Notes on the Fabrication of American Masculinity explores the archetypes and spaces which formulate our perception of the American man. Growing up as a boy in America, this project examines the foundational characters and spaces which permeate my male experience and shapes both social and sexual expectations. The project interrogates the ways in which masculinity is commodified and sold, how the ideal male figure can be both aspirational and homoerotically desirable. Using motifs like baseball cards, and staging encounters in male-centric spaces, the project takes familiar tropes and pushes them to new sexual places. Picture Superman standing naked in a locker room, smoking a cigarette in his cowboy boots.
Consumer Culture Masculinity:
Pocket-sized illustrations of the idealized man, engendering an internal struggle of ego, a desire to be or be with.The intimate handheld nature of the card, to be able to clasp the image in your hand is the ritual in which one admires the statuesque figure. The mythology of American masculinity relies on such consumer culture. Trading cards, action figures, and other male-coded products advertise the ‘way for boys to be’, offering both an imaginary aspiration to reach as well as capitalizing on the inherent attraction they generate. Underwear packaging exemplifies the extreme homoerotic end of this practice, models advertised in Tom of Finland-esque depictions. These baseball cards take the market strategy and amplify it to an absurd end. Scantily clad ballplayers with vulgar names, these cards have no veneer of consumer safety. They want to be desired.
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Consumer Culture Masculinity Continued:
As a boy you are presented with very few roles to play: the soldier, the cowboy, the policeman, or whatever John Wayne figure fits the mold of American masculinity. Beyond youth, these archetypes are utilized by marketing companies in order to manufacture desire toward their product. One day you want to emulate the gentleman Roy Rogers, the next day you want to smoke like the Marlborough Man. Through film, comics, and pulp fiction, the image of the stranger in the 10-gallon hat with a deadly shot and a drifter’s attitude is sold as an idealized manhood to achieve. This is inherently tied to sex, the cowboy being promiscuous and desirable. He saves the girl therefore he is allowed to have his way with her. The pimple-faced teen is emasculated in the distance between his reality and the dream of the cowboy, a gap which is capitalized on. To embarrass the boy is to ensure that he consumes, promising that he too can be as manly as the cowboy if only he buys into it.
Environment Based Masculinity:
The primal conflict of masculinity marinates in male-dominated spaces. Animalic contests of chest-puffing, the place is inextricable from the dick measuring contest. Locker rooms, dugouts, barracks, homoerotic encounters manifest in these spaces not just through explicit sexual encounters, but also as result of a clash of ego. These environments operate on rules outside of American Protestant culture. They are bodily, encouraging men to push each other to the limit. Who can stomach the most alcohol? Who can poke the cue ball with the greatest accuracy? Who can endure strenuous muscle abuse? And deeper, who takes the longest to cum?
Environment Based Masculinity Continued:
An important aspect of the masculine space is its relation to women. Either forming as an escape from women (a getaway from the atomic nagging wife), or as a space historically devoid of women (a deployed navy vessel), the abundant masculinity exists in response to the deprivation of heteronormative sex. It is an observable condition that in the absence of straight sex, sexual activity does not cease to happen. How pent-up do you have to be before you consider fucking a dude? As the old adage goes, “ 50 sailors go out, 25 couples come back.”
