Author: derick

In our society, it is not enough for men to be men just in the biological sense. Men need to also “act” like men and exude masculinity. And yet still, this is not quite enough. In addition, men need to also pay specific attention to avoid anything that even remotely connotes femininity. They need to avoid at all costs, such things as: the displaying of emotions, betraying a smile at the purchase of new shoes, or to take more than a passing interest in one’s own reflection from a mirror. In short, for men to be men, they need to adhere to the Male Image—lest be deemed anything but.

However, in a most ironic twist, and contradictory exception, some men that many would consider the apotheosis of masculinity are the most egregious offenders of the circumscribed male body-image rules. This group consists of: the male body-builders, the lifters, the aesthetic athletes, the hormone-gulping protein-shaking buttocks-injecting many; they abound, and they betray the fact that masculinity and femininity are not as diametrically opposed as we’d like to believe.

While females are known to have a more ostensible interest in their outward appearance, males as well, that are part of this group, have an almost obsessive regard for their body. Muscle building to this degree far exceeds any health benefits gained; in fact, it comes to a point where it is almost all aesthetics. This degree of male image obsession flagrantly contradicts one of the major precepts of those implied rules of masculinity: that males should hold indifference to their looks.

We then move on to product. It is accepted that most women spend a great deal of money purchasing beauty-products that highlight, conceal, or augment, their own natural features, such as eyeliner, makeup, breast implants, et al. However, such product purchasing, as well as cost, is comparable in the male domain. Herbal/supplement stores like GNC, or MetRX, boating huge profits, sell supplements—with dubious efficacy— that are bought in enormous quantities by men interested in “bulking” up with the hopes of increasing gains beyond exercise and weight lifting. A perusal through the MetRX website will quickly indicate to anyone that these products are not exactly cheap either, although some like the best adaptogen supplement is quite affordable. However, most of these supplemental products require a long duration of use before even the promise of noticeable results. Here we see another instance of the overlapping between the masculine and the feminine “image”—making it harder to differentiate the two.

The male muscle building culture seems to ignore the rules of masculine body image. In fact, not only are the rules ignored per se, they are defiantly broken. And yet, within the male community, an overly muscled body, with chiseled abs is becoming more and more desired. What if every male obsessed over their bodies in such a fashion; what if it consumed all their time, dictated their diet, and costed them an exorbitant amount in product. Are we still talking about men?

What is up with Abercrombie and Fitch? When you walk in that store, you feel like you’ve fell into the bowels of someone’s in-ear ipod headphones with the volume painfully set to the highest setting. You’re then forced to listen to some crappy teenage music to the tune of LFO, or some obscure alternative happy-go-lucky garage band full of amateur guitarists and ex-high-school quarterbacks.

In-store models, walk around, shrouded with a cloud of privileged lethargy, folding intentionally wrinkled shirts at a steady pace of 3-shirts-per-hour. The air is so saturated with their branded cologne, ironically called “Fierce”; all articles of clothing in the store are caked with this fragrance, and even a brief 5 minute visit to the store—in and out— is enough for the “Fierce Air” to suffuse your own fabrics with Shock-and-Awe-like bravado.

Clothing is of course, priced at a moderate 3x the reasonable cost. T-Shirts, categorically described in their website as “humor tees”, are replete with sexual innuendoes, all of the derogatory frat-boy kind, all suggestive, and all in promotion of everything schools have educational campaigns against.

Then we turn to their unique advertising campaign: images of men, similar to Men’s Health Magazine covers but containing a slight pedophilia taint. There is monotony in the images. It is a tired repetition of half-naked men, all alike, with chiseled looks, and defined abs, and with the occasional Affirmative Action Model bereft of any real discernable uniqueness. Gauging from advertisement alone, and perhaps in-store larger-than-life semi-nude male model photographs, one would wonder if Abercrombie and Fitch sold shirts at all. They do, apparently.

And the empire keeps growing. AF has begun to expand their reign to the UK. They have opened up a new brand named Hollister—the poor man’s Abercrombie. I admit, at a time, I too was an AF shopper. I bought into it. In fact, my wardrobe still contains trace remnants of their influence: an old polo shirt here, a t-shirt there, a pair of shorts.

Well,  the AF lifestyle isn’t for everyone. We can’t all blithely stroll through life, one beer-funnel at a time.  Some of us prefer mugs and glasses.

A high school History teacher once told me that he found the metaphor “Melting Pot”, which is commonly used to describe the ethnic diversity in the United States, as dated and imprecise. Of course he was right to say it is “dated”, in truth, seriously, where can you buy a Melting Pot? And as such, to new-fledged history students, is it really a good metaphor when you have to explain at it at both ends: starting from “what is a Melting Pot?”, and from then to “so, what is this supposed to represent?”. Instead, and in keeping with the gustatory theme, this same teacher came up with his own metaphor (he ‘claims’ authorship), “the salad” . A salad, unlike a Melting Pot, is a single entity composed of various vegetables that maintain their own individual identity. As a whole, there is unity, yet still the essence of each vegetable and their unique taste, as well as their respective identities are not homogenized into one completely new substance.

But as we are all well aware, metaphors of salads, or pots that are melting, look great in theory, but in practice things are not always so “peachy”. In fact, with a salad, nothing is ever “peachy” (and purists will adamantly avouch that fruits have really no place in salads). A salad doesn’t accurately portray the tense and complex soci-economic class contentions taking place in reality. Alright then, no Melting Pot, no Salad. What then is a better metaphor, or is there one? … Taco Salad?

During this brief bout of “vacation” (still working) I’ve been reading this great book I happened to pick up called Typee by Herman Melville. To date, I have never read a book so well-written (albeit, the content is dry at times). And I know, I have this awful habit of setting superlatives after every book I read, and I’m sure it’s not really helping my street cred as a reviewer (when’s the last time classical literature and “street cred” were in the same sentence?)

Enough about books. Lately, I’ve been a dvd-watching fiend, all thanks to Netflix, which is like the best service ever! (urgh, another superlative.) And then, because I thought I was losing my hair (my sister says I’m not and that I’m full of it), and the thought of being [gulp] bald scared me to that Googling-self-diagnosing “bad-place”; I discovered on there that the only preventable cause of hair-loss (just in case my sister is full of it) is if its onset is stress-related.

So, I did the only rational thing. I went out and bought a bunch of video games. The rationale: if I can first-person-shooter myself into a dumber catatonic state after a rough day in the office, perhaps—perhaps—my neurons will be too comatose to notice when I’m stressed.

Google. Who needs doctors?