More naval-gazing

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

	How would you cast Shadow man? With actors presumably, but who will play the mems, fems, and herms; where do you turn for intersexed actors? Acting is a profession that disproportionately selects for people who conform to the norms of beauty reinforced by mass visual media. Think: models, beauty pageants; tall, thin, etcetera. Would this actually be so difficult? Our actors, models and beauty contest contenders, even our bodybuilders, show a pronounced lack of body hair and fat; "beautiful" faces typically have a broad forehead, large eyes, a small nose, a small brow and a narrow chin, and these characteristics are commonly considered to be androgynous.
	While this might fly in a movie, I would argue that these norms of appearance are not androgynous, and are, as a result, not representative of average Harans, because they are not a mix of male and female, but are asexual. "Androgyne" literally translates as "man-woman," but our culture's androgynous fashion-image persona shuns many secondary sexual characteristics: spare tires; post-breastfeeding breasts; fat buttocks; male baldness; body hair; acne; bat-wings.  Even more out-of-favour are counter-gender secondary sexual characteristics: facial hair or baldness for women; breast development for men. To be beautiful, even within a conventional gender persona, is to hold to a prepubescent body and face, at least in parts. features. Is this because of our fascination with youth?
	What happened to the Mediterranean hermaphrodite? Where is the endomorphic and breasted figure bearing a phallus, and possibly a beard? Where is the American bearded lady (also seen in Brave New World)?
	Most of the deliberately androgynous or third-gender people that I know or have seen outside of conventional media affect a presentation reminiscent of eighties rock, Punk, Goth or Emo. These are all post-boomer youth subcultures. Others port an Annie Hall, hippy, or  post-hippy alternate look, these being derived from boomer visual styles. I know a couple of contemporary flapper-equivalents, but none of them are (to my knowledge) intentionally androgynous. The one unifying theme here is that the subculture that spawned these is one of youth. And with the exception of hippies, and , to a lesser extent, alternates, all of these encourage an asexual androgyny. Why is this? Is it a matter of youth? Or is it that, in our culture, the only safe space to play with gender is away from sexual bodies? If so, why is this? Are hippies an exception, or am I full of shit?

Comments

[osmie]

A possible flaw in this reasoning (which I'm reluctant to point out because the observations themselves are quite astute) is that it relies on a series of snapshots of the population, in each of which the most genderqueer subculture is youthful. The trouble is that everyone older than a youth was once a youth, at some time or other -- hence the particular individuals who make up the genderqueer population are different in each snapshot. So the question is not so much why/how older subcultures discourage androgyny, but what happens to former genderqueers that influences them either to blend in or to become a hippie?

Phrased that way, the question implies a few obvious answers, any subset of which might be valid, but which probably don't constitute a complete list:

• Youth are genderqueer precisely because they're young; it's part of exploring & defining themselves within society; once they've found a role the need to experiment goes away.


• Anyone continuing consciously to reject gender roles will eventually tend to pick & choose other elements of society to keep or reject, at which point they're indistinguishable from hippies.


• It takes enough money to support a family that eventually people are forced to conceal their more visible stigmata to get a higher-paying job.


• Youth are, frankly, really bad at keeping up any sort of double life; consequently everything comes out on the surface, be it paganism or kink or genderqueer. By contrast, folks in their 30s and up tend to keep their double lives to themselves; there's just as much subversive stuff going on but you never see it because it's no longer happening in public.


• Those who are headed for transition start out androgynous but gradually become less so, thus thinning the epicene pool.

Some excellent points about the two types of androgyny, though: our culture definitely holds up zero-sexed as beautiful, two-sexed as monstrous. Why is that?

[hundun.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thanks.