Not too long ago I got the chance to see the musical Cabaret on Broadway starring the delightful Orville Peck as the Emcee. I got to thinking about male beauty for…reasons. But also the word "beautiful" itself, which becomes quite loaded in that show. What starts as a bit of clever banter in the opening (“Even the orchestra is beautiful”) becomes a not-so-veiled threat by the end (“You didn’t find our country beautiful?”)
Even the orchestra is beautiful!
Not too long after, I had the pleasure of hearing Bella Cardim speak about her amazing photography and installation work that centers food as emblem and symbol of how we think about our bodies, how we think about the beauty—or lack thereof—of our bodies. She explores not just accepted notions of beauty, but also the compulsion to adhere to them that many people face day in an and day out. The word beautiful may not appear in the work, but the idea, the threat?, is there underneath it all.
Beauty, we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. Accepting the validity of differing points of view is already a stretch for many of us. Some make a constant effort to do better, some just shrug and rest comfortably in their solipsism as they rage at the world. But all that is about conferring, or not, the status of “beautiful.” It doesn’t end there.
Once decreed beautiful, especially when lots of people agree, triggers all kinds of other fun. We’re aways awash—drowning, even—in gendered ideas of beauty, restrictive notions of what is beautiful, what’s allowed to be beautiful, who’s allowed to be beautiful. And then, what happens when one is considered beautiful?
Is it a compliment or a weapon?
Take for instance, the phrase “male beauty.” Something I contemplate a lot—even when not watching Orville Peck on stage. It’s very central to my work as an artist and something that lives at the heart of many—perhaps all—of my paintings. At least, my own personal exploration of what is beautiful to me, and why. Your mileage may vary, and that’s delightful.
Under patriarchy are males even allowed to be beautiful? Yes, but… It then transforms from compliment to something else entirely. Think about this curious bit of patriarchal math: male + beauty = queer; queer = bad; male + beauty = bad.
Another downside of the declaration of beautiful: beauty, once conferred, is treated as dismissive, exclusive of anything else. How often does it carry assumptions that one can’t also be smart or kind or strong while being beautiful? Or maybe it is being kind or strong that makes you beautiful?
Thank you, darlings, for indulging me (if you’ve even read this far! lol), on this meandering rant to nowhere. The point, if there is one: everything is a system in a system of systems. Everything is connected and carries weight due to those connections. Sure, beauty starts in the eye of the beholder, but doesn’t end there. If we then somehow convey to others what we find beautiful, we’ve entered a new, social realm where the weight of the interconnections and consequences all come into play.
And now, darlings, I’ll leave with you a bit of campy irony in the form of a song, sung by an angel.