Gender and Desire in Polo Ralph Lauren, continued...

Although occupying only half of the image, the model is clearly the focus of this advertisement. In it, one gets the sense of an active, confident masculinity, one that requires no artifice. As Judith Halberstam notes, this is a frequently-conveyed attitude in advertising for men's products. She writes, "Advertisements for Dockers pants and Jockey underwear, for example, appeal constantly to the no-nonsense aspect of masculinity, to the idea that masculinity 'just is' [. . .]." (53)  This "no-nonsense" model also engages with the viewer. He knows he is being watched but the spectator's gaze does not intimidate him. In fact, he seems to invite the gaze. But whose? The ways in which he wears his clothes offer many possibilities. As an example of Fischer's archetypal cowboy, this model would certainly stir pleasure in some gay men. He is physically trim, clean-shaven and with a healthy mass of graying hair. His denim shirt is unbuttoned to reveal an additional, copious amount of chest hair. His jeans fit his legs nicely and the flyfront ripples somewhat under the strain of his bulge. The rope he carries is useful for lassoing cattle but also for sexual play. The cowboy hat, which he holds in his hand instead of wearing on his head, is one of the ultimate props for this archetype. By not wearing it, there is a suggestion that perhaps this cowboy has finished his work for the day and is heading back home to "put his dogs up and take a load off." The shirt's placket is slightly askew, suggesting that he does not take his clothes too seriously.

But he does. For the cowboy, clothes are not fashionable; they are, rather, "made to be worn." The clothes this model wears, however, and the way in which he wears them, are a matter of finely-calculated decision. There is a distinct balance between messy disarray and careful grooming. Martin Pumphrey explains the peculiar nature of this sartorial dichotomy in films and advertising featuring cowboys: "Heroes may be dusty but not dirty. Their clothes may be worn but not greasy. They seldom sweat. Above all, they have always just shaved." (54)  It is this premeditated nonchalance with regard to grooming that I think may also make this cowboy an object of male desire. Indeed, the cowboy's cleanliness and kept appearance recall a figure from the 1970s gay liberation movement, known as "the clone":

It was no longer enough for gay men to 'have men' as their sexual partners; they wanted to (appear to) be these real men. [. . .] As this new masculinity became more popular and more gay men adopted the look, these men became known as clones. [. . .] However, these clones were not intending to 'pass' as heterosexuals, as the predecessors had. Their appropriation opened up radical and transgressive possibilities. [. . .] Clones wore these appropriated clothes differently from heterosexual men, so there could be little doubt about whether someone was a heterosexual macho man or a gay macho man. Straight men wore this attire in an unselfconscious way, usually loosely and for comfort. [. . .] Clones rejected this nonchalance and stylized these looks[.] (55)

Putting aside Cole's statement about unselfconscious dressing (it is my belief that no person ever wears anything "unselfconsciously" or purely "for comfort"), he makes an important distinction between dressing like a cowboy and dressing like one is dressing like a cowboy. Though both are performances, one is a performance, and one is a performance of another performance. In this advertisement, one sees a performance of a performance, too. The fact that the cowboy is neither dusty nor dirty very obviously contradicts the edict of the advertisement—"made to be worn." That is because these clothes, though "made to be worn," are not made to be worn while tying hogs or branding cattle. They are, first and foremost, made to be seen. (56)  The dress of this cowboy is not unselfconscious or purely for comfort, but more stylized, like a clone's dress. He is dressing to impress. In his seminal work, Ways of Seeing, John Berger writes,

[M]en act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (57)

"The Instability of the Male Pin-Up"

What, then, is the viewer to make of "a sight" in which the subject is male? A male, no less, who stares, not off into space, but directly back at the viewer. He watches himself "being looked at." In his essay, "Don't Look Now," Richard Dyer explores the "instabilities of the male pin-up." (58) For Dyer, what is unstable about the male pin-up is the fact that he becomes an object of spectatorship, an object of the female gaze. Because the act of looking, according to Berger, has typically been associated with men whereas the state of being looked at has been associated with women, when a man is being looked at he is suddenly, according to Berger's definition, in a passive, effeminate position. (59)  The masculinity of the male is called into question when it is objectified. According to Dyer, this explains why photographs of male models almost always show them doing things, that is, walking, riding, or working. Dyer further states that these male models do not look at the viewer, as many female models do, but rather up and off:

[. . .I]t is not a question of whether or not the model looks at his spectator(s), but how he does or does not. In the case of not looking, where the female model typically averts her eyes, expressing modesty, patience and a lack of interest in anything else, the male model looks either off or up. In the case of the former, his look suggests an interest in something else that the viewer cannot see - it certainly doesn't suggest any interest in the viewer. Indeed, it barely acknowledges the viewer, whereas the woman's averted eyes do just that - they are averted from the viewer. In the cases where the model is looking up, this always suggests a spirituality: he might be there for his face and body to be gazed at, but his mind is on higher things, and it is this upward striving that is most supposed to please [emphasis added]. (60)

But in Figure One, what is pleasing is not the model's presumed indifference to the viewer or his presumed intellect, reserved for "higher things," but rather his acknowledgment of and response to the viewer's gaze. He neither looks up and away (as does Dyer's male model), nor does he avert his eyes in a display of modesty (as does Dyer's female model). Rather, he returns the gaze, invites it, even. And although he is walking ("doing things"), he recognizes that he is an object to be looked at. Indeed, the fact that he is walking adds to the viewer's pleasure. For someone who enjoys pin-ups that depict active, virile men, Polo Ralph Lauren's advertisement delivers just that.

Next >>>