Editor’s Letter: The Ambiguous Female Gaze
Man-Affluence is an emerging men-ism. A product of transformative influence of gender-fluid style and mindset. Will it lend agency to the female gaze?
As on most mornings, after kicking off slumber reflexes and having paid homage to the God of exercise who has a dedicated temple in my head, I steal a glance at Instagram. The Voice of Fashion feed has made a morning choice, ignoring disruption by my frequent likes for Golden Retriever public personalities and therapy horses.
Paper Magazine which taxied recently on runways of temporary attention with actor Ranveer Singh’s nude images, sent out, on August 1, images of American actor Adam Driver x Burberry. Driver stands next to a robust horse in knee-deep waves with the high seas as alluring backdrop. The horse is naked, Driver topless, muscled, and his ab-packs—six and some are on chiselled display. Scroll down. Next image: @abujanisandeepkhosla shows a male model, with a stubble and unwaxed chest hair in an embroidered georgette kurta wearing a stack of gold necklaces.
There is more. Tiger Shroff’s cartwheels to big smile formula, actor Timothée Chalamet’s too-thin body in a sexy black suit with tie, British PM aspirant Rishi Sunak’s voter smile and actor Rajkummar Rao in shredded trousers as showstopper for Anamika Khanna for India Couture Week’s finale. It is easy, so easy to replace Shah Rukh Khan’s old roses and bathtub campaign for Lux soap or model Milind Soman’s (also in bathtub and several sexy addresses) outings.
Like many social media skaters, my gaze is restive. Ranveer Singh’s attempted image antithesis—from gender agnostic, chaotically glamourous and self-conscious style to not a stitch on his body was a let-down. Most human beings look better with clothes. So does Singh. A hail of praise rises for his wardrobe experiments.
I find myself unsettled between Men Who Are the New Women and Men Who Are the New Men—socio-political realities as well as media coinages.
They are pushing away the clichés of Indian life—from the “maryada purshottam” (perfect, honourable man) archetype to childhood memories of fathers wearing stiff expressions and perennially thick skins at photo studios. Fairytales don’t sell as much anymore as Jane beats Jack to climbing the beanstalk. While the frog and prince politics in the mind of young girls stands mocked in romance novels. Instead, a dozen granular experiences and interpretations of masculinity surround us.
Outside fashion shows and inclusivity-focused imagery of urban culture, live and thrive the daily realities and dreams of the regular man. Suited-booted, kurta-pyjama clad or in jeans-T-shirt ordinariness with breadwinner anxieties and Mr Fix-It expressions. Hungover at times with male superiority but for whom orange suits, gold necklaces, or Marc Jacobs-like black lace panties and red toenails are off limits. Husband, son, ex-boyfriend from school, the Swiggy delivery man. The 19-year-old weightlifter Jeremy Lalrinnunga from Aizawl who won a gold yesterday at Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. The makeup dada in the powder room, the Panipuri “bhaiya”, darwan (tall, moustached, protective doormen) ushering us in and out of hotels or hospitals. Each of them, a man in our lives.
The two extremes do not connect when personified like this. Yet there is a scaffold between the two that has become a walkway in the last few years. A nod which has become a smile. From small town markets to city boardrooms. From the unclothed fantasies in bedrooms where the light stays on long after the mask has been removed to the grainy, endearingly altered masculinity outpourings on OTT. It is neither Ranveer Singh clothed or nude, nor Alauddin Khilji, the ruthless sultan figure as narrated in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2018 film Padmaavat.
It is a product of the transformative influence of gender-fluid style and mindset.
Outside fashion shows and inclusivity-focused imagery, live the daily realities and dreams of the regular man.
Man-Affluence, TVOF’s theme for the 4th anniversary edition puts celebrity chef Ranveer Brar on the cover. Brar epitomises these ideas. In his interview to Mumbai-based columnist Sanjukta Sharma, he talks about how his choice of cooking as a career was for him, as a Lucknow boy, an expression of rebellion.
The phrase ‘Man-Affluence’, is forked out from TVOF’s recently released Atlas of Affluence 2022 consumer study. It revealed that men are bigger, more invested retail customers. They compete with women for style and fashion-beauty indulgence. They are not as straightjacketed (well!) as in the past. They traipse to malls, negotiate the cut and carat of diamonds. They don’t want to be studs, they would rather be studded.
This edition tracks the slowly decolonising masculine personalities and closets of men-men. Influenced as they are by rainbow identities, choices and even feminist convictions. Not emasculating but liberating.
If you will find Raymond’s Complete Man waking up after decades to Sephora moisturisers in Somak Ghoshal’s piece on The Closet Politics of the Not-Gay Man, you will also find, in this edition, the man behind the loom, the weaver and how the artisanal legacy of Indian textiles is carried forward by men.
The Babumoshai myth—of gentlemanly Bengali integrity, favourable to literature and dhoti-kurtas is explored and busted to some extent. There is Dolce&Gabbana high jewellery for men as well as men on Botox and other beauty pursuits. From grooms who revel in grandeur to enviable collectors of quaint and fine things, and an interview with Hindi cinema actor Vijay Varma on the unshackling of Bollywood men, this is a discovery of ideas, some known, some found.
What happens then to the Female Gaze? Has the agency of women looking at men-men changed? Men and their supremacy in society hasn’t vanished in response to the rise in female affluence or scholarship. Yet consensus may just lean towards the fact that if there is ambiguity, it is of the liberating kind—it does not daunt. Complete blindness or deafness to female agency may be a thing of the past.
In her book, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Essays on Art, Sex and the Mind, author Siri Hustvedt refers to “infighting” in feminist theory. “It is now safer to refer to feminisms than to feminism because there are several different kinds…” she writes. Man-Affluence is perhaps then just one of the many men-isms. Only time will tell of its acceptance in the Female Gaze.
Banner: The digital cover of The Voice of Fashion’s fourth anniversary issue featuring chef Ranveer Brar.
Digital Cover Credits:
Photographs: Avinash Jai Singh
Styling: Akshay Tyagi, assisted by Noyonika Nalavade, Jay Pilke and Alka Bishnoi
Hair and Makeup: Anuradha Raman , assisted by Suraj Tiwari
Production: Sohini Dey and Shubham Ladha
Location: Masque Lab, Mumbai