Body Horror

Prompt No. 67: Race Fetishization and Fashionable Beauty

Despite its significance, the body is notably absent from a lot of fashion theory. Over the centuries, writers, historians, and theorists — overwhelmingly white and male — may have wedged in a section on comportment but little else. That may not seem like that big of a deal, but the omission shapes how we understand clothing. Only when embodied and situated in society do clothes have any real meaning, and that meaning is derived from the wearer’s experience of society in them. In other words, the body plays a significant role in our overall presentation. It complicates the semiotics of dress. And since bodies can differ greatly, the only way we can begin standardize the language of clothing is to assume the wearer is not only a member of dominant society, but adheres to what anthropologist Marcel Mauss referred to as “techniques of the body” or the ways in which that society socializes an individual to use their body. Bodies that do not or cannot conform are either ignored or relegated to styles within their subculture, i.e., Latino men to zoot suits, Black men to urban streetwear, and queer men to cross-dressing and drag. (Non-white women simply do not exist.) Still, we know race, gender, size, proportions, modifications, and ability all inform presentation, impact participation in fashion, and ultimately shape one’s understanding of the world around them, so why is the body ignored? Because when it exists outside of norms or expectations, the language shifts into a dialect few are comfortable with or capable of translating. When considered, the body reveals all of the ways in which we are governed by the bio-politics of white supremacy. Fashion just attempts to obscure it. However, with yet another miracle weight-loss drug flooding the market, cheaper plastic surgery, the return of dangerously thin models and actresses, and the rise of “looksmaxxing”, not only is the body’s significance more apparent than ever, so are the horrors of its conformity.

But let’s take a step back. I have always considered conformity a necessary evil, but the extent of its dreadfulness became apparent whilst chasing a high. You may know the feeling: you encounter a work of art, a piece of music, or even an article of clothing and see your imagined self within it, the self no one knows. That exposure, that mirror, that moment of recognition is intoxicating, and eventually, you find yourself immersed in that world searching for another glimpse of your reflection. Right now, I am in the thick of it. For months I have greedily consumed all things avant-garde and anti-fashion, including the work of content creator Karl Leuterio (@inkarlcerating). In one of their most popular YouTube videos, Leuterio make an interesting connection between the body and “Frankenstein-core”, an “entry-level” avant-garde uniform that incorporates hyperbolized silhouettes and garments comprised of different fabrics, patterns, and cuts. Although designers employing this method are a bit like Frankenstein, Leuterio stops short of suggesting the wearer is their Creature. “To say that we are all monsters would be derogatory, but it’s something to ponder because we continue to create and reinvent ourselves.” And yet, some of us are monsters — not necessarily those who reinvent themselves, but those who conform to fashionable standards of beauty.

According to Joanne Entwistle, the body, like dress, has become part of an endless “reflexive project” we are called to think about; one progressively linked to our sense of self. “The care of the body is not simply about health, but about feeling good: increasingly our happiness and personal fulfillment is pinned on the degree to which our bodies conform to contemporary standards of health and beauty.” Although women and femmes bear the brunt of this labor in modern American society, the steady rise of the “manosphere” reminds of the project’s hypermasculine, militaristic, and homoerotic roots. Having renounced fashion as an inherently “feminine thing”, men have relegated themselves to bodily transformation as their primary means of communicating either their real or imagined status and sense of self within society. Michel Foucault traced its origins back to the 18^th century when mastering the body afforded men an opportunity to transform from peasant to soldier. However, establishing uniformity in composition, comportment, movement and attitude revealed the male body’s potential for objectification. Once disciplined, the body becomes docile and “may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved” — not by the self, but by those invested in power. Political leaders took advantage, and in short order, the docile body not only demonstrated a nation’s strength, but became the standard of beauty for the Western world. In “The History of White People”, Nell Irvin Painter describes how by the 19^th century, the U.S. and Europe defined beauty in terms of the “great vigor and body and endurance of men.” But not all Western nations were equal in this regard. One had shockingly fallen into degeneracy: the United States.

“Already the United States man differs in appearance from the European: the ladies early lose their teeth… the muscles become stringy and show themselves; the tendons appear on the surface; symptoms of premature decay manifest themselves,” stated Scottish anatomist Robert Knox. Knox was not alone. George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon deemed America “weaker, less active, and more circumscribed in the varied of her productions” in volume five of his thirty-six volume Histoire naturalle. The opinion spread throughout the nation thanks to essayist, lecturer, and abolitionist Ralph Waldo Emerson. His obsession with the beauty and bodily might of the “fair Saxon man” made its way into countless lectures and writings, articulating a much broader fixation with the ideal traits of whiteness. As a matter of fact, like many abolitionists, his anti-slavery stance had more to do with seeing it as a barbaric practice beneath Saxons such as himself than seeing enslaved African-Americans as worthy of civil liberties. This notion of the degenerate American set the stage for all sorts of pseudo-scientific practices that focused on “the fetishization of tall, pale, blond, beautiful Anglo-Saxons; a fascination with skulls and head measurements; the drawing of racial lines and the fixing of racial types; the ranking of races along a single ‘evolutionary’ line of development; and a preoccupation with sex, reproduction, and sexual attractiveness.”

Although the theories fell out of favor over the years, the biological racism that underpinned them stuck around. Painter noted that “All of this proved not only durable but also applicable to people now considered white.” So durable, in fact, that avant-garde director Paul Morrissey critiqued the lingering fascination with the bio-politics of whiteness in his 1973 cult horror classic Flesh for Frankenstein. In Morrissey’s adaptation, Frankenstein is obsessed with perfecting the Serbian race to replace the “worn out trash” that populates the planet. As a result, he seeks a head that is not only beautiful, but from a libidinous man who will eagerly procreate with Frankenstein’s female creation. Although considered camp for its gratuitous sex and gore, Flesh for Frankenstein serves as an allegory for American race fetishism, past and present, but today’s Frankensteins are hardly seen as grotesque.

Whether its incel influencer Braden Peters (known as “Clavicular”) or supposed liberal professor Scott Galloway, white men continue to use bodily discipline as a means of disseminating unfounded and deeply bigoted beliefs. But instead of creating men, they fetishize themselves, espousing the benefits of physical transformation within their own lives. Twenty-year old Peters shows boys how to “ascend” on his nearly 24-hour livestream, touting (and using) anabolic steroids, peptides, methamphetamines, “bonesmashing” to improve appearance and gain social capital. Like race fetishists before him, Peters drags others into his nightmare, injecting girlfriends, denigrating women, and implying Black people have inferior looks on camera. And like race fetishists before him, Peters combines “a fragile constitution… with a glorification of masculine strength.” In February, he told the New York Times that he’s likely sterile due to early testosterone use and does not enjoy sex. At the other end of the spectrum, Galloway, at 61, still talks about his transforming from scrawny to “ripped” in college using weights and Accutane. Regardless of approach, both rely on the message of bodily discipline to attract and amass a following of insecure boys and men who see physical transformation as their sole means of upward mobility. And in order to maintain that following, Peters and Galloway peddle far-right propaganda that only addresses the concerns of white men. In doing so, they reinforce the belief that all other bodies — and therefore social conditions — are fixed. Only they are allowed to transform.

That said, the reflexive project of the body is yet another horror within this late capitalist hellscape. While most may believe they work on it within or for good reason, those taking the project to its extreme show us just how dark it’s always been. Fashionable beauty has always meant seeing and smashing bones, bleaching and stretching skin, whittling oneself into the narrow confines of whiteness. If that’s not terrifying enough, conforming to these standards has also meant internalizing a racist worldview set by men so delicate — so beset by nervous breakdowns, dizziness, palpitations, and disinterest in sex and procreation — that they become preoccupied with the heredity of other men.

Yes, some of us are monsters, objectifying ourselves for proximity to power, and it is something to ponder.

Editorial Note: In honor of tomorrow’s Met Gala, sponsored by Jeff and Lauren Bezos, I will release a special anti-fashion edition of Acquisitions that will include movies, music, books, and my favorite finds. I hope you stay tuned!