Look at this charmer, sitting there in his straw hat, amidst
the taupe-tiled spotlit minimalist bathroom of his graciously appointed midtown
apartment and displaying his collection of male cosmetics.
Kyle Lee (for it is he) popped up on my Twitter feed this
week, on what happened to be International Men’s Day.
Now, I need to be clear here: He – and his odious little
quote – popped up on my Twitter feed. And I got angry. I rarely get angry on or
about something I see on Twitter these days, and I try very very hard (and of
late pretty successfully) to avoid becoming part of any of the Twitter
torch-wielding outrage mobs.
But as I sat reading how Kyle – in an article with the New
York Post about the increasing market for male cosmetics – commented that he
would “be embarrassed to go to the makeup department in Bloomingdale’s because [he]
think(s) it screams ‘gay’ or ‘feminine’”
– I got angry and I allowed my righteous anger to encase me like a tea-tree and
geranium-scented seaweed body wrap.
Kyle, the article proceeds to announce, is “a hat designer
who runs his own brand, He is gay but says that he doesn’t like being
stereotyped”.
And to that – while still angry, and before I’d had a chance
for a more considered response – my only reaction was: “Stereotyped? Afraid of
being Stereotyped? GURL, I KNOW YOU’VE GOT A MIRROR. TAKE A LOOK IN IT COS YOU
ARE FAR LESS CHARLES INGALLS THAN YOU ARE NELLIE OLSEN!”
Then I realised that (a) I was being vitriolic and (b) most
people won’t get my Little House on the Prairie references, because most people
weren’t stuck indoors watching reruns of the show from the ages of six to
sixteen because going outside meant there was a good chance someone would spit
at you, throw something at you, ignore you, laugh at you or just call you a
Pansy with the tone of disgust that, to this day, makes my stomach clench with a
mixture of anxiety and fear.
And you know what else that tone used to cause in me? A wave
of self loathing.
And that, quite frankly – that self-loathing – is evident in
Kyle’s comment. He thinks being ‘gay’ or ‘feminine’ is something to be ashamed
of. Because the world has told him, since he was a little boy playing Milliner
while the other boys were playing fireman, that ‘that’s a girl’s job’ or ‘those
are girls’ toys’ and he’s – despite the fact that he claims to be an out
Homosexual (though the words ‘and proud’ are oddly missing from his description
in the piece) – still, deep inside himself, is aware that he’s, at best, silly,
and at worst, disgusting.
And that – once I got over the anger that someone who looks
like the Mayor of Gaytown could actually say something so stupid – made me
quite sad.
It was international Men’s Day, a day when we were
encouraged to consider what it means to be a man, and to reflect on both the
positive elements of being a man and the negative. But I found myself thinking
about what it means to be ‘feminine,’ and why that would be perceived by
someone like dear Kyle as something unpalatable.
Cos we all know this isn’t just men. Girls, too, are
constantly shoehorned into preconceived notions of what it means to be a girl
or to be feminine. Like baking and pink unicorns, you’re a little princess.
Express an interest in wearing boots and growing up to be a vulcanologist,
you’re… less so. But whilst society has expended a fair degree of energy on
trying to address this gender stereotyping where girls are concerned, there’s
still a message sent to boys that to be anything other than a rufty tufty manboy
is a cause for concern.
In my life, I have had female role models who went out to
work for their families and brought home a wage; who fought like lionesses for
their pride and for what was right. My father was a stay-at-home parent for
many years, making breakfast lunch and dinners for my brother, mother and I,
and who took the time to sit with me and do my homework. They were people in an
economic situation that forced them both to take on roles that neither had
expected they would when they were growing up.
But they took them on, because they were pragmatic, loving,
and giving, and because they were a partnership. They cared about their loved
ones and they cared about themselves, and they saw nothing embarrassing,
nothing shameful about being who they were and doing what they needed to do.
But poor Kyle, and people like him – and I include myself in
that – are… well, some of the more discredited psychological opinions on
homosexuality used to assert that it was a result of a retardation of emotional
and or sexual maturation. We never really grew up, therefore we were never
really able to leave same-sex crushes or sex for pure pleasure as opposed to
the concept of sex as the means of procreation, behind us.
Bullshit, of course, and yet… and yet there is an element of
truth (there’s an element of truth in most things, except in any statement that
begins “Donald Trump is a Genius because…). The pervasive childhood linkage is
one of abuse. And we never leave it behind.
If you’re told every day, either explicitly or via the fact
that your culture, your world simply does not reflect you, that you are less
than, that you barely exist, it’s easy to retain, for the rest of your life, a
strand of that “Worthlessness” running through your DNA.
It’s a scar, and like physical scars brought on by childhood
physical abuse, it will probably never entirely vanish. But you can learn to
see it for what it is: a reminder of how things used to be and not of how they
have to be forever. Someone with
a physical
scar can look themselves in the mirror and know that they are stronger and more
beautiful for having survived and thrived from that trauma, or they can hide in
dark rooms hating their appearance and avoiding people who might see the scar.
They can liberate themselves from their past, or they can allow that scar to
become a whole new form of abuse – self-perpetuated abuse, this time.
And those who bear the spiritual scars of the jeering
mocking hatred of a society that tells boys ‘it’s shameful to wear makeup’, or
‘it’s disgusting to want to hold another boy’s hand’ can be the same. They can see it for what it
is, or they can allow that shame-scar to make them embarrassed to be seen as “too
gay”.
And yet. And yet.
I was afraid of being ghettoised. I wanted the books to be seen
as ‘not just gay’. I was afraid I would be looked down on by the industry or
that I would lose out on opportunities if I was ‘the gay one’, or that all I
would ever be allowed to be was ‘the gay one’.
Can you see where this was coming from?
Somewhere deep inside of me – so deep I’d basically
forgotten the cavern even existed – voices were telling me that “
Gay”
wasn’t as good as “Straight,” that being seen as only a “Gay writer” would be
limiting, that being “the gay one” would, in some way, make me less than the
other writers I knew.
I was Kyle Lee (minus, it must be said, the natty chapeau,
but have you looked at the price of those fucking things? All I’m sayin’ is
Kyle doesn’t need to sell many of those each month to pay for his taupe tiling
and selection of cosmetic products). I was Kyle Lee and it took a lot of
therapy and a few tragedies for me to realise what I truly hope he discovers
soon: Nothing* you do is ever shameful if what you are doing is being an
authentic open version of yourself.
Full disclosure: I have a spotlit taupe bathroom, a cupboard
full of products (Kyle, girl, call me: I got some coupons for the Shiseido
counter at Bergdorfs) and a pre-disposition to hating myself because I was
trained to.
But you know what? I try to love myself, and I try to love
other people, no matter how masc, femme, fat, thin, black, white, latino,
asian, bald, hairy, camp or butch, dull or sparkly. Because if we – LGBTQI
people – are ever going to stop the world hating us, are going to stop
politicians and bigots trying to destroy our pride and erase us once more, we
have a long and constant battle on our hands, and it’s going to have to start close
to home.
(*within, obviously reason: I mean, shopping for foundation and
powder is not shameful; wearing white after Labour Day ought to be grounds for
a justified Homicide defence).
