Viva Androgyny: what is the sex of unisex?

Being ‘different’ and ‘original’ is still being part of the system, if not even more so, these days. Such popular figures as Lady Gaga are perpetuating the system and while some cultural critics celebrate Gaga as a contemporary shift of feminism, it nonetheless brings a question if that is a kind of shift we are happy to see and if it is not another face of capitalism disguised as a mixture of hype fashion and scandal.

To me Gaga seems a complete embodiment of the age of ‘post-everything’, in which we are now living. Everything is a commodity, everything is to be sold, bought, measured by its monetary value or the illusion of a lifestyle it promotes. While 80s were famous for the fact that being subversive was ‘in fashion’, now it seems to me that the popular idea is that there are no boundaries whatsoever. Is it possible to be subversive in the age where gay lifestyle is hype, cross-dressing is cool (as long as you are a model, designer or a fashion-conscious city dweller, otherwise it is still pretty much a crime), mixing and matching is our style? The illusion of resistance is yet another promise of the Western capitalist culture. Rigid institutions that hold the society together in the all-too-familiar way are still difficult and dangerous to threaten. Take the institution of gender, for example. We are still clearly marked as male or female even if our appearance suggests (or, rather, screams in the language of fashion) that we are something else. Therefore, the question arises, is unisex a valid alternative to the gender binary we are all tied to, or is it yet another trick of fashion marketing which will leave us penniless and still hungry?

High street fashion and her majesty high fashion itself keep playing with the idea of ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’ and sex-gender unity itself. Now even French Connection claims to know what makes a man and a woman. Their new 2010 Fall/Winter campaign screams ‘This is a man. This is a woman’.

 And, being a joke as it is, there is nonetheless a hidden element of structure in fashion marketing – you aim at a certain audience, certain victims, you catch them all, you cash in. Scientific tone and clear boundaries that may be ridiculed here are still going strong underneath the gift wrap in our consumerist dreams. There is only so much you can choose guided by a deterministic tone – there is a man, if you are a man, you buy these clothes. Then there is a woman, if you happen to be a woman, you buy those clothes. Only two categories – nice and easy. But what happens if you don’t fall into either of those categories? Then you go to another shop, which will offer you an alternative, a choice of a different identity. You can then be unisex, or at least that is the promise. But can you really be unisex in a highly gendered world? Can you jump on the wall that divides two binary opposites and declare, “I’m above you all!”? In reality, probably not.

Take another example of gender bending and blending techniques now used by fashion industry to attract the rebellious souls. Burberry 2010 fall/winter campaign surprised with a selection of models that seemed like each others’ clones. A female model (second left) looks especially androgynous and perfectly fills the space ‘in-between’.

Now, luckily, you can look a little like a boy even if you are a girl, and still be acceptable. Or, shall we say, if you are a successful model, you then can be a girl who looks a little like a boy…? No doubt, however, that it is much easier now than it was years ago. So all for the better, right?

A different figure to fit in-between and provide a link between maleness and ‘feminine’ looks is surprisingly found in H&M 2010 fall/winter collection. The long haired male model represents a missing link between clearly male (macho) and ‘feminine’ looks, such as (and again I am quoting French Connection here) the wind playing with the hair.

                                 

(This is the only picture I managed to find portraying the H&M 2010/11 fal/winter male model with long hair-behind the manequins)

Versace pushes it forward with their fall/winter 2010/11 campaign and puts two male models in a relatively ‘feminine’ poses and, again, long hair does the trick.

 

More from Versace fall/winter 2010/11

 However, while it is aimed at the more androgynous male look, maleness is nonetheless evident and one is not very likely to question the gender of both models. It is not easy to put one’s finger on it – there is something that reassures one of gender category the models belong in both Versace and Burberry cases. It would be a lot more subversive if we saw girls advertising boys’ clothing, and women’s collections advertised by men. That is possibly next year’s aim – we will see where the fashion train goes. It is not very likely to change its direction easily though.

Either way, does unisex exist in the real world, or is it just a fashion game? We can clearly see unisex  as a new brand: hair, clothes, perfume, shoes (trainers – universal unisex shoes!) and the list goes on. Ultimate androgynous clothes, such as shirts, trousers, shorts, trouser-suits, are now easily available and celebrated by fashion industry. Even more so, it has spread to other branches of culture industry, such as film, music video, photography (although they are all closely related to fashion). The example of the smell, or shall we say, the heavenly aroma of unisex illustrates how the idea of unisex is used as a trick to reel in new customers, those who have not yet been reachable for exclusively female or exclusively male brands and products. CK ‘One’ is clearly marketed for androgynous urban consumer chasing the illusion of ‘otherness’.

                                                Calvin Klein 'One' promotion video 'Altered States'

Looking at it with the eyes wide open, androgynous very often shouts ‘maleness’. Androgynous look is mostly male-dominant – it is not likely to be a skirt or a dress. Female-to-male transition (not necessarily in terms of sex reassignment, we are using more of a metaphor here) is more integrated in fashion than male-to-female. The popularity of ‘boyfriend’ jeans (you don’t have to have a boyfriend to wear that kind of jeans, you can buy them in the high street store and fool everyone!) and ‘boyfriend’ watches and other ‘boyfriend’ fashion items proves the point. And while gender bending men’s fashion collections of 2010/11 propose skirt-trousers for men, it still seems that ‘maleness’ in women’s fashion blends in easier. It probably has something to do with the play of the contrast – a thin female model wearing her ‘boyfriend’ jeans emphasises her femininity, especially matching those oversized jeans with tight top and high-heels.

Either way, despite harsh critiques of consumerist society with all its vice, despite the arguments that cultural industry caters for everyone (and clearly no one seems to escape), it nonetheless seems that the culture as it is today still provides secret doors and dark alleys, which we can walk (at our own risk) and step out of the clearly marked category of gender. Even if it is a scam, if it is just another way to reach us, we should still be happy to have this opportunity to get a pair of trainers, or a haircut, or a perfume that does not have a label ‘M’ or ‘F’. We have enough of this in every other aspect of our everyday lives. What we are going to do with this label-free illusion – that is entirely up to us and that is a question to be raised again and again. Even if we have reached the era where the labels ‘F’ and ‘M’ are being replaced by fashion labels, it nonetheless leaves the population labelled. While there is definitely a shift, it is the shift of the name of the label, but not the abolition of the label itself. Looking at it from this perspective, there is still a LONG way to go.

24.10.2010 er

 

How real is ‘real’? Acting reality on and off the screen

Reality is something we experience every day: it is the mundane, the usual, the tiresome things that surround us. We are so used to it that often we do not even realize that we have no clue where it begins and ends, where the boundaries of the reality are, if there are any in the first place. Then suddenly we come across something that makes us question our perceptions of what is real and what is fake, artificial; and then we wonder whether what we experience every day is real and whether reality can be measured by our experiences and feelings. Without going in too deep, I will be talking about reality TV and the feeling of realness in life, which is so easy to disturb.

The Real L Word is the reality TV show, or rather, a phenomenon in which mediated reality repeats a TV show. It does get confusing. In their introduction videos the heroines (or shall we say, the ‘real’ characters?) of the reality TV drama depicting lesbian life all are at pains to emphasise the notion of ‘realness’ of this project. This is real life, we do real things, - they say, - we are real. Being ‘real’ characters in the reality TV product, they seem to be less real than the fictional characters of the original L Word (a TV series depicting lesbian life in Los Angeles). Even though the idea they promote is that the reality TV heroines are what the characters of the L Word are ‘loosely’ based on, they will always be considered that which came after the L Word – hence the copy or a different version of the original (the real). It does seem that in this journey through the fake and the ‘real’, the original is lost and we, the viewers, are tangled in the twisted web of representations without the originals, of copies and different versions of a reality. Without getting too Baudrillard-like, let us move on to the shallow discussion of the reality.

It is time we talked about the concepts. The real as a concept might stand for that which is the first, the original, not removed from its essence, one of a kind experience of life, the nearness of the existence that gives us a feeling of something substantial. The real is what we take for granted in life: the people we meet, the material environment that surrounds us, our first-hand experiences. But do we really know what real is? Does it really matter, these days? We can get relatively similar satisfaction having a conversation in the virtual chat room or via text messages, compared to the face-to-face conversation with a living person. And then again, where does Skype video conversations (and alike) stand in the spectrum of the ‘realness’ of human interaction? We may talk to our family member who happens to be overseas and have a casual conversation about mundane every day things. We see their facial expressions, hear their voice, yet the conversation itself is mediated by technology and physically we are nowhere near the person. How can we distinguish between what is real and what is not? Clearly, not by watching a reality TV show. Even more so if its title mentions ‘realness’ in any way. As much as the participants try to convince the audience that they are not being fooled and that there is no acting, the question remains, what is a real person anyway? A real character? If all that we are is just a mix, a clash of pieces of other people’s habits and ideas, the only unique thing that our personalities have is the combination in which these pieces come together. The soil that we grow in, the environment in which we thrive, and thus our essence (on the level of our personality – I am not talking about our souls here), are those combinations of combinations.

So, back to the real then. Our longing to experience something real in this artificial world, even by seeing something one does not have direct access to (for example, other people’s lives), must have played a great part in the rapid development of the reality TV and the forms that it took. We, as viewers, want something real, we are tired of acting. Tired to the point where the entire world seems like a big act, yet we try to escape it by...tuning in to some ‘real’ drama on reality show, merely to be fooled again. Reality TV is no more real than a film or fictional TV series. It is still as far removed from reality as any other cinematic production, it is staged, acted, filmed, cut, produced and only available to view on a lifeless TV screen. Whatever we see on a screen, is a representation. The only thing that is real, is the screen itself (and we – those who are watching it). However, the cast of The Real L Word would disagree and would claim that they do not adopt different personas on the screen, that they just are themselves living their usual lives in front of the cameras. That is precisely what the L Word characters would argue, were they accused of being fake.

There is no way of measuring, therefore there is no guarantee that the roles which people play in real life are much different or more real than the ones actors play on screen. It is all relative, regardless of what side of the screen you are on. We play this game, we follow the rules, we sometimes change the script to then change our character, we follow, we lead and we explore the reality without certainty of what real is. We very often long to be told what is real though, hence the reality TV, which sells the idea of having a glimpse at the real people, real emotions, and real life. It works – we buy it, because we need it, we need the assurance that there is something real. That makes us feel more real, too.

16.10.2010 er

Introduction

The images we see – all that is visual, thus sensual and influential – create our world as we know it. No wonder Berger (1972) suggested, “Seeing comes before words”. But words must come with the sight; they complement the visual world, together with sounds, smell, touch. They make it a human world. That is what we believe, anyway, it is ‘our’ world – we take it as is, we make it as it is. And we are a mere part of it – the insects of the urban hives that thrive in an artificial environment. We are attacked by images, overcrowded by experiences, strangers among strangers wandering the streets and the deserts of the Western reality.

This is my way of seeing, neither right nor wrong, not to be taken as the only interpretation of anything that I attempt to interpret.

* Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd.