Let’s take a look at this group photo from Pensioners’ Association from Maribor. There are 41 people in it, 35 women and only 5 of them are having grey hair.

Pensioners’ Association, Maribor

Hiding grey hair by colouring or dyeing them is part of a beauty work for women or work of femininity that is work women do on their appearance, manner and personal identity to maintain femininity – i.e. the ideal of young, white, middle class, able-bodied, cis hetero femininity – throughout their lives. Dyeing hair is part of feminine technologies, associated with women by virtue of their biology (e.g. tampons, birth control, bras, and hair colour) and/or their social role (e.g. kitchen utensils, sewing needles, household cleaning products), alongside with skills, tools and knowledge about those technologies and how to use them that women acquire during their lifespan.

In Western, postmodern societies, where bodies are categorized through “normative or normalizing gaze” (this means measuring, comparing and consequently including/excluding people) this gaze – directed at women’s hair – includes hair standard that doesn’t welcome natural grey hair colour. Being a grey-haired woman translates into being perceived old – hence ugly – and by that, triggering feelings of repulsion or abjection.

Hair carries many culture-specific meanings about a person; their gender, race, ethnicity, social status, sexual orientation, political convictions, occupation, health and age. Grey hair in our consumer culture connotes aging, future body decay (illness, sickness, death), and all these future events evokes fear or phobic-fear (i.e. fear without the known object of fear), avoidance of the subject, aversion, uneasiness, something that is there, but is in the undefined future. Death, as Julia Kristeva has stated, is one of the categories of abjection, together with sexual difference and food loathing. All three of them serve for the preservation of life and constitute the proper social body to conform to the cultural expectations of the physical body. And the cultural expectation for women’s physical bodies is to remove all signs of ageing, including grey hair.

However, having grey hair is a gendered issue – men sport grey hair without being pressured or self-disciplined to hide it by colouring as women do. Women are still regarded as Body, enmeshed in bodily existence in a still current Cartesian body-mind dualism where body – the bearer of flesh, emotionality, sexuality and procreation – connotes life, instability, changeability, disorder, mortality and death. Women’s grey hair are therefore the most visible signifier of aging that causes fear of death or ageism, but according to Iris Marion Young, ageism exhibits border anxiety of the abject – we are confronting our own death and we fear our future selves, only time divides our current selves from our future, older ones. The abject is a border between self and other, and because of its closeness to the subject, cannot be defined as Other or object.

Women’s grey hair has this abject status – they are close to a person’s head, alive at the roots from where they constantly grow, technically dead at the ends and their colour signifies aging. This signifier of an old age can be avoided by colouring them which also serves as a reducer of death anxiety for them and people around them. Grey roots are the border between the artificial colour and grey hair, always threating to outgrow the artificial hair colour. This fear of showing grey roots creates an ongoing anxiety so they must be consciously kept under control.

Dye your hair until you die.

Of course, this association between grey hair and death is socially constructed; originating from the modern conception about death – prior the 19^th century, death was common among children and young adults, older folks were rarity and with longer life expectancies, and emerging new discourses – medicine as a main knowledge producer – link between and old age and disease/death was created.

Head, covered with strings of grey hair or grey hair full-on, is subjected to ageist microaggressions or body policing, much of it happening almost mundanely or what Anthony Giddens has described as a practical consciousness: informal (unnoticed, unreflective) speech (“you look old with grey hair”), aesthetic judgements, jokes (“is it snowing outside?”), bodily reactions (side-eyeing at people), tone of voice, etc. Practical consciousness involves complex reflecting monitoring of the subject’s body, other subjects and their surroundings while interacting with others, but on the fringe of consciousness.

Women in the first photo we saw were everyday women, their retired status and older age means that they are out of the work force (do not belong anymore to the work circles), perhaps without strong family ties (widows, with adult children), so colouring their hair could be interpreted as an insignia to belong to their pensioners social circle, to be part of the group where the in-group monitoring do occur.

How about women who occupy the highest positions in international politics and business, do they sport grey hair? They do have “status shield”, a term coined by Arlie Hochschild, where higher social status protects individuals from “displaced feelings of others” – anger, shame, mockery, verbal abuse, microaggressions, peer body policing etc.

Among 100 powerful women in 2016, according to and ranked by Forbes magazine, there are only 10 women who don grey hair:

From left to right: Janet Yellen (Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in U.S.), Christine Lagarde (Managing Director of IMF), Queen Elizabeth II, Ho Ching (CEO of Temasek Holdings – investment firm from Singapore) and Sheikh Hasina Wazed (Bangladesh prime minister)

From left to right: Drew Gilpin Faust (President of Harvard University), Irina Bokova (Director-general of UNESCO), Mary Meeker (venture capitalist, head of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ for surging Internet companies), Beth Brooke-Marciniak (Global Vice Chair of Public Policy for Ernst & Young, multinational professional services) and Theresa May (British PM)

Having grey hair is obviously still not “respectable” enough for women in professional settings, because – according to Young – respectability is linked to the idea of order, where the standard remains white, bourgeois male who is rational, restrained, chaste, straight and dispassionate and by conforming to these norms sexuality, bodily functions, and emotional expressions are repressed. Cleanliness as a part of respectability agenda means avoiding anything that can be linked to bodily functions or changes, so sporting grey hair in professional environments is viewed as frumpy, sloppy or non-professional. Women are in danger to be losing respect not just due to their gender but also on behalf of their appearance because the ideal of respectability is still rooted in professional settings (government, multi corporations, high-level politics). However, despite the fact that those ten women out of the hundred do have grey hair, their hair colour can be dubbed as an “expensive grey”, i.e. colour and hairstyles one can acquire in top hair salons without looking washed out or half-styled. They are protected by their class privilege to look professional by donning (expensive) grey hair. But their lives are still pervaded with a specific type of self-disciplinary body regime, common for professional spaces.

It is called “power dressing”, a sartorial phenomenon for professional women that emerged in the late 1970s in capitalist societies when women started to occupy middle and top managerial positions in companies on behalf of second wave feminism in Central/West Europe and North America. This type of clothing practice represents the masculinisation of women’s dress – two-piece suit with skirt or pants in dark colours (black, grey, dark blue) with shorten hair or hair bun. This “uniform” was used to visually divide professional women from secretaries, a job that was most common for women in office spaces.

As we saw, most of them do perform power dressing – they de-feminize themselves, but others who do not belong to the Western culture, present themselves in more traditionally influenced outfits that could be marked as feminine rather than masculine. What is considered professional look is also culture-specific. Perhaps deliberate decolonising practices are here at stake.

Ho Ching and Sheikh Hasina Wazed

Let’s take a quick look at mass media (film in this case). Young has defined mass media as a site for unbridled fantasies, so how is it with the representation of grey-haired women. Are they even present in film? Not particularly, but when they are, they are portrayed in fantasy tales as witches (i.e. women with otherworldly power), for example, Into the Woods with Meryl Streep and Grimm’s fairy tale Hansel and Gretel – this is the image every child is exposed to and has internalized it.

Into the Woods (2014) and Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel

When portrayed in a contemporary or futuristic cinema, they are power-hungry bitches (The Devil Wears Prada with Streep again and Julianne Moore in The Hunger Games). The representation of grey-haired women as powerful “creatures” affirms the aforementioned statement about films as spaces where the abject can come alive. Apparently, women’s power is so threatening that can only be lived on screen – as a fiction.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and 2 (2014)

The other type of grey-haired on-screen characters are minor ones, usually mad, poor women, living on the fringes of society like Crazy Cat Lady from The Simpsons and Judy Davis in The Dressmaker.

The Simpsons (1989-) and The Dressmaker (2015)

Here, another dimension of discrimination against old women can be spotted: sanism (discrimination against people with mental illnesses) and class discrimination or classism. In this case, grey hair translates into the absolute loss of power – socio-economical (i.e. poverty) and personal or psychological (i.e. insanity).

Film representations of grey-haired women are stuck on the opposite sides of power; they are either powerful or powerless with the absence of anything in-between. This apparent on-screen invisibility – except for the aforementioned extremities in power – render the cultural desire for older women to be absent in society in general.

To conclude: this avoidance of grey-hair can be explained as a gendered abjection, a fear of death and women as the bearers of flesh, life and mortality and proof lies in almost every aspect of our social Western reality: everyday life, professional environments and media representations.

Thank you.

Enega od pogojev za civilizirano življenje (kot si ga predstavlja hegemonična moškost) predstavlja nadzor nad nagoni, torej tudi seksualnimi in posledično materinskimi čuti. Pričakovati od ženske, da postane mati tako pomeni siljenje, da pokaže svojo ‘nečlovečnost’. Če pa ženska ne postane mati, potemtakem ostane človeška ali civilizirana, a težava nastane, ker je v spolnem redu hegemonične moškosti prostor za civiliziran (tj. [samo]nadzorovan, avtonomen) subjekt namenjen … moškemu. Tako ne-mati ohranja moški red v nenehni ontološki negotovosti zaradi svoje nerealizirane ‘naravne’ ženskosti, s tem pa se poraja vprašanje, kaj nadomesti izpad njene biološke reprodukcije. Najpogosteje so to aktivnosti, ki so konstruirane kot ‘maskuline’, npr. absolutna svoboda brez obveznosti ali brezpogojna predanost lastnemu življenju in karieri, najpogosteje na področjih akademije, umetnosti, politike ali podjetništva, tj. v panogah, ki so na očem javnosti in nosijo več družbene moči, prestiža in denarja.

Kdo sodi v kategorijo ne-mater? Najprej so tu  ženske, ki so reproduktivno zdrave, a so se odločile, da ne bodo matere v kakršnikoli obliki, potem so to ženske, ki ne morejo imeti otrok, a si jih želijo in na koncu samske ženske, ki so že prešle rodno obdobje ne da bi imele otroke (biološke ali posvojene).  Kot ne-matere so najmanj stigmatizirane reproduktivno nezmožne ženske, ker želja po materinstvu obstaja, a je iz objektivnih razlogov neizpolnjena. Sledijo samske ženske in lezbijke brez otrok, saj je odsotnost moškega partnerja za vzpostavitev jedrne družine družbeno sprejemljiv vzrok za ne-materinstvo. Najbolj negativno so označene heteroseksualne ženske v partnerski zvezi, saj so objektivni pogoji za materinstvo izpolnjeni (prisotnost moškega za jedrno družino, reproduktivna zmožnost), a odloča subjektivni razlog – ženska odsotnost želje po otrocih. Pravica po odsotnosti materinske želje pomeni razumsko odločitev in prej omenjeno preseganje nagonskih, neciviliziranih impulzov, ki naj bi tvorili žensko kot zgolj telo za reprodukcijo človeštva.  Ne-izbrati materinstvo pomeni odločati (tj. imeti svoj ‘glas’) o lastnem telesu, to pa je nekaj, kar se je ženskam skozi zgodovino človeštva odrekalo.

Če je reproduktivno nezmožna ženska zgolj žrtev biologije, se od plodne ne-matere pričakuje, da se bo družbeno ‘odkupila’ za svojo izbiro, kar se lahko zgodi skozi profesionalni poklic (socialno delo, prosveta, zdravstvo in ostala kvazi-skrbstvena dela z ljudmi) ali prostočasne aktivnosti (skrb za ostarele družinske člane/-ice, prostovoljstvo, delo z otroki ali živalmi). Skrb za druge, ki tvori dobro ženskost in v primeru ne-mater umanjka  (tj. ne prenese se na otroka), se mora zato prenesti na druge osebe ali bitja, skrbi potrebne. Taka kvazi-materinska skrbstvenost zato deluje kot popravljalna metoda odklonskosti, saj so bile v preteklosti ne-matere patologizirane, tj. prikazane kot psihološko neprilagojene, histerične, čustveno poškodovane in samovšečne, ‘moško sebične’ namesto ‘žensko razdajalne’. S takim medicinskim portretiranjem (in medicina še vedno velja za eno od tvork resnic v družbi o tem, kaj je ‘normalno’ in kaj ne) so služile za simbolno opozorilo ostalim ženskam, ki so morda dvomile v materinski mandat.

Družbena strpnost do ne-mater je zdaj vseeno višja, kot je bila v preteklosti, saj je diktat obveznega materinstva upadel, ni pa izginil. Nadomestila ga je ideologija odloženega materinstva, ko se odločanje za materinstvo preloži na kasnejša leta v življenjski biografiji posameznice, kar nudi iluzorni občutek o svobodi izbire za materinstvo (»še vedno imam čas za otroke«). A prelaganje materinstva na kasnejši čas v posamezničinem življenju vodijo ne le subjektivni vzgibi, temveč gre za preplet z objektivnimi okoliščinami, kot so stanje podaljšane mladosti; daljšanje šolanja žensk; zaostreni pogoji na trgu delovne sile, ki grozijo s finančno odvisnostjo od drugih (moža, rodne družine, države); želja po ohranjanju nepretrgane poklicno-karierne poti; nevarnost poroda ali rojstvo nezdravega otroka; zaskrbljenost zaradi prenaseljenosti (t.i. zelena odločitev); prepričanje o lastni neadekvatnosti za materinstvo in materinjenje; ekonomsko-materialna obremenitev intimne zveze ali samskega življenja; urbano okolje, kjer so možnosti za preživljanje prostega časa večje (npr. potrošnja, civilno-družbene iniciative, večji izbor kulturnega življenja).

Za konec še pogled na dva angleška izraza, ki vsak po svoje vrednotita to družbeno pozicijo. Izraz ‘childless‘ konotira manko v ženskem življenju, na neizpolnjevanje primarne vloge žensk, na jezikovno mikro-agresivnost take ženske izbire s strani drugih, saj pomeni ‘biti brez nečesa ali nekoga’. Bolj pozitivno besedno alternativo in manj vrednostno obremenjen je izraz ‘childfree‘, ki je v slovenščino neprevedljiv. Lahko bi se mu reklo ‘rešen/-a otrok’.

Viri:

Lindsey, Linda L. 2005. Gender Roles: A Sociological Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Oakley, Ann. 2000. Gospodinja. Ljubljana: Založba /*cf.

Seidler, Reinhard. 1998. Socialna zgodovina družine. Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis.

Švab, Alenka. 2001. Družina: od modernosti do postmodernosti. Ljubljana: Znanstveno in publicistično središče.

This new phenomenon has arisen on the behalf of (1) a large use and popularity of social media where anyone can carefully curate and portray better (or worse) versions of them or broadcast an opinion/gut reaction to the world, (2) the urban impersonal living, (3) the possibility of an online anonymity, (4) the users’ need to overshare and (5) a human practice to Other anyone who acts/looks/thinks unconventionally and is not a part of our in-group.

Strangers are the ultimate Other – we do not know them, so we do not care about them. French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss has stated ways of handling persons who are stigmatized as Other and one of them is public ridicule or humiliation. Public humiliation it is a form of social control that occurs when a person violates the norms of the community and other people respond by publicly criticizing, avoiding, or ostracizing her/him/them. Before the 19th century, when legal systems were rudimentary and the system of modern prisons has not yet been institutionalized, the use of this tool was to keep public order intact. But more important was the fact that it kept delineation between Us (i.e. the good, normal, the in group) and Them (i.e. Others, outsiders, social or moral deviants).

Stranger shaming is therefore nothing new, as it has its roots in public humiliation. In the past, there were shaming parades, scold’s bridle, the pillory and the cucking stool for those in-group people who violated the norms, but for Othered or out-groups, there were Victorian freak shows (or shows with human biological oddities), human zoos (also called ethnological expositions), auctions of black slaves and lynching of black folks in American history.

Frank Embree was handcuffed, stripped naked and whipped, later lynched and castrated. Before and after images of him were sold as postcards. Source: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

Witches, religious groups (Jews and now Muslims), war collaborators (mostly women who were stripped naked with shaved heads), prisoners of war/citizens of defeated countries in war, refugees, and foreigners in general were submitted to public humiliation with one intention only – to assert power over her/him/them by degrading them, taking away of their pride, dignity, status and humanity. Public shaming is a moral warning (“it can happened to you if you don’t follow societal rules”) and at the same time, it is a spectacle or entertainment for the public.

To shame a stranger publicly online because he/she/they do not conform to our worldview, is a digitalized form of public humiliation. The photographer/uploader has a power over other people and is convicted that she/he/they has the moral right to punish someone for behaving or being different by publicly posting that photograph. As Dr Aaron Balick put it, ‘the photo shared is a psychological reflection of the person who took the picture, not the photographed. Individuals may shame strangers to evacuate their own bad feelings through the process of projection, thereby giving them a better sense of security at the expense of another person.’ But speaking sociologically, stranger shaming contains sexism, ageism, racism, sanism, classism/snobbism as it is mostly directed toward women and other minorities (e.g. LGBT+ folks, black and brown people, economically disadvantaged, folk with in/visible disabilities, those who do not conform to mainstream beauty/fashion rules …). Here are some examples of current stranger shaming.

• People who dress “extravagantly“,“tastelessly”, or “age inappropriate” defy the rules of the most disciplinary regimes of modern times – fashion, who can be classist, ageist, sexist and trans/homophobic,
• people who are overweight/underweight/disabled are being fat-shamed/body-shamed because they do not conform to the norm of a “beautiful body”,
• people who sleep on public transport are prone to classism or sanism,
• women who eat in public are subjected to sexism (“women should stay thin”) and sexualisation (a never tired man-created association between eating a banana and giving fellatio); who eat in public transport break the rule of not dining in the domestic sphere/home where they should prepare food for others; who drink/are drunk in public defy the societal rule of enjoying themselves, being hedonistic and abandoning the women’s responsibility to be serious and take care of others instead of themselves, which – within the rape culture context – translates into unwanted sexual invitations from men who don’t respect the rule on ongoing, enthusiastic consent and who don’t remove their body hair ignore the rule of the beauty regime (“smooth and hairless body is the only right body”),
• people who behave “differently” are subjected to classism and ableism/sanism,
• the last one is hacking of nude photos of female celebrities, where women are usually victim blamed of having them instead of people who illegally obtain them being prosecuted. But illegal ogling at nudes of some beautiful female celebrity serve as a means of degrading them to sex objects and making them falsely “accessible” to average Joe’s. This crème a la crème female objectification is reserved for wealthy and famous women.

Modern stranger shaming is a reflection of people’s obsession with other people’s bodies – what they look like, how they behave, how they are adorned. At the same time, it is an affirmation that we live in the society where discipline and self-discipline of the body remains our main focus.

People who stranger shame are self-proclaimed socio-moral crusaders who want to reimpose disciplinary rules on those who escaped them. Fruitless mission, I must say.

The postmodern, Western culture is an ocular-centric or even somatophobic one: we observe the world around us and therefore, necessarily (or deliberately) distant ourselves from others to get a more “objective” view of it. As much as we watch others, others watch us back. Some social groups are more conditioned to be watched (e.g. women, PoC, LGBT+, refugees, animals, disabled persons), while others have the privilege of an uninterrupted and entitled goggling (i.e. members of hegemonic masculinity with their male gaze). Sight creates distance or space between people, but touch nullifies that because it establishes a physical meeting (“meating”) between two subjects, or a person and an object; one can feel the texture of things or the warmth of the other person’s skin. The sensory impression replaces the “rational” one.

Eyesight has the top position on how we learn about the world around us; it is the “civilised” method unlike touch that is regarded as less credible or unruly sense. Touch is more egalitarian than sight since the one who is touching is also being touched back. The act itself triggers so called skin-ego, where skin as the protective surface marks our physical boundary with the outside. With touch we transgress boundaries of ourselves, of our bodies. Touching also implies intimate cosiness (e.g. children, mother-child, lovers, close friends, family) and therefore must be cultivated – whom, what, where, how and when it is appropriate to touch.

To Somersault’s lead, a 16-years-old Heidi (wonderfully portrayed by Abbie Cornish), touch represents her hidden modus operandi; she is a haptic person. By caressing things and people, she is establishing communication and connection with the world. When touching other people is being done by a young and beautiful girl, men easily frame and shame those acts as sexual. However, the ultimate manifestation of touch is the sexual act so Heidi engages a lot in casual sex. More sexist or patriarchal viewers would label her as “slut”, focusing on her “angelic looks” or “sexual magnetism”, but all this reduces her haptic sexual agency to being a sexual prop for male consumption which is not the case in Somersault. Those descriptions just signal an inept stereotyping of women’s sexuality and sensuality.

Director Cate Shortland generously reveals Heidi’s haptic character by largely focusing on her hands – what they do, whom they touch. Heidi’s desire to touch is a feminist tactic that subverts the male gaze, a man’s social entitlement in an ocular-oriented culture to look at Others without being looked back. Men may eye her as an object, but her reaction is to touch them. And objects don’t react so now they are transformed into equal subjects of touching. But there is another aspect of subverting the gender of a person who touches. Along with the privilege of male gaze, men also exhibit the behaviour called “mantouching” which allows men of certain age, social class and power to touch others without any consequences. In her own gentle way, Heidi is changing that paradigm not to subordinate others but perhaps to destigmatise touch as a secondary sense.

Taking pleasure in touching can also be a proof that Heidi might be ASMR; she is soft-spoken, her caressing of things and people gives her satisfaction, she enjoys being undressed by someone else or being non-sexually touched, and she revels in personal attention from sexually ambiguous Joe (Sam Worthington) when he slowly washes her face. Regardless of the current cultural snub about ASMR (“does it exist or not?”) if any sensual activity gives women major enjoyment…

Somersault also excels visually with the blurry, dreamlike cinematography by Robert Humphreys and subtle soundtrack by Decoder Ring. It is a mesmerizing piece of cinema that celebrates Other types of senses.

Michael Akers’ drama Morgan (2012) deals with a young man named Morgan who used to be an enthusiastic cyclist. He had won a lot of medals and awards but after having had a severe accident Morgan sees himself confronted with paraplegia. His mother, his friend Lane and Dean, his new love(r), become important people on his way back to everyday life.

In this text I investigate stereotypes, the characters’ language in regard to disability and the filmmakers’ decision not to use a disabled actor on the one hand, and the film’s innovative beginning, the fact that there are no flashbacks, its easy-going representation of sexuality in a romantic relationship and, Morgan’s need for help and an adjusted environment on the other.  The main assumption of this text is: the empathetic approach (of the film) and the deliberate research done regarding the main character’s disability makes Aker’s drama Morgan a rare example of a realistic portrayal of a disabled person who can not only live with his sexual orientation but have a romantic relationship, too.

Stereotypes

The film Morgan uses several stereotypes that add additional meanings to disability. These include the triumph over fate or disability, disability as personal tragedy and the super cripple. The triumph over disability and disability as personal tragedy are extremely present in this drama. In fact they go hand in hand because they justify all of Morgan’s behaviour and actions. The desire to be a ‘winner’ again spurs Morgan to be a top athlete as a wheelchair user, too. His training keeps Morgan’s body in shape and keeps up the ideal of a perfectly shaped body even with a disability. Swantje Köbell, professor at the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin, University of Applied Science underlines that ‘die mit Behinderung assoziierten Eigenschaften mit einem traditionellen Bild von Männlichkeit weit weniger in Einklang bringen [lassen] als mit dem gängigen Bild von Weiblichkeit’ (it is much more difficult to accommodate the characteristics associated with disability in the traditional image of masculinity than in the traditional image of femininity) (Köbsell 2010: 22).[i] She says:

‘Die Rollenerwartungen an Männer und Frauen werden dabei nicht nur unterschiedlich bewertet, sondern auch hierarchisch gegliedert. Männer gelten auch heute noch als stark, aktiv, unabhängig und mutig; Frauen dagegen als schwach, passiv, abhängig und hilfsbedürftig, wobei die männlichen Eigenschaften positiv und die weiblichen negativ bewertet werden.’ (The role expectations placed on men and women are not only judged differently but also subdivided hierarchically. Men are said to be strong, active, independent and courageous while women [are perceived] as weak, passive, dependent and needy and the male characteristics are considered to be positive the female [ones] negative.’) (Köbsell 2010: 20)

Thomas J. Gerschick, professor of sociology at the Illinois State University, emphasises:

‘Bodies are central to achieving recognition as appropriately gendered beings. Bodies operate socially as canvases on which gender is displayed and kinesthetically as the mechanisms by which it is physically enacted. Thus, the bodies of people with disabilities make them vulnerable to being denied recognition as women and men. The type of disability, its visibility, its severity, and whether it is physical or mental in origin mediate the degree to which the body of a person with a disability is socially compromised.’ (Gerschick 2008: 361).

Nevertheless it is important to keep in mind that there are more definitions of bodies than the binary man/woman and it is equally important how people perceive and define themselves and their (gendered) bodies.[ii] Morgan’s definition of himself as a ‘winner’ is also part of Morgan’s and Dean’s conversation after they had made love for the first time. Dean wants to know if the accident or the disability has changed Morgan. He replies:

„Of course, I was a winner.“

D: „I can see that.“

M: „I look at those things [his trophies, P.A.] and wonder who that guy was. I’d give anything to be him again.“

D: „I think you can still compete.“

M: „It’s not the same.“

D: „Why is that?“

M: „’Cause I’m not the same.“

Credits: United Gay Network

The feeling of having lost everything due to the accident and its consequences becomes obvious at  the beginning of the film when Morgan lies on the sofa, watches TV and drinks beer all day. In the above-mentioned conversation with Dean Morgan finally says: ‘It took everything.’ Later in the film there are several scenes in which Morgan says that he would prefer to be dead than in the wheelchair. At one point he even insults his mother by assuming that she also wishes he would be dead.

The stereotype of the super cripple is questioned in the film. Nevertheless Morgan manages to climb a rock and get back into his wheelchair and makes it home alone even after he had a heavy crash.

In this film music serves primarily to boost the mood of certain scenes as well as to underline the emotions of the characters and to intensify the emotions of the audience.[iii] The combination of sound and vision in the scene that shows Morgan in the wheelchair shortly before he leaves to meet Dean for their first date corresponds with the stereotypes mentioned above. Whilst the song’s line ‘Get up and dance’ symbolizes on the one hand his personal tragedy, because it has become impossible for Morgan to get up and dance, it stands on the other hand for the confidence Morgan feels in this very moment. Despite his own negative attitude towards his paraplegia he is quite sure that he and Dean will have a real date. Morgan’s confidence corresponds with the positive message of David Raleigh’ song Get up and Dance which, however, is only obvious to those in the audience who know all the lyrics.

The Characters’ Language in Regard to Disability

There are scenes in which the people who talk to Morgan immediately realize that they used expressions which are rather unsuitable because of the situation he is in. His mother suggests, for example, that Morgan should move in with her at least for a while and uses the phrase ‘back on your feet’. In another sequence Lane, a friend of Morgan, rather spontaneously but very clearly refuses to sit in Morgan’s wheelchair because in her opinion that would be ‘bad karma’. But even if there are scenes in which the characters themselves reflect on their speech other dialogues must be criticized from the Disability Studies’ point of view: for example, those in which Morgan adds additional meanings to the expressions ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ or those moments in which he expresses that he wants to die. In these cases the characters’ language in regard to disability helps to establish the stereotypes mentioned above.

No Disabled Actor

The pictures in Morgan’s apartment which show Morgan’s life before the accident preclude an actor who is a wheelchair user in real life from starring as Morgan – which would have accorded to the requests of Disability Studies. But the director/writer of the film, Michael Akers, and the producer/writer Sandon Berg, who had been inspired by an audition with an actor and wheelchair user, have done detailed research into the topic (Cf. United Gay Network 2012). In addition, Leo Minaya, the actor who stars Morgan, spent at least fourteen days in a wheelchair prior to shooting the film (Cf. United Gay Network 2012). In this way both the filmmakers and with the story they tell avoid what Lauri E. Klobas terms a ‘”quick fix” syndrome’ (Klobas 1988: xv). This means that disability in this case does not serve as quick solution for a bad story or a poorly researched story. What is more, filmmakers usually tend to use disability as a prime example of deviation. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder point out: ‘Disability lends a distinctive idiosyncrasy to any character that differentiates the character from the anonymous background of the “norm.”’ (Mitchell/Snyder 2006: 205). This mechanism is fostered by the fact that disabled people are a very heterogeneous minority. Instead of sharing a common language, culture or sexual identity people with disabilities – apart from deaf people who usually understand deafness as culture – ‘share’ a medical feature or a legal category. That’s why the ‘blind’ person or the ‘wheelchair user’ do not exist. Even an identical diagnosis – as in the case of Morgan’s paraplegia – can, for example, have very different forms and thus different impacts and consequences for each individual. This makes research and accuracy in regard to a character’s disability even more important in my opinion.

Innovative beginning and no flashbacks

The protagonist’s initial situation becomes already obvious during the opening credits.  Surprisingly enough the filmmakers use neither words nor do they shoot Morgan. Rather, they use e.g. a  balloon that says  ‘Get well soon’ on it, and various aids for disabled people indicate that the person living in this private apartment must be disabled.

At the same time there are no flashbacks in the film Morgan. The way the filmmakers do without visualizing the fatal moment that caused Morgan’s disability is quite uncommon for films featuring such a scenario. The film’s audio commentary proves that this was a deliberate decision. By placing emphasis on the here and now Akers and Berg don’t need to change the film’s chronology.[iv] Above all, however, they avoid using flashbacks as a cinematic key to Morgan’s psyche. Instead Morgan’s mood regarding that fatal moment in his life is revealed in his interaction with Dean at the scene of the accident.

Still, Morgan’s bicycle is present not only in his apartment but also as a symbol as, for example, in the scene where the traffic lights for cyclists switch to red a second before Morgan’s doctor withdraws the medical permission for this year’s race (in the wheelchair division).

Easy-going Representation of Sexuality in a Romantic Relationship

The quintessence regarding a disabled person’s sexuality becomes obvious when Morgan talks to his physiotherapist:

M: „I met a guy. So we play [basketball, P.A.] together.“

P: „Friends? Or friends?“

M: „I can’t even imagine. I mean: What can I, you know, do in that department?”

P: „You can do whatever you wanna do.“

M: „I mean: How? Like with my legs… I can’t feel them. Who…“

P: „Maybe you should get him to do some of these exercises with you. That way he can learn how your body works and get used to touching you.“

Credits: United Gay Network

Everything else that happens in connection to sexuality and a relationship can be grouped around this dialogue: Morgan’s futile attempt to masturbate, the first encounter between Morgan and Dean where Dean touches Morgan almost coincidentally, their first date, their conversations about life and their wishes, the question of whether they should show their affection in public or not, their first kiss, the question of whether and how they can meet their sexual needs and desires, the experience of a happy relationship of which physical attraction forms a natural part, as well as the medical aspects and consequences of Morgan’s erectile dysfunction medication.

The easy-going representation of a disabled person’s sexual desires in a relationship seems to contain a ‘romantic overload’ in this drama: The first encounter of Morgan and Dean leads to their first date and a little later Dean adapts his apartment to Morgan’s needs so Morgan can feel comfortable there and it can become ‘our home’. This corresponds with the fact that in Dean’s eyes Morgan is ‘sexy as hell’ even with his disability. Thus, he is not only experiencing some sexual adventure but also an adorable and attractive partner. Conversely, Morgan may need erectile dysfunction medication for a fulfilled sex life. But above all, thanks to his romantic relationship with Dean Morgan does not depend on sex cinemas, prostitution and sex workers, or technical aids like penis pumps in order to satisfy his sexual desires. The (rare?) fortune of his situation becomes even more obvious when the Canadian short film Hole is taken into account, in which Martin Edralin’s main character Billy has to cope with the fact that he longs for intimacy but does not have a partner.

Aker’s main character is above all concerned with meeting Dean’s possible expectations. His own sexual needs and desires are still secondary at this point. This is the case even though Dean assures Morgan: ‘I wish you could walk and do some of the things I wanna do and I know you wanna do them, too. But you can’t. It’s not your fault.’ Nevertheless Morgan is worried: ‘I’m just afraid that… that I can’t do the things that you want… ’cause I can’t.’

As Aker’s film Morgan allows a disabled character to experience sexual desire and a romantic relationship it employs a traditional storyline: Dean and Morgan meet, have dates, are in a relationship, argue, separate and so on. These dramatic standard situations help turning their relationship into something ‘normal’ or – in Berg’s words – ‘universal’, too.[v] If in the end Morgan’s struggle over whether to show or to hide his affection for Dean in public reminds you of Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (2011) this is just another aspect of the universality of Aker’s film: The gay wheelchair user Morgan faces the same conflict as the gay character Russell, who is able-bodied.

Morgan’s need for help and an adjusted environment

Morgan is quite independent. He manages to handle a lot of things on his own. At times it even seems as if he has the superhuman powers of a super cripple. Nevertheless, the film does not conceal the fact that Morgan needs help with housework, for example. It also shows that Dean sometimes needs to help Morgan or that he is willing to help Morgan. Moreover, Dean doesn’t mind having aids for disabled people like Morgan’s shower chair in his apartment. Even if these aids look rather ‘unsexy’ anyway. What really counts for Dean is that Morgan needs them.

Apart from that the film shows how important an adjusted environment with elevators and ramps is for Morgan. In some of these scenes the standard height of the camera which is generally at the height of a walking or standing adult is lowered to the height of the wheelchair user.

Credits: United Gay Network

Conclusion

One of the questions raised by the disabled gay protagonist in Michael Akers’ film Morgan is whether masculinity and a body that has been changed due to a disability go together. Correspondingly, the main conflict of this drama is caused by Morgan’s wish to be a top athlete on the one hand and his new physical limits on the other. He still needs to adjust to his new situation and learn how to treat his body correctly. At the same time Morgan asks himself if and above all how he can enjoy his sexual identity after the accident. As I have mentioned above Morgan talks about this aspect quite openly with his physiotherapist. The easy-going approach of Akers and Berg, who give their character the opportunity to have a romantic relationship, does not minimize the problems the disabled gay character Billy faces in the Canadian short film Hole. The romantic aspect of Morgan simply adds an important aspect to the bigger picture. In addition, many short scenes in Morgan e.g. at the physiotherapist or Morgan’s training together with Dean prove that Akers, Berg and Minaya have done a lot of research to depict Morgan’s disability realistically. In comparison to many other films with disabled characters this may almost make up for the – nearly unavoidable – stereotypes of tragedy and triumph. Especially because many young people – mostly men? – would do everything to be their able-bodied ‘me’ again during their first year after an accident that left them with severe disability.

References

Berg, S. (2016, February 27). Morgan (E-Mail).

Berg, S. (2016, March 3). Morgan (E-Mail).

Gerschick, T. J. Toward a Theory of Disability and Gender. (2008). In K. E. Rosenblum & T.-M. Travis (Eds.), The Meaning of Difference. American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender. Social Class, Sexual Orientation, and Disability (5th ed., pp. 360–363). New York NY: McGraw-Hill.

Hartmann, B. Rückblende. In T. Koebner (Ed.), Reclams Sachlexikon des Films (pp. 517–519). Stuttgart: Reclam.

Hickethier, K. (2001). Film- und Fernsehanalyse (3., überarbeitete Auflage). Sammlung Metzler: Vol. 277. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler.

Klobas, L. E. (1988). Disablity Drama in Television and film. Jefferson: McFarland.

Köbsell, S. (2010). Gendering Disability: Behinderung, Geschlecht und Körper. In J. Jacob, S. Köbsell, & E. Wollrad (Eds.), Gendering Disability. Intersektionale Aspekte von Behinderung und Geschlecht (pp. 17–33). Bielfeld: trascript Verlag.

Koebner, T. Dramaturgie. In T. Koebner (Ed.), Reclams Sachlexikon des Films (pp. 130–132). Stuttgart: Reclam.

Mitchell, D., & Snyder, S. (2006). Narrative Prothesis and the Materiality of Metaphor. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The Disabiliy Studies Reader (2nd ed., pp. 205–216). New York: Routledge.

United Gay Network. (2012). Morgan: A Michael Akers Film. Press Kit. Retrieved from http://www.unitedgaynetwork.com/morgan/press_kit_downloads/MORGAN_PK_100112.pdf

[i] Translations from German texts are mine.

[ii] Cf. also Berg’s email on 03^rd March 2016

[iii] Regarding the functions of music in films cf. Hickethier 2001: 98-102.

[iv] Regarding the flashbacks in films cf. Hartmann 2002: 517.

[v] In regard to cinematic standard situations cf. Koebner 2002: 130f., in regard to Michael Akers’ and Sandon Berg’s concept of universality cf. Berg’s email on 27^th February 2016.

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Dr. phil. Petra Anders writes and talks about the representation of disability as well as about otherness, identity and films of all kinds in various contexts. Her dissertation dealing with the representation of disability and mental health in contemporary German film is entitled BEHINDERUNG UND PSYCHISCHE KRANKHEIT IM ZEITGENÖSSISCHEN DEUTSCHEN SPIELFILM. EINE VERGLEICHENDE FILMANALYSE and was published with Köngishausen & Neumann in December 2014. In 2016 her chapter ‘More than the “Other”?: On Four Tendencies Regarding the Representation of Disability in Contemporary German Film since 2005′ will be published in CULTURES OF REPRESENTATION: DISABILITY IN WORLD FILM CONTEXTS, edited by Benjamin Fraser.

However banal it may sound, shit, dung, faeces, poop, excrement, number two, shite, bowel movement, stool, discharge, defecation or crap matters. Without the regular defecation, our bodies die. Discharging waste from our bodies is literally a life-saver.

How to defecate is a matter of acculturation and socialisation we are exposed to. Most Western people use a sitting flush toilet and toilet paper to remove the traces of defecation and pee in an environment that is familiar, cosy and clean. It is quite a different experience to take a dump at the chemical toilet – they are not supposed to be a place where you should or could feel at home, despite engaging in very homely activity. Chemical toilets have no homelike atmosphere; they are a transitional place for masses to relief themselves as quickly as possible. When you must shit in public places (e.g. public toilet in a mall, workplace or a chemical toilet), you must do it so quickly that nobody even notices it. Yes, we are that uncomfortable with our own faeces.

Where does this uneasiness with defecation come from? It is a result of the social processes that sociologist Norbert Elias has discussed in his pivotal work “The Civilizing Process” (1939). A civilizing process of Western culture (i.e. white, middle-class, heteronormative, masculine) did not encourage the celebration of the body, bodily openings and its leakiness. The sealed-up body has become a corporeal standard of a new economic order – capitalism and institutionalized philosophical ethics of Cartesian dichotomy (Mind over Body) helped to constitute general beliefs that body needs to be contained at every level. The containment of the human body means an individualised (i.e. separated from other human bodies, where physical connection with others only happens on purpose), socialized (i.e. natural body functions are transformed into socially accepted modes of how a body should function or behave – no more shitting in our pants when adult) and rationalized (i.e. the dominance of reason and self-control over emotions and body – to control bowel movement and defecate in specific spaces for defecation) entity.

The sealed-up body is now accompanied by emotions of shame and embarrassment – sex life, birth, death, loud laughter, loud talking, defecation, drinking and eating have become “private matters”, done in the privacy of our homes, but when performed in public, they must be necessarily encoded in social customs, e.g. visible sex activity is “normal” only in porn movies, giving birth is placed in specialised departments of a hospital, people speak in moderate volume of voice when conversing etc. All those cultural expectations of social conduct emanate from the white, middle-class, straight, able-bodied, Western, cis-gender and masculine values on how to be a “civilised” person.

One of the most important conditions for a person to enter “civilization” is being potty trained. When we are born, we ooze “dirt” – blood, urine, faeces, placenta etc. and until parents (usually mother or some other woman) teach us how to defecate properly (e.g. using potty and later toilet), we wallow in our own bodily fluids (e.g. shit, pee, food, saliva, vomit) and do not worry about it because we have no concept of borders – everything belongs to us, even our own turd. This is the most sensual time of the human life; nobody is judging you for being covered with excreta until you are potty trained, which means you are now able to separate proper (e.g. civilised) from improper (e.g. savage) defecation. By being potty trained we map our body – where we end and others begin.

Potty training is a person’s transition from her/his/their sensual self or – what Julia Kristeva (1982) has named – semiotic phase (i.e. the phase of dirt, uninhibited fleshiness and improperness) to the socialized one (i.e. proper, clean, disciplined, rational). The socialised self represses the sensual joyous times of childhood, because early childhood is also the state of unity between mother and child, where borders between them are not so clear. Mother represents the quintessential Body – warmth, food, emotions, joy, life, but also dirt, decay, death, power over (child). For Kristeva, defecation is an everyday repetition of man’s separation from his mother, where faeces represent the bodily (e.g. maternal, life-death) aspect of a person’s life.

In a masculine conception of social reality, all that is related to femininity (e.g. body, sexuality, motherhood, emotions and death) is repressed or denied, so taking a dump – a very physiological and bodily phenomenon that occurs randomly – should be carefully premeditated. Shitting becomes a disciplined ritual that needs to be controlled and rationalized to be executed properly, otherwise shit (or maternal/feminine) will take over. It is a sign of another masculine attempt to dominanate Nature (i.e. bowel movement, phantasm of mother), because defecation reminds men that despite endless efforts to control everything and everyone around them, they are still bodies – unstable and uncontrollable entities where shit calls the shots.

Man’s fecal ritual is a predetermined and controlled process – when to defecate, where to defecate and what accompanies the defecation. If the bowels are not moving, they will make them move. “Get this shit working” could be the morning mantra, because morning dump is the most important one; it sets the mood of the day. It should happen after breakfast, no one is allowed to cut the line when a man’s defecation is about to begin and by spending some time sitting aimlessly on the toilet seat, a man will mentally force his bowels to start moving. To disassociate from his own defecation (because of the connection with Nature, e.g. maternal), he occupies his mind while shitting. To sit in silence doing “nothing” (well, shitting is not nothing, but nevertheless) is incomprehensible to a man. If he would defecate as women do – quickly, without any thought, when you must go, you go, you don’t hang around in a bathroom – he would have had to listen to himself (e.g. his thoughts) and sounds that surround defecation – the growling of bowels, farting, the moment when turd hits the water surface of a toilet bowl.

So, to separate himself from this “mundane” everyday need, he distracts his mind with reading papers or clicking through his smart phone while defecating. It is unthinkable for a man to be alone in a room with his turd (e.g. the symbolic separation from mother and in the presence of Nature), so occupying his mind with meaningful/less information (i.e. rational thought) helps him survive this horrendous experience of filth and corporealness.

To recognize something as a “shit ritual”, however unconsciously it is done by their “ritualists”, this sends a message of men’s uneasiness with anything feminine or maternal in their bodies (not even a piece of shit) or in their identity.

On the other hand, taking a phone with you to the toilet, regardless of your gender, also accentuates the internalized capitalistic expectation to rationalize your time – use every spare minute for everything and everyone else (e.g. work-related obligations) except yourself .

Shit in piece.

P.S. This text would have been different if different types of men had been observed – non-heterosexual, non-middle class, non-western, non-white, disabled or aged men.

Sizeism is a discrimination against a person on the basis of her/his/their body size (fat, thin, small or tall), but it also includes a less common prejudice against a person’s length and width of feet. This prejudice is far more problematic for women, whose feet size is larger than number 41. They fall out of the category to be ‘beautiful’ because western society’s notions of women’s beauty are intertwined with their feminine physicality. Beautiful = feminine.

Women’s feet are – as any other body part – defined and validated via disciplinary regimes of beauty. Besides the usual young, pretty and thin imperative, women’s hands and feet are supposed to be small and delicate. The littleness of feet is yet another body ideal, placed upon women with its subtle message that their bodies should not occupy a lot of physical space; women should make themselves as small (hence the tyranny of slenderness) and invisible as possible. When it comes to feet, there is a ‘big feet’ shame that – in everyday life – translates into taunting and is primarily damaging for girls and young women, who do not have small feet and if they are also tall (i.e. over 1,80m), another aspect of sizeism (i.e. women’s height) is being added. These societal body prejudices can harm a young person’s body image.

When a woman does not belong to a ‘normal’ shoe size, she is being ‘punished’ for her size discursively (being constantly taunted for her feet) and materially (not being able to find the right size or kind of shoes). Her right to choose shoes has been eliminated. The only options left for her are sports footwear or men’s shoes. But not every woman has a desire to wear those limited types of footwear, if those choices were forced upon her and she also wishes to engage in more diverse (e.g. feminine or extravagant) footgear. Reasons can even have an economic aspect – not everyone can afford custom-made shoes or to order shoes of specific shoe brands from abroad.

If I apply the traditional psychoanalytic approach about a shoe as a symbol of female genitalia, then too big or too wide women’s shoes translate into the sexist understanding of a vagina as being ‘loose’ and needs to be corrected or medically tightened. In times where vaginoplasty is becoming more normalized, the repulsion of anything big (e.g. body fat, ‘loose’ vagina, big labia or big feet) on a woman’s body just reinforces the idea that being a woman is nothing but shameful.

Therefore, a big feet shame should just became a big feet Pride.

The western understanding of a woman’s body is – alongside with its reproductive power – also built around its aesthetic (decorative) and mobile (inactive) nature. It is expected for a girl to be pretty and a woman to be attractive, so to stay pretty/beautiful, a girl/woman should not engage in activities (sports mostly) that could ‘ruin’ her appearances. Bruises ruin skin to a degree of transforming skin colour from natural to ‘unnatural’ – blue, green, violet, yellowish. But most of all, they bluntly expose the fragility and mortality of the human body.

To gain a bruise is a positive message about body vitality and reaffirmation of the corporeal toughness for boys and men only; girls can be covered with bruises until they reach puberty. Puberty is a gender game-changer for girls, because it is assumed that a girl should abandon her free-spirit roaming and willingly submit herself to the docile young femininity – to be looked at as a ‘beautiful object’ instead of being primarily a looking subject. Bruises, scars or pimples on the body can be compared with cracks on the porcelain – they are a sign of imperfection or failure, something that is not well received in the western neoliberal society that strives for permanent success and cannot or will not see ‘defeat’ as a time to recess, recuperate or grow.

The societal imperative to be beautiful and perfect (although disguised as a woman’s choice and not an obligation) is a heavy burden in every woman’s life. Despite the fact that beauty standards vary in society, every culture and subculture has the ideal upon other members are measured and valued (e.g. too butch or too femme for a lesbian, too dark or too light for a black person, too masculine for a straight woman …). Women’s bodies should aim to be beautiful – impeccable and “bruiseless” to conform to the arbitrarily established standard(s).

Philosopher Iris Marion Young claims that adult women are caught between states of immanence (i.e. being an ‘object’ or immobile) and transcendence (i.e. being a subject or motile). Every time women are predominantly defined as immanence, their autonomy, creativity and subjectivity (e.g. voice, mind and body) are being destroyed or rejected. The model of conventional femininity does exactly that; it gently forbids any opportunity for a woman to be ‘outside’ of her inactive role if she wants to remain a feminine and beautiful insider.

When a woman engages in sports, she is expanding her spatial, motile, behavioural and physical limits and by not squeamishly avoiding the potential injuries, she is experiencing and embracing physical pain, produced by her own actions. Culturally, there is only one type of physical pain all women are allowed to participate in – childbirth, so by exploring her own pain thresholds besides the imposed one, she transgresses her gender role of a beautiful object and positions herself as an active agent of her own body, possibly covered with bruises, scars and dirt.

Not only does an adult woman, who is getting bruised, transgress her gender role of a delicate flower, she also deconstructs the dominant belief that when a woman’s body is bruised, it must be the case of domestic violence (e.g. intimate, family or elderly abuse). Bruise as an age-specific injury is quite unproblematic with pre-pubescent girls, but over time that fleshy symbol of an active life becomes an undisputable marker of an abuse. When a woman is abused, she is ultimately objectified yet her objectification is intensified with random people’s glances at her bruises and assumptions about getting them.

Bruises are and should only be “kisses” between the flesh and inanimate objects, never between two human bodies – an objectified subject and an abusive subject. But the naming of bruises as kisses is not mine. Finnish photographer Riikka Hyvönen has beautifully documented bruises of roller derby players, a now revived all-female (and feminist) sport, whose global recognisability can also be contributed to Drew Barrymore’s Whip it (USA, 2009), a film that celebrates independence, companionship, wit and women.

Babe Ruthless (Credits: Mandate Pictures)

With portraying bruises as “kisses”, the discourse of what is producing women’s bruises is changing. Instead of being exclusively embedded into a paradigm of an abuse, women’s bruises can arise from pleasurable fun.

However, this is not how the story goes in Magic Mike XXL (MM XXL). MM XXL (2015, d.: Gregory Jacobs) is build around male sex work (i.e. stripping), masculinity as a fluid concept and women as central guilt- and shame-free pleasure seekers with spending power.

In a Western society, some professions are Othered; they are low-positioned in the work hierarchy, lacking social prestige or power and perceived as ‘dirty’. A job is unjustly branded as dirty if a person handles with physical (e.g. garbage, waste, excrement), social (i.e. servility to others) and/or moral (i.e. sex-related work) dirt. Sex work or stripping, to be precise, is one of those Othered professions that are filled with social (serving others by dancing for payment) and moral (sexualised entertainment) aversion. Stripping as a part of sex work nomenclature is primarily a gendered profession, considered as feminine sex entertainment service because dancing, sexual servility and body-as-instrument are elements of women’s work script. Men are not supposed to dance, because dancing invokes uninhibited body moves, affiliated with chaos, freedom and pleasure as opposed to the disciplinary regimes of walking or military marching. When men fully engage on the dancefloor for their own pleasure, they are bending gender rules of an appropriate masculine conduct of moving.

Male strippers, performers, who are using their dancing skills to sexually seduce female audience, are further gender-bending the accepted notions of male stoic heteronormativity that deprive men from being seductive towards women by displaying their bodies. Women are (western) culturally predestined to be seductresses with their ornamented and exposed bodies. It is strange (Othered?) for a man to be half-naked, seducing women and making money out of it.

Magic Mike

MM XXL is one of the rare cinematic representations of male stripping where portrayals of male strippers doesn’t fall into the category of comedic (usually homophobic) giggles or social seriousness. What they do for living, is normal. Despite a constant visibility of male bulked bodies, MM XXL men are not being objectified. The concept of an objectification derives from the fact that a person is reduced to his/her/their body parts and intentionally dehumanized by it. MM XXL men’s ripped bodies are part of their personhood and the work they do, but they are also individuals with their own stories, ambitions, world views and problems. Mike (C. Tatum) is an entreprenur, Ken (M. Bomer) is a spiritual healer, Big Dick Richie (J. Manganiello) struggles with the fire-phobia and oversized penis problem (here it is – the ending of the myth that women want big cocks), Tarzan (K. Nash) is facing with ageism and his own mortality, Tito (A. Rodríguez) is also an entreprenur. MM XXL men are fully aware of their less privileged socio-economic position and that their economic well-being depends on their healthy, fit and young(ish) bodies. Bodies are fickle entities – they tend to get old, a fact that nobody has control over it and this creates a permanent anxiety, present in their day-to-day living. An aging body anxiety affects everybody who are in body-related professions (e.g. sports, fashion, entertainment – acting, dancing) because they must be thoughful about the future which will not include their main means of support – a body.

Stripping demands a visible body (exposed, naked) and for the dominant or hegemonic masculinity (white, heterosexual, middle class, able-bodied, educated) that is an anomaly, the Other. Male is not culturally constructed as Body (or nature), but as the Mind (or culture) and by using their bodies instead of minds,  male strippers are transgressing their gender and approaching towards their ‘antagonist’ – femininity. Furthermore, male performers also subvert the angle of the male gaze – they do not look at other (women), they are looked by other (women). By abdicating their socially given entitlement to ogle women’s bodies, they position themselves as ”objects” of the female gaze. MM XXL men perform for ‘her pleasure’ and they fulfil an array of women’s (hetero)sexual desires from romantic wedding fantasies, cunnilingus (btw. Mike’s head is pretty often located between women’s thighs) to group sex and BDSM episodes. Nothing is othered, everything is welcomed, but too bad that female same-sex desire is absent.

Women’s desire is rarely depicted so deliberately non-judgmental in the cinema; usually, sexually active woman falls into the category of a ‘bad’ woman – mentally unstable, promiscuous, dangerous and in need for ‘correction’ (marriage or death). In MM XXL, the male desire to perform sexually and women’s readiness to consume it creates a realm of sexual equality between parties involved, a little sexual paradise, free from gender roles and forced purity. Female consumers – being presented as actively sexual beings – also embody a spectrum of diverse femininities (e.g. black, brown, white, thin, fat, young, old/er), but furthermore, MM XXL women are self-reliant, confident and … mature: strip club owner Rome (J. Pinkett Smith), middle-aged Southern belle Nancy (A. McDowell), convention organizer Paris (E. Banks) and tomboyish photographer Zoe (A. Heard), all of them sexually literate. To dilute overall female heterosexual climate, there is a queer moment between Rome and Paris, but this is as far as the film goes.

MM XXL men are pioneers of the newer, more fluid masculinity; empathy, communication, companionship, support and respect for each other and Others (women in general: clients, ex-bosses, potential lovers) are their main traits. These men, so comfortable in their bodies and their heterosexuality, are constantly touching each other and yet there isn’t one homophobic, sexist, racist or ageist joke made, because they do not need to validate their masculinity by degrading the Other. In MM XXL, toxic masculinity has been discarded as an unnecessary and outdated waste that has polluted everyone for far too long.

MM XXL is a campy, positive, gender-bending (e.g. their attendance at drag club is for their own dance pleasure and not for making fun out of transgressive identities), but mostly, a pro-sex feminist film where women come (or cum) first.

The abject can be experienced in three different ways: (1) as dirt (i.e. corporeal changes and their climax – death, (2) in sexual difference (i.e. the female/feminine body and incest) and (3) by food taboos or repulsion. All those pillars of abjection represent the border or ritualised beginning of culture (i.e. order, civilisation, system, logic, masculinity) from nature (i.e. chaos, darkness, devouring, maternal, emotions).

The ultimate bearer of dirt is the human body and by keeping it clean (e.g. showering, bathing, using deodorants and perfumes, wearing clean clothes), the body becomes civilised (disciplined, moderated, composed). Mary Douglas has compared (hu)man body with the (male) society; both of them strive to the stability, unchangeability, rigidity, orderliness and cleanliness. If body would remain permanently clean (i.e. the same), it would not age and die. Yet everybody dies and every system is vulnerable and permeable at its margins. Body margins are its caveats and openings (mouth, eyes, ears, nose, belly button, rectum, genitalia, urethra) that render body as inescapably leaky and dirty – everybody must shit, piss, sweat. Some cry, ejaculate, menstruate and produce milk. The more are body openings and their fluids are postulated as dirty, the more the society aims to be homogenic, pure and close-minded – to distant itself from dirt. And it is the female body that is branded as inherently dirty due to its unpredictable leakage and production of body-specific fluids (menstruation, breast milk, vaginal mucus), accompanied by extra openings (vulva, urethra). Because more fluids exit a female body, the more ‘dirt’ can enter it.

The sexual difference (female – male) is another basis to experience abjection where male body is understood as universal and female as deviant or Other. The cause for a man’s attraction and repulsion against the female body is its difference – breasts and vagina at most. Yet that’s not all. Childbirth is defined as an ultimate abjection and the grotesqueness per ce that embodies a duality of personhood (Self plus Other or mother and child). The process of giving birth is the climax of abjection; a state of in/out, Self/Other, life/death, horror/beauty, of liminality and no self-control. An image of a woman giving birth resembles to the borderless flesh explosion that reiterates man’s somatophobia and fear for losing his (body) control.
The third aspect of abjection is food loathing – what is edible (healthy, nutritious or necessary) is culturally imposed. Food becomes abject when the boundary between nature and culture is crossed. For example, overripe fruits/vegetables (resembling to decay), unwashed food (possibility of the contagion), food that falls on the floor, food pulled out of a garbage can (close to the litter makes it impure), body excrement (eating boogers, scabs, blisters, drinking urine or covering yourself with menstrual blood). The ultimate taboo that combines all three abjections (food-dirt-desire) is mother’s milk. Mother’s milk gives life, is infant’s first food that is literally forced on her/him/they and she/he/they is the only person, allowed to drink it.

Food represents a constant repetition of a need to survive or live and at the same time a chance to rebel against the authority (i.e. parents: primary mother and/or secondary father), who has in the past decided for us what, when, how and where to eat. Without food, the body withers away and becomes the climax of an abjection – a corpse.

Here are some randomly chosen examples from contemporary western cultures that can be described as abjection illustrations:

• horror movies, filled with corpses, bodily waste, reproductive (i.e. maternal) bodies allow viewers to take pleasure & displeasure while watching them,
• ban of nipples, pubic hair and menstruation in social media sends us a message that particulars and fluids of female body are taboo,
• storm chasing as premeditated (cultured) pursuit of the weather condition (nature); its unpredictability arouses contradictory emotions (fear and excitement, esprit and paralysis) in a storm chaser,
• veganism as a dietary and ethical abstaining from eating animal products can be understood as rebellion against meat-eating patriarchal order that fuels on aggression and bloodshed and by not eating animal corpses, a person refuses to eat the abject.