I’ve gotten into a whole slew of conversations lately that have swung
around pesky topics like self-esteem, standards of attractiveness,
self-image, and all the weirdy swirling nebulous love/hate feelings that
we all have towards ourselves, how we look, how we feel, why we are
the way that we are. It's been high on my mind lately, and you know what
happens when I get to thinkin'...
It’s very easy to pick apart all the ways in which our various social groups/media perpetuate the "beauty myth," this nebulous thing
that pressures us to conform to someone else’s ideal. Looking inward,
though, at the ways in which we ourselves reinforce it is kinda hard.
Doing the introspective thing shows us all the flotsam and jetsam
rumbling around that we don’t want to realize – like how we judge and
emulate and appease. And by we, I mean the royal we, the editorial -- I mean I.
But you know, there are a few things that creep in here an there, things that make me get all hummina hummina
inside – things that lie outside of the norm. When I see them popping
up in mainstream places, I like to pretend that maybe someone else,
someone in the higher tastemaking echelon, has similar predilections, or
at least a sense that the norm doesn’t have to be so damned normal.
I admit, even though I know better, I too have internalized bits and
pieces of the pesky standard. But I do have quite a few exceptions –
admittedly, by their very nature, they are the exceptions that prove the
rule, but still, they are my exceptions, dammit. And
thankfully they are popping up in fits and spurts in the mainstream
media. Hopefully the fitting and spurting will be more frequent as time
goes by. Wait, that sounded dirty…
Anyway, these are some of the things that make me tick.
Christina Hendricks/Joan Holloway (aka Saint Joan of Rac)
For the uninitiated and those who dwell under rocks, Mad Men's Joan
Holloway is a curvy gal – and she wears her stature like armor. She’s
luscious and totally unafraid of her curves, and she dresses in a
classically tailored manner so that everything is accentuated.
"Joan is a person I sometimes wish I could be," says Hendricks. "She's a
presentation—I don't think she ever lets anyone see who she really is.
She's very confident and pulled together… I've always had a bit of a
walk—this girl's got hips—but on the show it's exaggerated. The first
day, I put on those [retro] undergarments, and I was walking around the
office like, boom, boom, boom! They called 'Cut,' and I turned
to [creator] Matt Weiner and said, 'That was Joan.' And he said, 'That
was Joan.' It all just dropped into place."
What I find
especially refreshing is that the character isn’t overly conscious of
her size – her body is hers and it is how it is and there’s none of this
self-aggrandizing “real women have curves” bullshittery (because some
real women don’t, you know). We never see her sucking in her gut or hiding underneath a loose tunic, she just owns it.
The fact that she's trussed up in layers of gorgeous vintage underpinnings certainly doesn't hurt matters, either.
Straight boys kissing
Velvet Goldmine and Brokeback Mountain are the two
most easily accessible examples I can think of right now, and I can
watch either, or both, over and over. And over. Not because they’re
particularly good movies, because they’re not, but because they feature
straight actor boys makin’ on other straight actor boys. It’s more than
just the physical kissyfacin’ though; in order to fool me - a most
astute connoisseur of straight-boy kisses - all the usual
straight-playing-bent trappings have to be shed. No affected mannerisms,
no props, no gimmicks or costumes can convey the passion of a true hot
boy-on-boy kiss.
Thanks to the magic of the rewind button, I
can watch Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan Macgregor make out for hours.
In the context of Velvet Goldmine, it’s not just a kiss – it’s the
truth behind the pageantry. It’s the foundation that supports all their
other artifice; it’s the realization that to succumb to an emotion that
potentially compromising you have got to be just a little bit naive. And
daring. And devoted. And brave.
Brokeback’s reunion kiss – yowza!
– you know, when Jack gets out of the truck and Ennis pulls him into
the stairwell and there is the pulling of shirts and the kissing of
faces and there’s just so much want and lust and longing. The tension,
the nervousness, the release... Especially since Ennis was so torn and
taciturn, so uncomfortable, so angry with his feelings, getting so
overwhelmed with the presence of another, and letting go of all of that
in a fit of passion - harnessing all that and putting it all into a kiss
that goes against one's own (in real life, personal and in movie life,
social) sexual preferences, how can that not stop your heart just a
little?
Julianne Moore's budding young crow’s-feet
Mizz Moore’s face… dang! I truly hope she inspires women to take off
the makeup - she looks great without it. Her features are open, honest,
and devastatingly gorgeous. She’s also been pretty outspoken against
cosmetic surgery, too, which in and of itself is beautiful.
If
you look, and you don’t even have to look closely, you’ll see all
manner of crow’s feet, fine lines, a bit of crepe in her skin’s texture –
all things that are natural for a woman her age. All things that we
will all have to deal with and grow into and wear as either badges of
honor or hide away as badges of shame. Wearing one’s age is a really
awesome thing. It’s a skill I still need to learn, but I hope I’m
getting there.
Benicio del Toro
Squintish eyes, graying hair, furrowed brow. Yes. Yes. A thousand
times yes. He smokes, he mumbles, his favorite cussin’ word is
“piss-hell.”
There’s a whole cadre of the untraditionally
handsome in Hollywood, the Steve Buscemis and the Timothy Olyphants and
the whomever elses, but they just don’t do it like del Toro. It’s an
intangible. And it works.
Alyson Hannigan / Willow Rosenberg (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Beautiful. Nerd. Shy. Nerd. Lady-lovin'. Nerd. Redhead. Nerd. Has a deep well off inner evil. Nerd…
Strong character writing is at the heart of this crush, which is of
itself damnsexy (the writing, I mean, not the crush. but the crush is
sexy, too...). The evolution from shy computer nerd with schoolgirl
crushes to a sensitive, powerful, tactile, and sensual
adult/witch/lesbian/bringer of evil/symbol of redemption was one of the
reasons I kept watching Buffy even after it got a little heavy-handed
and silly.
If that's not enough, she (Willow) offhands lines like, “"Well, when
I'm with a boy I like, it's hard for me to say anything cool, or, or
witty, or at all. I-I can usually make a few vowel sounds, and then I
have to go away." I can totally relate. And she can do the straight
girl/girl kiss thing pretty well, too.
Yes, it's a theme.
Seth Green
Party Monster notwithstanding (my previous point about straight actors playing the ghey
does not apply here), Seth hits the hot spot because a) Scott Evil was
just a cute lil dorksider, b) even though I lose IQ points every time i
watch it, Robot Chicken cracks me up and laughin' = lovin' and 3) he’s
kinda short. I like that. I’ve never been a fan of the neck crick that
comes from height differential. I like looking into eyes, not up
nostrils. Just sayin’.
Christian Kane's Eliot Spencer fight scenes (from Leverage)
Yes – violence can be sexy. It’s very sexy indeed when dished out by
Eliot Spencer, the character Christian Kane plays on TNT's heisty Leverage.
Spencer fights hard, at close range, and takes no prisoners. Also, his
fights are real, which is the kicker. “I can't believe Jon [Frakes] and
Dean are still letting me do my own stunts, but that's just the way it
goes,” says Kane. “You get better coverage, you get better film, you get
a better end product when an actor does his own stunts, especially if
he can do 'em well, and there's not a lot of people who come in and do
fights better than I can. I'm not being cocky, it's just the way it is.”
Like the kissin’, a good fight requires honesty and sincerity – you can plan it and rehearse it, but ya just can’t fake it.
Joan Jett’s cover of “Androgynous”
Joan Jett. Covering my favorite Replacements song. About girl-boys
and boy-girls. With John Doe just standing around, being his weirdly
Oedipal sexy self (which is the makings of a whole ‘nother post
entirely). Somehow, I missed this song when it was released a couple
years ago, I just happened up on it on youtube the other day. Wow!
The song itself is not as much of an enigma as most ‘Mats songs –
it’s easy to get that there is a good sense of understanding of, even
appreciation for, of the fluidity of gender roles and identity. But it’s
a ‘Mats song – it’s not preachy or weird, it’s not anything special at
all; just another Dick and Jane story.
The common thread in all of these is a good dose of reality. Whether
it’s a physical trait or a tendency or the willingness to dive so deeply
into well-written character – it’s genuine. It’s owning everything
you've got, flaws and strengths and all, and doing the best you can with
it. Oh, and redheads. Reality and redheads.
And now I'm dyin to hear about all y'all's mainstreamy on-beyond-the-norm crushthings. Tell.
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