I was recently listening to the Slate Spoiler Special, where the hosts -- both women -- were talking about The Lost Daughter. One of them mentioned -- really just in passing, mind you -- that Peter Sarsgaard looked very handsome in this film. It was just once and no assessment of any other actors' looks was ever proffered.
I have to acknowledge up front that Dakota Johnson was also described as being beautiful, but it was in a slightly more catty fashion -- like not everyone can be as beautiful as Dakota Johnson.
The particulars of this discussion are not what interested me, but rather, what they prompted me to think about. (And if I'm being honest, I might say that I probably wouldn't even be writing this post if I hadn't thought up a title that I really liked.)
It occurred to me that women are still allowed to talk about how attractive men are, but the reverse is not true.
It's okay. REALLY it's okay. We heterosexual white men have already had our millennia in the sun.
But is it too much to ask for neither side to talk about how attractive the other is?
But Vance, you say. They also talked about how attractive an actress was.
Correct. I still say that a man could not get away with the same "both ways" approach. (Plus, and here's a good jab at heterosexual men, we are still not that comfortable with talking about other men being attractive, though I hope I am an exception to this.) They could talk about ten attractive men, but once a comment was made about a woman, that would be the thing that stood out.
Oops. I'm starting to sound like a bit of a troglodyte. Let's see if I can get back on track.
I think the real solution here, and this solution might be a bit the enemy of free speech, is to use code words. Don't say "beautiful," say "elegant." Say "radiant." Say "sultry." These words are more descriptive anyway, they are more based on what appear to be sort of objective rather than subjective assessments, and they are things you can usually get away with.
I find myself in this position all the time, wanting to convey to my audience that I find a person -- man or woman -- physically attractive, but not wanting to come off like a skeevy pervert. Or worse than a skeevy pervert, someone who belittles a person by focusing only on his or her physical attributes, and not all the other components of a well-rounded persona.
So what I might say is something like "Although Dakota Johnson is certainly physically attractive, what comes through is her energy with her fellow performers." I've said that she's attractive, but I've said it parenthetically, like you forced me to acknowledge it as part of making a different argument. If you are focusing only on the fact of her beauty, you are doing it wrong.
I guess that's the distinction I made in this discussion of The Lost Daughter. Johnson's appearance was mentioned as an essential aspect to an argument they were trying to make about the character, that her beauty in some way informs how others interact with her in the story. In the case of Sarsgaard, it seemed more like a random mention, like they couldn't help talking about how he looked because it was one of the first impressions they got, and in a discussion involving spontaneous commentary about a piece of art, it was something that quickly fought its way to the front of their brain and escaped their lips. Of course, it could also be argued that Sarsgaard's appearance is relevant to the character, as this character prompts Jessie Buckley's character to leave her husband, and you can't discount the role of his appearance in such a choice. They didn't make that argument, however.
But maybe there's something more subtle going on here that I should acknowledge. Maybe this is a much more pernicious double standard.
Maybe because there has been a history of actresses being valued for their appearance above all else, including acting talent, I am less surprised to hear a woman's appearance being discussed than I am a man's. Actors, conversely, are valued for their appearance often as a secondary consideration, though it should be said you can't make it far in the movies as an unattractive actor unless you are really good. But you don't have to be nearly as good as an unattractive actor as you have to be as an unattractive actress, and as an extension of this, this is also why actors can have six-decade careers, but actresses usually max out at three decades if they're lucky. (Plus they also say men can get more attractive as they age, while women don't, which is again based on age-old cultural norms that should be repudiated whenever possible.)
Now, we shouldn't leave a discussion like this without touching on another double standard that involves what homosexual people can do in this same situation. It is perfectly fine for a gay podcaster to go on at length about how hot someone of their same gender is, as this does not really strike us as the same sort of objectification as when straight podcasters do it. This likely has to do with a couple things: 1) you can talk more loosely about someone of your same gender the same way people of the same race can talk more loosely about each other, 2) such a sex-positive rant is considered to be part of their exuberant persona, something they can't turn off, and 3) gay podcasters are given a longer leash on stuff like this because they themselves have only recently been allowed to be openly gay on a podcast. Or in the past, they could be openly gay but then maybe they'd be relegated only to a spot on a queer-themed podcast. Sadly but regrettably true. So the male gays are allowed their male gaze as a form of reparation.
I'd say that the more politically disadvantaged you have been, historically, the more latitude you are given on this -- except that as a minority heterosexual male, you are still not allowed to verbally ogle a woman you find attractive.
In short, I'm fine with what the Slate Spoiler Special podcasters did, and it's uncharitable that I am even singling them out given that this type of thing is pretty widespread. It just happens to be the example that prompted me to put pen to paper, so to speak. Writing 1,500 words about it may seem like I'm not fine with it, but as you know, these ideas just get my mental juices flowing, and hey, there's my keyboard!
I guess it's just disappointing that we live in an era where people treat each other so poorly that we have generally lost the ability to call someone else attractive, because it is viewed as part of a climate of hostility rather than a climate of generosity. At its core, when you are calling someone attractive you are paying them a compliment, and you don't mean to indicate that attractive is the only thing they are. But we have long since lost the ability of allowing individual comments to be taken on their own at face value, because we simply can't make it the standard to judge someone's opinions within the context of all the opinions they may have expressed on a particular podcast. If you are only just starting to listen to that particular podcast at that particular moment, you might be outraged, and you'd have every right to be.
In the end, we need to think of our daughters -- lost or otherwise.
No comments:
Post a Comment