The decay of women is obsessively charted. Now men are finding out how it feels
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/decay-women-men-finding-out Version 0 of 1. Phwoar! I am surrounded by near-naked men. Some of them are gorgeous and they know it. They are flaunting themselves – frolicking while pretending to play football. Others have, quite frankly, let themselves go. They appear not to have heard of waxing. Some are even eating chips in public. Animals. Some have socks and sandals and totally uncoordinated beachwear. Some are barely preserving their modesty and are flashing the flesh in ways that leave little to the imagination. I do not know where to look … but the thing is I do. We all do. Objectifying bodies is part of the pleasure of being on a beach, and at the English seaside every kind of body is on display. Beautiful young girls in string bikinis still suck in their stomachs as they walk past, watching themselves being watched. The male gaze is everywhere internalised, but it is shifting shape. As I watch the middle-aged guys letting it all hang out while the younger ones, oiled and shining, do backflips to impress each other, it is clear that not only do women look at men, but men look at men too. Women, despite being continually told that we are less visually responsive, do not content themselves with a furtive glance. We look. Actively. There are always attempts to commodify the female gaze, to channel it into profitable activities. Here, have this pop sensation. Lust after this great actor. Gaze upon Jamie Dornan in the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey. Welcome to the world of pain called romance: it will tie you up in knots all right. Film-makers and photographers trying to arouse heterosexual women have had to borrow from gay culture. Some of the first attempts at porn for women featured men in passive, limp poses. Men in the "pay and display" positions assumed by women look ridiculous. Ever since men were persuaded some 20 years ago that moisturiser was not an inherent threat to masculinity, they have been marketed to as people who might want to make themselves look better. They have been groomed by the cosmetic industry into being as pliable as women. They consume to be consumed. Witness the stars of reality TV and sport, gelled, glossed, branded into high-definition narcissism at a screen near you. These images of contoured, sculpted torsos, over-whitened teeth and fake tans are unreal and bring with them anxieties. Younger men feel they cannot live up to them and some older men feel this degree of self-absorption is weirdly emasculating. Some of it reflects an increasingly visual culture in which the mirror is not in a private bathroom but on Instagram. It is now a fact that if a Kardashian does not post a selfie every 15 minutes, a star in some distant galaxy dies. Self-objectification is the name of the game and displays of male vanity are part of it. The writer Mark Simpson – who coined the term "metrosexual" – calls the new wave of ripped footballers and pumped-up Towie boys "spornosexuals". Beckham remains the Daddy, but look at the way Novak Djokovic was photographed by Vogue: such men are the very knowing objects of both male and female desire. What intrigues me now, when these idealised versions are everywhere on display, is what we don't see: the ageing male body. Gérard Depardieu's nakedness in Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York is deemed shocking. His huge belly is there to see, the result of his well-documented excesses. But he strips defiantly. The cultural commentator Agnès Poirier observes of him: "No one is immune to the spectacle of their own decay." True. But all of us decay. This is called ageing. The decay of women is every day obsessively charted. Our ageing hands, feet and knees are microscopically inspected. Men are not yet subject to this; the bodies of ageing men remain largely hidden. Yet, actually, Depardieu's stance is not so unusual. Men who have been objectified often destroy their own looks in ways that we should recognise. Marlon Brando, once so beautiful, lived a life of binging and bulimia, rowing himself out to his private lagoon to wolf down five gallons of ice-cream, breaking the lock on the fridge leaving teeth marks everywhere. Orson Welles, a little plump when young, ate for two and was warned his overeating would kill him, but could not stop. A topless Morrissey now pinches at his flab in self-disgust. Every politician has to be seen jogging. Paparazzi will snap a male paunch, but it is not yet the meat and potatoes of shaming. While I am all for equal-opportunity desire, I have no wish for men to be subjected to the same pressures as women, so that they end up miserable about their perfectly good bodies. This gap in our visual culture, though, is not accidental. The bodies we see least of are those who are in power: the ageing middle-aged man. It is almost as if they have something to hide. |