BODIES CHANGE, we’ve understood this since the 5th grade when we were sat down and explained the mysteries of sexual metamorphosis as we erupted (and I literally mean erupt) into puberty. But I don’t mean your body or mine, or your brother’s or father’s, not real bodies anyway. I mean bodies, or rather our conception of them in popular media, fashion, and general aesthetics. The male figure and visage, constantly idealized, is constantly morphing. In the 50’s it was solid and broad with large but poorly defined muscles. The face: reserved, strong jawed, and stoic, a man back from the war and ready to live the American Dream. In the 70’s the figure became leaner, sportier, and much furrier, think Burt Reynolds, (a young) John Travolta, and Mark Spitzer. It was a look that exuded sex on a more carnal level. But in the 80’s and into the 90’s the male ideal mutated into an inflated, steroid ridden, massive hulk. It was all the Fabios, Sylvester Stalones, Arnold Schwarzeneggers, bent on creating and maintaining a giant’s stance. It permeated through men’s fashion up and down the catwalk. The sculpted jaw, bold cheeks, potent lips, all sitting on top of muscle after muscle rippling and glistening, succinct and obtuse at the same time.
But the body changes yet again. In the late 90’s designers like Miuccia Prada, Raf Simons, and Hedi Slimane embraced an alternative male. He is slim, youthful, lean, frail, sensitive, lyrical, and odd, a little too odd at the time. This was not a man, it was a boy, and he did not go to the gym he went to the library, and in instead of growing muscle he cultivated interests. It wasn’t these designers alone that ushered in the new look, they were just keen enough to spot a new thing when it was coming. Eventually you had The Strokes, and Bright Eyes, and The Killers, and Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant, and many other cultural points of absorption that softly but effectively said “skinny is ok”. Hedi’s successive appropriation of youth culture from skateboarders to indie British rock stars broadcasted across the fashion cosmos didn’t hurt either. And we find ourselves today in 2008 and those odd skinny creatures are ruling the runways. It’s almost impossible now for any muscle stud to find work in Paris or Milan save for a few fashion dinosaurs that still live out their heydays in the 90’s. Muscles have vacated the realm of luxury and have become especially low brow. The meek truly shall inherit the earth.
But it’s not just the body; it’s about the face too. The face has changed and it’s a little less perfect and much more special. It’s more affected yet natural, and especially rare. Rarity is of course relative. When all you see are chiseled statues splattered across the ads finding that boy with the perfectly large nose is a tireless pursuit.
Kira Bunse and Eva Gödel run an Agency called Nine Daughters and a Stereo (taken from a Bowie/Iggy Pop lyric), which has risen to fill the niche for these newly ordained beautiful men. A fashion photographer and art director respectively they have that careful eye for the face and the body from which contemporary glamour is made. Their boys, often used by Prada and Raf Simons, tend to have a Teutonic feel (evident of the agency’s base in Cologne) and their hauntingly beautiful looks exemplify the French jolie laide standard of beauty. What I especially care for with these boys is how real they look. Their quirks make them tangible, and that reality is far more fun to dream about.
– JEREMY L.
