Beauty...?: Feminine Masculinity and Feminist Minimalism

Susan Bordo begins "Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body" (a chapter from her book, The Male Body) stating that she is "putting classical art to the side for the moment" (168). While this is most likely a reference to something she discussed in a previous chapter, I, having not read the other parts of her book, was struck by this opening clause in a different way than she likely intended. For sure, let's not talk about classical art; instead let's consider something more contemporary.

Below you see two images. On the left, a sculpture by artist Michelle Lopez; on the right, a male model found on Google image search. Do you see a similarity between these pictures?

 

Hold onto that for a moment. Let's dig into Bordo's writing a bit:

. . . my gaze is invited by something "feminine" about the young man. . . . This model's languid body posture, his averted look are classic signals, both in the "natural" and the "cultural" world, of willing subordination. He offers himself nonaggressively to the gaze of another. Hip cocked in the snaky S-curve usually reserved for depictions of women's bodies, eyes downcast but not closed, he gives off a sultry, moody, subtle but undeniably seductive consciousness of his erotic allure. (171)

What she says here adequately describes our model above as well. And she continues: "For many men, both gay and straight, to be so passively dependent on the gaze of another person for one's sense of self-worth is incompatible with being a real man" (172). This idea that a "real man" doesn't need to be seen by others to be valued brought me to thinking of minimalism, an artistic style with which we are all (probably) familiar, at least in a cursory way. How do I make this connection? Minimalism was/is characterized by the use of pared-down design elements, simple shapes and colors, geometric abstractions. When we look at a minimalist painting or sculpture, or listen to a minimalist symphony, we get the idea that there is not much going on. These works, in a sense, resist meaning and interpretation; take Yves Klein's word for it--"even in its presence," such work "does not exist."

Minimalist art is provocative because in a sense, there is nothing that we bring to it as viewers. It does not require our interpretive gaze; in fact it resists and challenges us in its stoicism. Minimalism shares this aesthetic ideal, this lack of a seductive "dynamic tension" (Bordo 171) with more traditional portrayals of masculinity. "Stiff, engorged Schwarzenegger bodies . . . seem to be surrogate penises--with nowhere to go and nothing to do but stand there . . ." (ibid). Just like the mono-/phallo-lithic minimalist artworks, traditional masculine beauty does not call us to come closer, but finds its value in its ability to stand alone.

      

Both of the images that we saw at the beginning of this post are responses to this kind of masculinist aesthetic. Michelle Lopez, a post-minimalist sculptor,

explores the contested yet generative place where Minimalism and Feminism converge, diverge, and ultimately reunite. The languages she employs—material, form, and space—seek to “corrupt minimalism,” by making “macho sculpture feminine.” (see link)

The sculpture, Blue Angel, mirrors the male model with his leaning, seductive, feminine pose; each image modifies the minimal/masculine ideal of straight, simple, geometric unity through "bending" and "folding," and so that aesthetic rigidity remains but seems to "wilt," "melt," and "crease" into ambiguity/androgyny.

What does this mean? Bordo thinks that these ideals are positive, that it is incorrect to think of these models as 'sex objects' because "it seems to suggest that what these representations offer is a body that is inert, depersonalized, flat, a mere thing" (186). But I think that Lopez's sculpture is, if we accept the connections to a post-masculine aesthetic, a strong counterargument. Blue Angel, though provocative, feminized, dynamically tense in its composition, ultimately does not offer much beyond its critique of minimalism. In the same way, our male model is provocative simply because he is not rigidly masculine. As responses to monolithic masculinity, they in a sense remain characterized by their dialectical appropriation thereof, and this foundering is, I think, the tragic beauty that makes Lopez's sculpture so compelling. The creased metal sculpture and the muscled male model both lean passively, and though they call us to look closer, there is nothing to be found beyond the surface. They are, in the end, nothing but objects.

What is Gender?

Gender is ubiquitous; everybody* has one, and it seems to determine many things about ourselves and our relation to the world. Yet most of us -- excepting professionals like scholars, scientists, and historians -- rarely discuss it. Still, various traits and norms are ascribed to one gender or the other. We seem to have a common understanding of gender, to which we act in accordance in our day-to-day activities, though an explicit answer to the question "what is gender?" is difficult to articulate.

In the 1970s, sexologists and second-wave feminists alike sought to popularize the notion that "sex" and "gender" are separate categories. Sex, they argued, is a physical/biological fact determined by one's bodily composition, while gender is constituted in social expression, the interplay between one's psychological convictions and their resultant behaviors. Is this distinction really so clear-cut? As Anne Fausto-Sterling claims, the reality is much more complex than the sex/gender dichotomy would indicate:

Our bodies are too complex to provide clear-cut answers about sexual difference. The more we look for a simple physical basis for "sex," the more it becomes clear that "sex" is not a pure physical category. What bodily signals and functions we define as male or female come already entangled in our ideas about gender.

If gender is not clearly something biologically given or socially constructed, then how do we account for it? Any comprehensive picture of gender must explain both these aspects, since we have recognized that neither physiology nor sociality is entirely responsible for the formation of gender categories. The philosopher Judith Butler gives us a radical view on what constitutes gender:

Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceede; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time -- an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.

In Butler's formulation, gender is not a natural category to which our bodies conform, nor is it a trait of the body which is acted out socially. Rather, gender for Butler arises within a "social temporality"; gender appears to be substantive because people consistently perform according to gender roles. Any individual could, at any time, choose to behave in some way that is contrary to their established gender identity; usually, however, this does not even appear as an option, or at least not a serious one. Butler's view of gender identity as performative -- that is, as constituted in the fact that it is enacted -- satisfies our need for an account which explains its apparent socio-biological nature. Performative gender identity takes place upon the social stage, and it is also necessarily embodied.

But if we are to understand gender as something constituted in the actions of an embodied self, why then does gender seem so compulsory? Why are there only two genders, if people can behave however they choose? The answer is that we have been disciplined into such ways of thinking and behaving. For historian Michel Foucault, "discipline" in this context means both "a form of control or punishment" as well as "an academic body of knowledge." Through seemingly objective processes of scientific inquiry, medical professionals in the early 19th century and beyond characterized and systematized a picture of the gender binary that still frames many aspects of our lives today. Disciplinary power functions through normalization, and acts upon the physical, psychological, and social components of our lives in order to maintain a requisite level of standardization; this normalizing force, according to Foucault, is the function of sovereign power in the modern state. Standardized modes of gendered existence, founded upon "natural" biological traits, lend themselves best to the industrialized society in which our concepts about gender came to be formed; the nuclear family, anchored by the relation of man and woman as ideal categories, served as the foundation in a society oriented around production.

Our stable and enduring categories of gender identity arise from the interplay between the lived body as performance and these disciplinary forces of normalization. Because gender is an overriding norm, we expect to see it everywhere, and we expect to see it in its typical forms. This expectation results in subconscious policing of ourselves and others, inducing a panoptic effect that holds us all accountable for making our bodies conform to our gender roles. That our categories of gender identity endure in this way allows us to make sense of our gendered world; if we didn't have a consistent understanding of "woman," for instance, we would not be able to make knowledge claims or conjectures about the needs, roles, and desires of women in society. Thus we see that gender represents a particular socio-political problem: while categories of gender identity operate by imposing an oppressive (and often hierarchical) set of restrictive norms, they also provide us with the political foundation necessary for affecting social change against such oppressions.

The central issue will always be that of naming. Any label we give to ourselves is going to be more or less restrictive depending on its commonality. A gender designation of "David Bowie" may be more liberating but less useful than one like "genderqueer," and either of these has the advantage of being a personal (and political?) conviction rather than an imposition like "man" or "woman." Not to say that such terms are never willfully taken up as personal identifiers; they are, after all, the norm, and most people are content to operate within the gender binary. I only mean to say that if, as Fausto-Sterling asserts, gender "is a somatic fact created by a cultural effect," I believe it follows that a radical re-thinking and re-naming of our gendered selves is one way in which to deconstruct the gender binary and to dismantle the oppressive social structures which rely upon its insolubility.

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*Perhaps not. Is "agender" a gender or a lack thereof?

Sources:
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Dueling Dualisms. (Chapter 1 of her book Sexing the Body)
Butler, Judith. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.

Image source: finecomic.com