Men and Women

PURPLE FASHION MAGAZINE teamed with Terry Richardson to shoot Vincent Gallo (whose beauty literally scares me- makes my insides freeze up and my tongue melt into bubble gum gloop that fills my jaw) to comment on the androgyny in women's fashion from the otherside. Is it harder for dudes to be fashionable? Is it not easier for a dude to be more fashionable than the rest of the dudes by comparison? So much goes wrong with Fash-men. Do they lack their own masculinity? Do they seem to debase their nature by embracing one that isn't their own? I feel like fashion is reaching an age where women who embrace their own feminity deliver a greater beauty than those who twist it, or deny it, or over-expose it: those who dress up in a costume of themselves. A simple, femininity for women, and a simple masculinity for a man can be as fashionable as costumes from Macaullay Culkin and Seth Green's Party Monster are extravagant. They even seem more fashionable than a trying plea for acceptance into the looking good world than are a lot of heavily planned outfits. Not that dressing up is not exciting.... but is it exciting only because it is a betrayal of the true self? A couple of passages from the novel I'm reading give me a satisfaction in understanding my thoughts on the matter of gender-bending:

In Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, Sabina is said to think, in the dictionary of Misunderstood words of her own feminity: page 89:

"Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume the correct attitude to her unchosen fate. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it."

And the bowler hat, that inescapable masculine motif: page 86:

"Once, during a visit to her studio many years before, the bowler hat had caught Tomas's fancy. He had set it on his head and looked at himself in the large mirror, which, as in the Geneva studio, leaned against the wall. He wanted to see what he would have looked like as a nineteenth-century mayor. When Sabina started undressing, he put the hat on her head. There they stoof in front of the mirror (they always stood in front of the mirror while she undressed), watching themselves. She stripped to her underwear, but still hat the hat on her head. And all at once she realized they were both excited by what they saw in the mirror. ... But suddenlt the comic became veikled by excitement: the bowler hat no longer signified a joke; it signified violence, violence against Sabina, against her dignity as a woman. She saw her bare legs and thin panties with her pubic triangle showing through. The lingerie enhanced the charm of her femininity, while the hard masculine hat denied it, violated and ridiculed it. The fact that Tomas stood beside her fully dressed meant that the essence of what they both saw was far from good clean fun (if it had been fun he was after, he too, would have had to strip and don a bowler hat); it was humiliation. But instead of spurning it, she proudly, provocatively played it for all it was worth, as if submitting of her own will to public rape; and suddenly, unable to wait any longer, she pulled Tomas down to the floor."




Are these funny? Depressing? Exciting? Dead?

Almost all of my favourite everything comes from artists who push the limits of their gender: think Kevin Barnes (favourite musician) (front man of ofMontreal) think David Bowie....think Prince's genius masc/fem. move out of a shabby contract... I LOVE ANDROGYNY WHEN IT MEANS LIBERATION! WHEN IT MEANS FORWARD MOMENTUM! OH, I LOVE IT BEYOND LOVING IT! Now I think Liza and her pant suits, and I am still loving it, but not aaaaaaaaaas much as those dudes I idolize. Patti Smith and her androgyny...... I.... love it. I do. But it also represses- it also humiliates. Is it only one way that it can go and liberate? Are these males liberating both male and female? Is it because Adam DOES and Eve IS? Is that why its the males that make it go forward and the females get lost? Is that even the case?

Is androgyny not us approaching a level where we do not pay as much attention to our bodies as we do our souls? We are all human. We are all human. If this is really what androgyny is about, what about all of those that subconsiously interperet it as humiliation? Degradation? Is it not a step forward and a step back? Double step? How can the majority of us leave the idea of public perception behind and trust our inner instincts? I'm not saying it's wrong to push the boundaries: I think it's exactly right to do that given its for progress instead of repression. Why do I feel since I cut my hair Mia Farrow short that my clothing doesn't exhibit my girlishness enough? Why am I repressed by my androgynous wardrobe when I once felt so liberated? Is gender real? Is body severed compeltely from soul? Is it wrong to dress like a man, so long as I'm not interperted as depricating myself? Must I just believe, as the wearer what I wear is for non-mutilating reason, and that be the be all and end all? S>?