such as in advertisements in women’s magazines, where the nearly nude female form abounds, fashioned as such for an overwhelmingly female viewership —
the object of the gaze is still constructed as an entity of desire for the surveyor.
While the gaze has always had a tendency to deconstruct the human body into its irreducible parts, when the gaze is heterogendered, the objective is to make reducible that which the viewer sexually desires, or finds sexually desirable, in others; when the gaze is homogendered, however, the object is deconstructed into those components the viewer finds desirable as images of attainment from both a societal and personal perspective for the self.2 Thus when women gaze upon the lean forms and enlarged breasts of models in women’s magazines, they desire those aspects of the model not because they themselves find these women sexually desirable, but rather because they believe others— usually those of the opposing gender — would do so. According to Tricia Sheffield, in instances such as this, the “magazine, its contents, and its readers are ultimately designed to incarnate the male gaze. And what the male gaze is incarnating is normative femininity” (5). In other words, thanks to dominant social conditioning, the socially subjective viewer of the same-gender gaze longs to be the
160
Of Muscles and Men
object of the gaze him/herself, and casts the qualities of the viewed object as desirable aspects to be attained by the viewing subject.
For He-Man and the other Masters of the Universe, this suggests a performative aspect to their muscles themselves. These enlarged bodies represent working forms, workmanlike physiques that reflect not only power, desirability, and virility but also wholesomeness and virtue. The strongman has often been cast as a warrior for good (Superman was the homespun, Kansas farm boy do-gooder; his nemesis, Lex Luthor, is the weakling intellect); as such, signification of the barbarian’s muscles reflects a social value that is largely deemed beneficial.
Manliness is valued, and thus overt and over-manliness must be even more valued. We revere and esteem such musculature. To put it bluntly, big muscles are cool.
Schwenger has noted the importance of the masculine form in the larger role of the male himself in society. Labeling musculature as part of what he considers the “maleness of experience,” he writes, “This maleness of experience, at a primary level, must mean the infusion of a particular sense of the body into the attitudes and encounters of a life” (623). The body then provides social and emotional cues for the male’s being. It leads him as both a social and sexual figure; the body shapes not only his demeanor and outlook, but the very fabric of his self as well. This is very much true for He-Man, who exists largely to orchestrate the musculature contained upon him. This would suggest that He-Man’s body acts as a simulacrum of maleness itself; and yet, as Judith Butler notes,
The body posited as prior to the sign, is always posited or signified as prior. This signification produces as an effect of its own procedure the very body that it nevertheless and simultaneously claims to discover as that which precedes its own action. If the body signified as prior to signification is an effect of signification, then the mimetic or representational status of language, which claims that signs follow bodies as their necessary mirrors, is not mimetic at all. On the contrary, it is productive, constitutive, one might even argue performative, inasmuch as this signifying act delimits and con-tours the body that it then claims to find prior to any and all signification [30].
Here Butler suggests that if the body is fashioned first, it is then deconstructed into its signifying auspice based on cultural markers. This may reflect a deliberate fashioning or re-fashioning of the body, and, indeed, bodies can be shaped and re-shaped through diet, exercise, and surgery. Once the desired look is achieved, the body then fits into the cultural signifier that was considered advantageous in the first place. Thus bodies are constructed into specific forms because of what these forms signify, crafting the body as a text that is both deliberately writ and read to present a particular meaning; signs and portents are not attached to shapes, but rather, shapes are created because of existing cultural significations.
Thus He-Man’s plastic, molded physique is constructed as a deliberate textual sign to the viewer. His body is meant to be read. Yet what does it say?
Beefy Guys and Brawny Dolls (Cornelius) 161
Ostensibly, male physique is traditionally associated with markers of desirability to the opposing gender and attracting mates. A recent study examining the correlation between male body attractiveness and those components factors that comprise it begins by theorizing that “(i) a reliable connection exists between body attractiveness and male quality; (ii) male attractiveness is an indicator of some components of fitness such as health and vigour; and (iii) females detect and use this indicator for choosing a mate” (Fan et al. 219). The male body, then, is fashioned to attract females, for the purposes of mating. This corresponds to numerous examples in nature, where male plumage and other like physical attributes are often larger, more colorful, and more ostentatious than their female counterparts possess. These attributes are then used in the process of courting potential mates. The developed male physique suggests the same approach; the more developed the attribute, the more desirable the mate.
However, the end results of the study fail to bear this supposition out.
Researchers uncovered that height is the most prominent marker of male attractiveness to mating; a developed physique only “can have small, but significant effects on male body attractiveness” (226). Musculature is thus significant but not prioritized; a well-developed but short man would find himself at a disadvantage over a man with an average physique but above-average height. Thus the body text developed in the Masters of the Universe toy line is not suggestive of male desirability to females; these bodies are not made for mating, just as these toys were not made for girls. No, these forms are made for gazing, and here the gazing is done by male eyes.
Guys and Dolls: Fetishizing the Muscular
Male Form
Larry was the omnipresent flannel-shirt-Levi’s stud in every bar in New York. Hulking, tall Larry, now, as always, in full uniform: construction boots, bomber jacket, flannel shirt, button-fly jeans with two buttons open to show a flash of jockstrap. The light brown mustache completed the image of every clone on Christopher Street.
— John Preston, Mr. Benson
Male-on-male homogendered gazing suggests, on its surface, male homosexuality, the active act of one male desiring another physically. Indeed, the very action of one male objectifying another through the gaze may be rendered into a homosexual act. Butler notes, “Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximable ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate” (237). Socially operated and com-
162
Of Muscles and Men
pulsory forms of heteronormativity suggest the interplay and interaction of males and females; since the gaze is often considered an act of sexuality, and often an act of sexual predation, then the homogendered gaze — specifically, a male-on-male gaze without women —can be construed as a homosexual act, and one aggressively masculine at that. Of course, not all gazer/object relationships are sexual in nature — as previously pointed out, some suggest the desire of attainment. Yet to stare at an object — to render a person the subject of one’s gaze — is often to suggest either the desire to be with (physically) or be like (physically) that object. Bounded by dictates of physicality, then, the gaze is necessarily corporeal in its fundamental essence of wanting; whatever the viewer may wish from the object, it is somatic in nature.
Gay clone culture is predicated on a binaristic relationship maintained within the act of gazing; it is, in many ways, mimetic gazing. In clone culture, the goal is to be both subject and subjector of the gaze, oth
ers’ and one’s self.
The fashioned male body thus becomes a text to read and a signifier of inclusion into the subculture itself. Like the Heroic or Evil Warriors, one must demonstrate the proper physique to assume membership.
The gay clone was first identified by Martin Levine in his ethnographic study of emerging patterns of identity shifts among gay men in urban areas in the latter 1970s and early 1980s. According to Levine, clones emerged after gay liberation in the 1970s: “When the dust of gay liberation had settled, the doors to the closet were opened, and out popped the clone” (7). Clones were “a specific constellation of sociosexual, affective, and behavioral patterns” (7). Participants in the clone culture relied on both visual and narrative cues to establish their status: physique, social demeanor, sartorial uniformation, and particular linguistic markers all suggested membership in the clone culture. Clones affected a style Levine labels “‘butch’ rhetoric, which fostered a masculine look through the verbal and visual symbols of macho manhood” (58). Levine’s generic description of the stereotypical clone uncannily resembles the description from John Preston, epigraphed above:
The clone was, in many ways, the manliest of men. He had a gym-defined body; after hours of rigorous body building, his physique rippled with bulging muscles, looking more like a competitive body builders than hairdressers or florists. He wore blue-collar garb —flannel shirts over muscle T-shirts, Levi 501s over work boots, bomber jackets over hooded sweatshirts. He kept his hair short and had a thick mustache or closely cropped beard [Levine 7].
Like the overdeveloped male form itself, clone culture is imitated and performed, reflecting a conscious desire to be like others (Levine 56). This form was reached through the application of sartorial and physical regulations and the appropriation of specialized behavioral codes. Levine writes: “Clones used such stereotypically macho sign-vehicles as musculature, facial hair, short hair-cuts, and rugged functional clothing to express butchness” (60). Clones utilized distinct uniforms, aping what were considered to be orthodox blue-collar mas-
Beefy Guys and Brawny Dolls (Cornelius) 163
culine guises of the time period: construction worker, cowboy, policeman, jock, leather man. (The Village People all took their looks from typical clone cultures found in New York City at that time. There seems little doubt that He-Man’s criss-cross leather strapping and “furry underwear” would have blended right in.) They also embraced proscriptive behavioral codes that encompassed “...
spatial distance, facial inexpressiveness, and loudness ... gay clones displayed reserve, aggression and coarseness in their motions, speech patterns, and facial gestures” (Levine 62). Most significant to the enactment of clone culture was the perfectly formed male physique:
Clones developed “gym bodies,” which denoted the physique associated with weightlifters. A gym body included tight buttocks, washboard stomachs. And
“pumped-up” biceps and pectorals. Clones favored this physique because they felt it was the most macho male build [Levine 59 –60].
In many ways, this physique was considered the most vocal affront against the stereotypes heterosexuals held about gay men:
Homophobia often operates through the attribution of a damaged, failed, or otherwise abject gender to homosexuals, that is, calling gay men “feminine” or calling lesbians “masculine,” and because the homophobic terror over performing homosexual acts, where it exists, is often also a terror over losing proper gender [Butler 238].
Clone culture was the first social movement displayed among gay men that could be viewed as a direct response to popularly held notions of gay men manifesting a failed masculinity. Vasu Reddy explains:
Gay masculinity hints at a collection of ideas, attitude and assumptions which culturally determine the way gay men view themselves as men. It is impossible to talk about a gay masculinity as it is something which is absolute; nor is it possible to exclude an understanding of this concept in relation to sexuality, and more specifically, heterosexuality [65].
As a response to heterosexuality, gay clone culture was both defiant and appropriating. It utilized the trappings of traditional masculinity in order to eschew them. It celebrated the hyper-developed male form in order to fetishize it, to render it beautiful. “[U]ntil very recently, the ideas and ideals of masculine beauty have been marginalized,” as if male beauty was inessential, unimportant to society (Schehr 78). In many ways, this is true; men controlled the auspices of marriage and mating, and were thus not viewed as commodities in the same manner as women. Women were prized for beauty and demeanor, men for wealth and position. Yet the rise of the feminist movement and gay liberation altered not only the modern perception of manhood but also the ways in which male beauty was demarcated and considered. Suddenly, the beauty of males was not only possible, it was fashionable, desirable, and commercially mar-ketable. Roots of this movement extend back to the very end of the nineteenth century and the new fad for physical fitness, but grew exponentially in the 1970s,
164
Of Muscles and Men
when health and physical conditioning for men became both a mania and big business. Movies like Pumping Iron (1977) captured this newfound fascination with developing the male form, and its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, not coincidentally, would later go on to play Conan in the film series), became leg-endry for his bulk. However, much (if not all) of the media surrounding this new version of the male form was designed for the commercial consumption of men, not women. Men’s fitness magazines, peplum movies, weightlifting competitions— all were designed to attract male capital and male viewers, helping to re-define notions of male beauty for a male perspective and male gaze, not female. Yet if the hyper-developed male corpus is designed to reflect some social notion of male beauty — if, at least, those who see the form desire to attain or possess it — then what does this mean for an audience who, at its construction, is of the same gender as those objects of the gaze? Lawrence R. Schehr, writing on the fashioning of beauty in men, suggests that masculine beauty is ultimately less objective than demonstrative:
The attributes of masculine beauty, whatever they may be, are invariably translated into the world of the manly, into what is impressive. Again, the English language gets it right: a man is handsome just as a sum of money can be handsome: bigger is better. These attributes become cathected onto the body of power so that masculine beauty, instead of being part of an aesthetic, becomes the index of a reinforced ideology of power and phallocentrism [79].
According to Schehr, muscles are attractive because they act as signifiers of larger attributes the male also possesses: wealth, power, status, all of which are associated with, and centered around, the concept of the phallus. For Schehr, the phallus acts as the ultimate symbol of masculinity and virility. One of the reasons the phallus is continually hidden from the outside world, or represented only symbolically, is that its value is diminished if it is exposed. Naomi Schor writes, “To subject the penis to representation is to strip the phallus of its empowering veil, for ... while the phallus can be said to draw its symbolic power from the visibility of the penis, phallic power derives precisely from the phallus’s inaccessibility to representation” (112). Maleness, then — in all its resplendent,
“manly” glory — both suggests and represents the imagined phallus, the literal and emblematic embodiment of the essence of male, or of Schwegner’s “maleness of experience.” The phallus attracts the viewer through its absence, or, rather, through the suggestion of its presence; trappings of masculinity suggest phallic power, entombing and enmeshing notions of male beauty into what is both promised and unseen.
Hyper-developed musculature, however, does not necessarily equate to the phallus; certainly not in He-Man who, unsurprisingly, was not designed anatomically correct. Beneath his shaggy underwear, he is as ineffectual as Barbie, with her molded over vagina, the only difference between them being the size of their missing genitalia. Interestingly enough, the upper raiment of Master
s of the Universe figures were designed to come off; the chest plates and faux
Beefy Guys and Brawny Dolls (Cornelius) 165
leather criss-cross bands were removable, allowing for a full appreciation of the developed torso. The shaggy underwear, however, remained firmly in place.
This may suggest a conscious presentation of the phallic mystery, but the reality is that no one expected He-Man to be any more intact than Barbie; though his muscles suggest performativity, “down there,” he is no man at all.
This would seem counterindicative of gay clone culture, which, as Levine notes, was focused on the “four D’s: disco, drugs, dish, and dick” (70). Levine talks extensively of the sexual “roles” found within close culture, using the common labels of “top,” “bottom,” and “versatile” to suggest “preference” in intercourse (97). In these interactions, the phallus is cynosure to the exchange.
Levine goes out of his way to point out that there is no correlation between body mass and sexual role: “many muscular, manly, or hung men were ‘bottoms’” (97). This juxtaposes uncomfortably with his description of “versatile”
men, however, who “with more masculine, muscular, or endowed men ...
become ‘bottoms’” (97). In many ways, Levine here falls into his own stereotype, the “failed masculinity” that Butler notes above, and suggests that the more muscles a man has, the more likely he is to take on the role of “top,” even though Levine himself says that muscles are no predictor to sexual role moments later. John Preston takes issue with this. In his seminal 1983 novel Mr. Benson (which was based on an earlier story of the same name he published in 1978), Preston indicates that one frustration with clone culture is the utter sameness of the individuals contained within it, even in their sexual behavior. The narrator of much of the novel, Jamie, starts by telling the reader, “I had just been cloned and found out that a mustache, a cute ass, and a smile with keys on the right would find me a daddy for the night” (2). Telling the novel in flashback, he chides himself for believing that “when I first came out, I thought butch was an insurance salesman in a flannel shirt” (1). When Larry, Jamie’s epitome of the male clone referenced in the epigraph to this section, turns out to be a bottom, Jamie laments, “I had never been so disappointed in my whole life” (36).
Of Muscles and Men Page 27