By Carleigh Baker,
Contributor

You always have to make
choices. Think about the
culture we're in. I do work
with teenagers, and most of
the boys I know when you
meet a 13-year-old boy, the
codes of masculinity are
causing them enormous
pain.

-Junot Diaz

) | obody needs bronzer.
No one,

regardless of age,

race, gender, or sexual
orientation. The pastiest,
most cadaverous of us do
not require bronzer, as in,
a life-or-death scenario.
Brazilians, ball waxes,
eye(guy)liner, pan(man)
tyhose. But all these
things are within your
grasp, just a credit card
click away.

Despite the crushing,
insecurity-fueled beauty
ideals that have been
foisted on women for
hundreds of years, we
don’t actually need to
conform to one size, one
shape, or one hair colour.
One global standard for
pubic hair, as if it was
decided at the United
Nations. Men don’t have
to wax their backs, hide
their bald spots, and
somehow maintain the

12

Feature.

4

body and skin quality of
a lithe, 12-year-old farm
boy. Nobody has to do
this.

But we do. We
indulge in these beauty
trappings, and the
extent to which we
pursue them provides
the beauty continuum.
From fashion’s current
faux-anarchists: nerd
glasses poised on a gaunt
and bearded face, to
the spray-tanned guy-
lined, blow-dried Jersey
Shore d-bags. Refuse to
find your place on the
continuum, and you'll
make the people on the
bus nervous—or at least,

and the

marvels at the recent
boom in men’s grooming
products.

Spurlock explains
“When guys are looking
in the mirror and saying,
‘Ym not good enough,
I’m not handsome
enough, I need to fix this
in order to be that perfect
image,’ for me that points
to a bigger problem.”

Spurlock cites
‘70s manly men Burt
Reynolds and Robert
Redford as examples
of a less insecure time
for men, drawing this
conclusion based on their
abundance of body hair.
The filmmaker claims

the psyche.”

This is true, but it
isn’t news. And weren’t
the unwaxed heroes of
old still encouraging
mass consumption,
appearing in ads
for Corvettes (penis
extensions) and Coors
Light (liquid courage)?

Things go very
wrong for Spurlock
when he links the
commoditization of
men to what he calls
the feminization of his
gender. For one, he’s
assuming that women
have the monopoly on
insecurity. How do you
suppose bald men felt

Men dont have to wax their backs, hide their bald spots,

and somehow maintain the body and skin quality of

a lithe, 12-year-old farm boy. Nobody has to do this.

until American Apparel
hijacks your look, and
packages it up as the
Next Big Thing.

Morgan Spurlock,
creator of Supersize
Me, continues his
mandate of probing the
superfluous with his new
documentary, Mansome.
With an air of wide-eyed
revelation, the first-hand
arbiter of the outrageous
discovery that eating
Big Macs makes you fat,

that men of this era were
more confident and
authentic, and worries
that current marketing

trends are robbing men of

their masculinity.

“The commoditization
of men is really helping
to push this agenda of
looking a certain way.
Business starts to drive
that type of thought
process, and when you
pour millions of dollars
into it, it starts to reshape

about their lot in life in
the hirsute “70s? Or men
that just weren’t that
hairy? A lack of chest hair
tagged you as merely a
boy in a shag carpeted
man’s world, and in case
the Corvette and the beer
weren’t working for you,
there were an abundance
of hair enhancement
products available. Just
because Burt Reynolds
didn’t appear on
billboard advertisements

Bam a age me eR Oa EE

 

for them doesn’t mean
his image wasn’t being
used to enforce a
beauty standard. Even
manly ‘70s men had 99
problems, and for many,
insecurity was one. Just
ask the Hair Club for
Men, founded in 1976.

“Y’m not only the
president of hair club for
men. I’m also a client.”
Sy Sperling, founder of
Hair Club for Men, states
boldly in a commercial
from 1982.

Aman who fusses
about his appearance,
even excessively so, is not
inherently feminine. This
is a nasty generalization
that manages to be
offensive to all involved.
Aman/s choice to groom
himself impeccably
constitutes no more
of an affront to his
gender than a woman’s
choice not to shave
her legs. As far as the
proliferation of fashion
items such as murses and
mantyhoses, Spurlock’s
contention that this is a
new phenomenon sadly
typifies the modern
pop culture approach to
anthropology: if it didn’t
happen 15 minutes ago, it
didn’t happen.

Aside from the music
industry, where gender
bending as a fashion