Ten Responses To The Phrase “Man Up”
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 by Barry DeutschI loved this video of Guante performing:
A transcript of the video is available on Guante’s website.
Archive for the 'Men and masculinity' Category
Mixed Feelings About Men-Ups
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 by Barry Deutsch
Photographer Ron Sabean created this “Men Ups” series of photos, 12 shots of men, dressed in (conventionally) masculine attire and often with macho props, posing like a model in an Alberto Vargas or Gil Elvgren pin-up painting.1
On the one hand, I like the series. The photos look nice, and do a great job of illustrating how performative “sexy” femininity is; even in pin-up photography, male models rarely strike Vargus-style poses (although sometimes). That’s certainly how the artist intended them:
My work tends to be either an overt social commentary, or rooted in deeply personal subjects relating directly to myself. With the Men-ups! series, it was definitely the former that was more so embraced and the issue of gender roles was my target. It has always interested me how the sexes have been pitted against one another and taught to believe that gender roles/identities and biologically assigned sexes were one in the same, especially since that couldn’t be further from the truth. How can color have a sex? How can a pose be acceptable (and even provocative) for one, and not the other? From these ideas, and many, many more, was born the series, one in which I hope breeds thought and insight on just how ridiculous and restrictive the socially created gender roles are from their very inception.
(There’s a brief interview with him here. He was also the model for Mr. May.)
On the other hand, even though I’m pretty sure the photographer didn’t intend the photos this way, I’ve seen some people find them funny because they believe it’s inherently silly for men to be sexy and cute. Which is sexist.
I also wonder, would it be possible to do a gender-reversed version of this series — a series of pin-ups of women posed with “feminine” objects and outfits, but in “masculine” ways? I think it would be hard to communicate “these are women performing exaggerated masculinity” using only the poses and attitudes. If you pose a woman like this, or this, or this, I think most viewers would just take it as an ordinary pin-up shot of a woman.
P.S. I also found this series of photos, similarly posing male models like female pin-ups, but — in my eyes, at least — containing more heat.
- Unexpectedly sweet/sad tidbit from the Wikipedia article: Vargas retired from painting pin-ups after his wife, who was also his model, died.
