeously rendered and a very cool artistic inspiration from a culture not previously much referenced in the Marvel universe. More because of the vibe they gave him.

Namor, like every other long-running comics character, has been interpreted in a variety of different ways, from imperious ocean wizard to smarmy undersea fuck boy. I confess I’ve always preferred the latter, watching him “hey, girl” at Sue Storm in front of her husband and scoff at people too unsophisticated to appreciate the charms of the shrimp queen. For years I’ve been cracking, “I can’t wait to see what twenty-five-year-old underwear model they cast to play him.” I was picturing a chiseled, smooth-skinned boy-man, preening and lip-biting as he imposed himself through ego and brazen sexuality. While there is a basis for Slutty Namor(TM), I admit the limits my particular biases and tastes on the topic placed on my imagination.

But Tenoch Huerta and the way they present him isn’t any of those things. In the trailers, he projects ten thousand percent, pure, weapons-grade MAJESTY. In real life, Huerta is a cute guy, even kind of sweet-faced. And you don’t get cast as an MCU superhero unless you’ve got BODY. But his beauty is in a shock and awe sort of way, blowing you away with his presence, his costume nothing but a few adornments meant to emphasize his status. Torque, headdress, jade jewelry. The bareness of his body seems to not to have any of the usual semiotics of nakedness— it’s not about honesty, or vulnerability, or even sexualization. It’s like a declaration of power, that his lack of concealment or protection of any kind is because he is too mighty to need it. More than anything it reminds me, weirdly enough, of dark Galadriel in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, beautiful and terrible as the dawn. Untouchable, imposing, and above all else, magisterial.

I was very surprised by it, but I’m super intrigued. This approach feels so fresh and I can’t wait to see what they do with it.

I was unaware that Mr. Global is a thing. How did the Internet manage to keep this from me?

It is generally about as tacky with the costumes as Miss Universe, which I appreciate. My favorite is Mr. Vietnam, who I think best balances looking hot with not looking ridiculous. Honorable mentions to Mr. Philippines, Mr. Puerto Rico, Mr. Laos, and Mr. Hong Kong.

Mr. Cambodia, Mr. UK, Mr. Malaysia, Mr. Korea, and Mr. India manage to stay pretty classy. Mr. Macau is doing the exact opposite of that, and I am here for it.

Mr. Peru, Mr. Mexico, Mr. Bolivia, Mr. Thailand, Mr. Sri Lanka, Mr. South Africa, Mr. Panama, Mr. Nigeria, Mr. Indonesia, and Mr. Ecuador would like their Miss Universe counterparts to know THEY WILL NOT BE OUTDONE. Bless you, gentlemen. And your abs.

Mr. Czechia, Mr. Romania, and Mr. Myanmar are straight-up in folk costume. Mr. Brazil and Mr. Dominican Republic are in the same vein, except for Sexy Halloween.

Mr. Venezuela was dressed by his mom for this, you guys.

I respect Mr. Spain for going there.

Mr. Japan is perhaps approaching this with… a slightly different ethos.

Mr. Cuba made me burst out laughing, being almost TOO on point.

Mr. Switzerland and Mr. France don’t give a fuck.

Mr. United States is… pretty much living up to our reputation on the world stage.

I went in as a guest speaker for a friend's theater class this week. Cari's husband Aaron asked if I could give a lecture for a class he was assigned at North Shore, and I decided it might be fun to introduce the idea of costume-choices-as-narrative. It's something I LOVE discussing but have very little opportunity to focus on in my regular instruction.

Bernie made the intriguing suggestion of choosing a particular character whose wardrobe changes with their nature and their circumstances, and explaining how it helps support telling their story. He recommended Captain America from the MCU— seeing as I knew him very well, the students were likely to have some frame of reference about him, and I likely wouldn't even need to look up a ton of visuals. My iPad is already choked to death on them, after all.

Of course, he and some others I mentioned it to warned me not to be too gross about discussing how Chris Evans looks and was dressed. The students didn't know me, after all, and I didn't want to seem creepy. I was a touch indignant, but acknowledge the point. The class was to be about the clothes and styling choices, after all, and while casting definitely affects how they make those choices, I didn't want to muddy the focus.

The hilarious thing was, THEY couldn't stop talking about how hot he was. The few times I had to rein them back into the discussion, they had gone off talking to each other about it— boys and girls alike. I managed to stay uncreepy, I think, but that amused the hell out of me.



I explained things about where the character was at any given time. How they made him look as unflattering and unimpressive as possible when he was skinny and asthmatic with clothes that didn't fit great, were in dull colors, and had 1940s period touches that read as "dorky" today, like short ties and suspenders. How even post-transformation he is still the same modest person on the inside, so still prefers conventional, low-key styles in a blue, white, and gray color palette. How when he first arrives in the 21st Century, he dresses in clothes that a person could have worn at any point between then and 1930 without really seeming strange, but would look at home on any grandpa— pleated, high-waisted trousers, blue plaid button-downs. But even when he updates his look to be more contemporary, with lower rise jeans and jackets with high-tech fabric and interesting seaming, he still sticks with simple looks that do not draw a lot of attention. How his one small dressing affectation is a love of brown leather jackets, likely learned in the army, that he updates with more and more modern styling periodically. How they keep him in those palette and styling parameters to contrast with Tony Stark. He's old enough to be Steve's father, but Tony is flashy and attention-seeking, with more red and black, dressing young for his age where Steve dresses old, in designer suits, graphic T's, and glasses with colored lenses. I dealt with the superhero suit as well, of course, but in a more general sense, pointing out its evolution through the circumstances in which Steve wears it, how it got more modern and functional in design, and how its breakdown is used to demonstrate how low he is by the time we've gotten to Infinity War.

I also brought in things about Mrs. Hawking, pointing out that theatrical circumstances require broader strokes, and how we work on a limited budget. I pointed out how many characters are associated with certain colors, like Clara with green and Mary with blue, to help audience members identify them, and to draw contrasts and connections. I pointed out how Mrs. Frost's blue and white is her attempt to seem innocuous, so when Clara confronts her in green and black she looks oppositional and threatening against her, and how Clara's fur coat functions like a form of armor. I compared Mrs. Hawking's super suit to Madam Malaika's, how they served to both underline the women's deep similarities as heroes as well as their vast differences. I pointed out how in Frost's scenes there is basically no color except HER color, and the significance of her tying it around Nathaniel's neck is a declaration of her power over him.

I wanted to give them a taste of everything you can do, and how creative you can be to say things with your choices. I had to pick and choose a few evocative moments, as there's so many possibilities for how costuming can be used. There are dozens more things in Mrs. Hawking that could be discussed on this level. And I tried to keep things a little on the simple side for the sake of introduction.

Like, I cut out some of Steve's outfits like the athletic wear in the "On your left" scene at the top of Winter Soldier. I'm ninety percent sure they have a relationship with Under Armour that required them to dress him in a way that made him look as hot in it as possible, but I don't really think it's totally diegetic that he'd wear his clothes that tight. It's not just too showy; it's borderline vulgar, to be honest. I think you can justify it in-story with the idea that he's never totally come to "own" his new body, to reconcile the reality of it with his self-image, and so doesn't have the best sense of what's going to fit it. But honestly, the character that they've established him to be is going to be slightly embarrassed to go outside like that, in the absence of concerns like "using Chris Evans's considerable assets to sell tickets."

I've always wanted to teach a full-semester theory of costume design class, but never have had the opportunity before, so this was super fun for me. It also makes me want to do a fuller exegesis on Steve's journey through costuming, about what all his looks say from a narrative standpoint. It's a study I'm fascinated by, and I had so much fun getting to teach other people about it for a little bit.

I am surprised by the regularity with which people express surprise to me that I really want Namor to show up in the MCU. Basically whenever I say it, somebody's like, why do you care about Namor? Why would you want him around in the films? They are, like, SURPRISED.

I think Namor's interesting! He's definitely, definitely a dick, particularly to T'Challa, but I like the idea that T'Challa is challenged by a fellow-royal on issues of being a king. He's conservationally-minded, and has serious problems with how humans ruin the oceans. I like how he makes Sue Storm confront the problems in her marriage to a fairly self-absorbed man. He'd be an interesting character addition, particularly when the Fantastic Four show up!

And because they can cast a twenty-five-year-old underwear model, give him some FEROCIOUS eyebrows, and make him wear a scaly banana hammock the whole film. COME ON PEOPLE HAVE YOU MET ME?

Plus, he, like, canonically bangs the queen of the crustacean people and stuff. And she really does look like a giant sea monkey, and when people are weird about it, he admonishes them for their puritanical human narrow-mindedness.



NAMOR IS NOTHING IF NOT COSMOPOLITAN IN HIS TASTES.

I mean, really. It's like you people don't know me at all.

Kind of had a breakthrough this weekend in the justification of one of my theories. I prize analytical thinking really highly (and in fact have been called upon to teach it in recent years) and as such I like to come up with codified assessments to assist in my understanding and interpretation going forward. Usually they’re about the craft of storytelling; sometimes they go a little broader than that, but most of the time it’s me working out my thoughts on how people convey ideas to tell stories.

I spend a lot of time thinking about female gaze. It’s my pet feminist issue, and I work to specifically tell many of my stories from that perspective. Female gaze encompasses a number of dimensions, but one of the most fundamental ones is how men are regarded as objects of attraction. And I have long believed in my gut that the key component of female gaze is vulnerability. By which I mean, that to the feminine perspective responds powerfully to the presence of vulnerability in the regarded object—perhaps even is drawn more strongly by it than anything else.

For example. Between a man who is beautiful, and a man who is equally beautiful but demonstrates some kind of vulnerability, be it physical or emotional, I would say most women are more likely to find the second man more appealing. Even between a beautiful man and a somewhat less beautiful man with greater vulnerability. Still the second one will be more appealing.

I have mountains of anecdotal evidence. Everywhere from the popularity of hurt/comfort and angst scenarios for male characters in fan fiction written by women, to the development of my own obsession with Captain America. The Steve Rogers character in the comics always bored the hell out of me, because he was so perfect and without texture. But the character in the film? A heartbreakingly gorgeous man with fears, insecurities, uncertainties, and even some feminine encoding? THE RECIPE FOR SEXUAL OBSESSION. Apparently!

(As a side note, I love, love, love this essay on how much feminine encoding the MCU portrayal of Captain America actually has. It articulates a bunch of things I felt and fell in love with about that version of the character.)

I didn’t come up with that idea on my own. I encountered it in an article several years ago that I can’t seem to find today. In that article, it mostly was examining that idea from a sort of BDSM context; if I recall correctly, it was about how femdom expressed. That part of it I couldn’t speak to, at least partially because I don’t think they supported their assertions that well. But that central IDEA, that the female gaze reacted so strongly to vulnerability, that part rang true in my bones.

So I’ve believed that for a long time on a gut level. But as a theory, I really couldn’t intellectually justify it except that it felt right. Which is not sufficient for analytical conclusion. Even “I have evidence that this phenomenon happens” is not the same as being able to articulate the REASON why it happens. And I couldn’t. After all, what’s to say it isn’t just a preference of SOME women? If I’m going to generalize it broadly, I need to be able to attribute it to something about the straight female condition.

This weekend, however, I think I finally was able to do that. And I think the root is in violence against women. One in three women will experience violence from her partner worldwide. Straight women are drawn to one of the greatest possible dangers against them. These two simultaneous facts makes any indication that a man will not be dangerous to them INCREDIBLY attractive. And I think the presence of vulnerability we tend to read as a sign of that.

Now, of course it’s not necessarily an accurate sign. But here’s the logic that I think applies. Men are not socialized to show vulnerability. Of course everyone has it sometimes, but they are encouraged to hide it. Specifically, they are encouraged to cover vulnerabilities with aggression. It’s that aggression that makes them dangerous. So there’s this sense that the willingness to admit and show things like fear, insecurity, or weakness marks a man as on the opposite end of the spectrum from aggression— and therefore, safe.

I would argue that any kind of indicator of what traditional masculinity would characterize as softness— sensitivity, femininity, delicacy —can fall under the heading of “vulnerability display.” These are also things men are culturally “not supposed to show” and they often face ridicule for these as “not befitting of a real man.” So, for example, a man who admits having qualities that are considered traditionally feminine is making himself vulnerable to attacks from other men who would perceive him as weak and unmasculine because of them. Therefore, that man’s willingness to own the qualities that could encourage others to attack him is perceived as making himself vulnerable.

Of course not all women are the same. We don’t all have exactly the same feelings, attractions, or even totally identical social encoding. But I think that this is why so, so many women are interested in stories where men cry, experience powerful emotions, are uncertain, or “in touch with their feminine side.” Not all women; we are not a monolith. But a large number, given what we do share from our experience of existing in the world as women. And I would suspect that of the women who DO NOT find themselves drawn to vulnerability, they are the ones who do not have as strong a concept of the problems stemming from traditional masculinity.

So I think I finally have a thesis on this that I can actually support. You may disagree. But I really do believe this. Vulnerability is the key component of female gaze because it acts as an indicator of an absence of the kind of masculine aggression that is most dangerous to women.

I know it’s a waste of energy to have any feelings at all with dumb comedy franchises, but Zoolander has annoyed me on an ideological level for a long time. When it came out when I was in high school, everyone I knew loved it while I just didn’t get why it was supposed to be so funny.

But the more I think about it, the more it makes me kind of angry. It basically has one joke to it, the absurdity of male models. Yes, when I was a little older I saw that there was SOME commentary on the constant-need-machine of the fashion industry with the whole Derelict thing. But mostly you’re supposed to laugh because you recognize how dumb and frivolous any man who models is, not to mention how silly the whole idea of a man modeling.

First of all, they hammer that stupid, unnecessary term, "male model." Why would you need to specify that a man is a male model, unless you think it's weird that a man even is a model? Secondly, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson do not look like models. I mean, people might find them attractive, but they’re not beautiful or even of the unusually extreme features your average female model is. The fact that they could be passed off as models speaks to the much lower bar men have to be considered attractive. Men don’t have to be beautiful! In fact, men AREN’T beautiful! The idea that you could be invested in the beauty of men is silly! And look what idiots they are. Any dude who would want to model would have to be a moron, right? Also, I’ll admit, there is one actually funny thing about the movie— Blue Steel and its variants —but it ties into the notion of how absurd it is that dudes even would model. Look how silly dudes are when they try to present themselves so as to be aesthetic!

I don’t mind people poking fun at the modeling or fashion industries. But I wish they were aiming for the INDUSTRY rather than basically JUST the idea of aesthetic men. Even the new one’s marketing campaign ties into this. I mean, thanks to a marketing tie-in, those actors are making appearances as their characters in actual, real Valentino couture. What’s the joke there, if they’re basically just doing what actual models do— that is, wear and demonstrate high-end clothes? It’s only funny if you think it’s funny that they’re BEING MODELS. I get really, really irritated at anything that feeds into the myth of Men Not Being Hot, and that’s basically all I see in those films.

I remember when I first saw Iron Man 1 in theaters. I found Tony to be incredibly hot, and this annoyed me, because he was a jerk, and I didn’t like the idea that such jerkiness wouldn’t kill my attraction to him. Every time I see Jon Hamm, the guy who plays Don Draper, out of character, I’m always struck— “He’s so attractive! Why do I never notice this?” I watch a ton of Mad Men, he’s super-handsome, and he looks fabulous in the period drag. But it’s because his character, while admittedly interesting, is such a jerk that I find him completely repellent when he’s portraying the man. This pleases me, because as above, I don’t want to be attracted to jerks.

There’s a tired old stereotype that women are attracted to jerks. It’s the only explanation some can manage to come upon for why certain awful men have no trouble finding women, when men without their obvious downsides get ignored. It irritates me a lot, as it gets used as a justification for men to treat women badly. So I get annoyed when it seems I verify the stereotype by wanting to jump Iron Man’s bones, and smug with myself when I blow it by being immune to the charms of a Don Draper.

But the truth is, women AREN’T attracted to jerks. Women are attracted to the qualities that enable men to be jerks in such obvious ways without experiencing the immediate social pushback that stops average people from being jerks. When Tony says something rakish and nasty, he’s displaying his wit. When Don solves a problem by saying something aggressive rather than apologizing, he demonstrates guts. Tony may have a huge ego, but it shows a wellspring of self-confidence. And everybody likes good-looking people; beauty can allow people to get away with murder. All of these things— beauty, wit, confidence, courage, power —make people attractive to others. While the use they put these qualities to may be undesirable, or even off-putting, the fact remains that they still require the possession of these qualities in order to perpetrate them. And that is what is sexy.

I think that’s an important thing to remember. It’s a shame that kindness and gentleness aren’t so paramount on that list of attractive qualities that the absence of them can cancel out the approval, but I think this explains what’s going on there. At least, a hell of a lot better than the theory that people actually like badness and being mistreated.

I am one of those people who thinks it's a shame that there is no real "dressing up" anymore. Mostly I think it's a good thing that in our daily lives we're allowed more freedom of expression in how we dress, and that we're not always being held to some rigorous arbitrary standard. But I do wish there were, in addition to that freedom, more occasions where it was expected and normal to dress according to formal rules. I love the way people, specifically men, look in formalwear, and there's just no occasion to ever wear black or white tie anymore. It's just so striking, so attractive. It lends an air of elegance, power, taste, discernment, and it looks so damn good.

Last year, the Met Gala theme was white tie. It was one of the few places outside of Downton Abbey one could actually see real people in white tie. Honestly most people didn't wear anything close to it. The handful of people who did didn't always execute it traditionally, and the aesthetic effects were variable. But the one person EVERYONE was talking about, as not only having nailed it, but having knocked it out of the park, was Benedict Cumberbatch.

Now I'm no Benedict Cumberbatch fangirl. I think he's charming and talented, but I really don't like how he's freaking everywhere, even in roles he's not suited for. I get how he's attractive but he doesn't really do it for me. But have you ever seen him in what he wore to the 2013 Met Gala? It's quite possibly the most exquisite white tie ensemble I've ever seen.



As I said, I'm a Downton Abbey fan, so I have a fondness and a familiarity for men who look GOOD in white tie. I still keep every image from the couture men's formalwear shoot the male actors did a couple years back on my iPad. They all look hot, though most of the articles have some kind of modern twist to them. But Benedict's here is so perfectly styled, so carefully composed, so exquisitely tailored that it makes for a sort of ur-example of a classic ideal. It flatters his figure, and the details are so thoughtfully chosen-- the exact distance of the waistcoat below the cutaway, the single Albert watch chain, the perfect length of the trousers. And it SO technical and correct, going back to the earliest codifications of the style. They throw the word "timeless" around, especially when it comes to the varying levels of men's formalwear, but dressed like this, Benedict could walk into a ballroom at any minute going back to 1870, and every woman's head would turn and murmur, "Who. Is. That?"

I don’t write about sex much. I don’t know if those of you who have read much of my work have noticed that, but I tend not to deal with it very often. To be frank, I think there’s something approaching a prudishness in a lot of my writing— not a lot of exploration of sexuality, not much drug use, few truly crude behaviors. I don’t even like my characters too swear too much. A lot of it’s just taste. I think dialogue’s more interesting when people don’t swear all the time, I’m a bit put off by human grossness. Those are just things I am not all that interested in exploring in my writing.

But I get a bit funny when it comes to writing about sex and sexuality. I have no DISTASTE for it the way I do with that other stuff. I feel like it’s an interesting and important part of most characters, something that could really add drama and dimension and intensity to stories. I can talk about sex with friends in person. But for some reason-- maybe it’s an immaturity, a silly hangup --I get nervous, even embarrassed, when I trying to write about it.

I have a weird impulse to worry, “What would my parents think if they saw this?” Which is stupid, for several reasons— not least of which because I only have one parent anymore —a silly thing for an adult to be concerned over. I also worry that the way I try to depict it won’t work the way I intend it to. Like somebody will read it and think I’m a freak for thinking that’s how you depict sexuality and eroticism. "What the hell was that?" “It was supposed to be sexy.” “That’s not sexy. That’s weird. And you’re weird.”

I ran into that challenge with Bernie and my Adonis screenplay. I don’t think sexuality ever played a bigger part in my work than in this story. A major theme is flipping the typical hetero power dynamic, and a big goal for that was to write a romantic relationship with a slowly growing sexual dimension to it that people would actually find hot. And with my nervousness that was challenging. It was made worse for the fact that I was using a lot of things I personally find hot to accomplish it. My muse for much of the project was Chris Evans, given my extreme attraction to him with the Captain America presentation— blond, smooth, and huge with muscle. So writing my lead character Aidan, the titular Adonis, to be played by him was a starting point. And naturally when I was looking for ways to express my characters’ attraction to him, I referenced how I experienced my own.

Sex is personal and idiosyncratic. Even when there’s nothing really wrong with how you relate to or experience sex, it’s not always something you want everybody to know about. People might not get it if it's too different from their own way. This made me feel particularly vulnerable— like, what if you thought I was a weirdo for things that were actually representative of me? Or what if I just didn’t get the job done as an artist depicting sexiness and it came off as clunky and awkward and now you knew way more about me than you wanted to for your trouble? A lot of the time I would feel shy as I was writing and then sort of pull back from the depiction for fear that if I got too specific, or too detailed, or too whatever, it would just be uncomfortable rather than sexy or furthering to the story. Or what if you read too much into a lot of the ways in which sexuality plays out in the story, particularly the problematic ones, and got uncomfortable because you suspected those things were representative of me? That one was particularly worrisome to me. You might find something a little disturbing in the fact that the man I modeled to be my physical ideal I wrote to be a multiple sexual trauma victim, which in certain instances plays out onscreen. I want that to be a circumstance driving the emotional arc of my story, not to come off like the author’s weird rape kink.

The truth is, if you care, what I mostly drew from myself for the various depictions of sexuality in Adonis is how I experience intense physical attraction. In this story I wanted to both celebrate and elevate the female gaze, as well as highlight the dangers of investing too much power into the mere concept of gaze. When it came to the former, I tried to depict the way I feel awe of extreme beauty, the somewhat fallacious but poetic attribution of some great deeper meaning to that beauty, the indulgent, rhapsodic cherishing of each quality in turn. When it came to the latter, I worked in the threat of that attraction to push out rational thought, the tipping over from appreciation into objectification, and the encroachment of a possessiveness that comes from the impulse to self-aggrandizement. Female gaze is my pet feminist issue, so I’ve given a lot of thought to deconstructing it, particularly how it expresses in myself. I joked a lot about how awesome it was to be able to claim looking at hot photos of Chris Evans as research. But I am being a hundred percent serious when I say that when I felt blocked, experiencing what my attraction to him felt like would help me figure out the right words to embody such a reaction for the story. I flatter myself that I think it gave the exploration of female gaze some real power.

It can be scary to put too much of yourself into your art. When people criticize it or don’t like it, it feels like a personal attack. But oftentimes that personal element can make something more complete, genuine, or powerful. So you have to be willing to open yourself up to that vulnerability. I hope it improved my work here, though it was definitely not an easy thing to do.

I was on Tumblr this morning, when I came across an unlabeled picture of some guy.

( Funny story about how pathetic I am below. )