Identity and Men: Is there such a thing as the male identity crisis?

I’m still on my body image kick, but I’ve been thinking more about identity. Recently, we’ve had a discussion about women vs. men and technology on our school’s student email listserv. I don’t want to keep posting to that thread (but here’s another article ‘Why No Women Want To Be On A “Women In Tech” Panel‘), but as I just read an article in the New Yorker about the feminist movement and The Feminine Mystique, (“Books as Bombs: Why the women’s movement needed “The Feminine Mystique”), I can’t help but see some related overlap. So instead of posting to that list, I’ll just make some related comments here.

In the thread, someone mentioned male identity and how men, in general, seem to be “falling behind” in certain social and eduction context, in comparison to women. For instance, more women graduate from college than men. In checking out a Wikipedia entry on identity, I checked out an external link on “Our male identity crisis: What will happen to men?” which itself is a blog entry on Psychology Today.

In the article, written by Ray Williams, he states, “In a post-modern world lacking clear-cut borders and distinctions, it has been difficult to know what it means to be a man and even harder to feel good about being one. The many boundaries of a gendered world built around the opposition of work and family–production versus reproduction, competition versus cooperation, hard vs. soft–have been blurred, and men are groping in the dark for their identity.”

The gist of many of his points I like, but not quite how he gets his points across. Such as, “The last bastions of male dominated roles appears to be top leadership positions, particularly in the corporate world, the military and politics, although even those areas are slowly being eroded. But leadership in those spheres has often been associated with the traditional male identity–with power, control and often aggression.” Are women supposed to feel guilty because we want to be in charge, too? And, if men have been holding the traditional top leadership positions all this time, why the negative slant to what is supposedly the “traditional male identity…power, control and often aggression”?

One commenter made an excellent point in stating that the advancements made by women in our society do not need to be seen as zero-sum, “where if women gain, men must lose.” She follows by stating, “Our culture’s slow shift towards gender equality for women is throwing into sharp relief the restrictive roles that men are still taught to identify with. That, in my opinion, is where the identity crisis and cultural backlash against feminism is coming from: that women are taught that they can be anything they want, from housewives to CEOs, but men are still taught that they can only be CEOs and that to do want or do anything that is ‘feminine’ is unmanly and unforgivable. That is what we need to change and is crucial to bringing this culture to true egalitarianism.” Eloquently put.

And, while Williams’s points about women’s gains in higher education surpassing statistics for men in high education may be true, I also wonder historically how many women were deliberately kept out of school so that they could stay home and work, or because going to school was for boys and men only. Still happens in some countries.

After this, I reviewed another blog post on a related subject that I liked a lot better. This article, “Bring home the bacon AND fry it up?“, by Samantha Smithstein, Psy.D., was focused on how women being the breadwinner has changed the dynamics of marriage and being a couple. While it did address men’s identity roles, it put them in the context of couples, rather than pitting men vs women. For instance, in reference to women out-earning men at work and at university, she quotes a variety of reasons and suggests that “some couples are choosing this lifestyle, others are forced into it.”

She does address how changes in traditionally held perceptions of men’s and women’s roles have affected men. “Studies indicate that in spite of the changes in women’s earning potential and role as breadwinner, men have struggled with issues related to their pride as well as social pressure and pressure from family when their wife is the breadwinner, often feeling emasculated or low self esteem.” In response, she goes on to say that it is up to both men and women to shift their perceptions of the roles of men and women, to fit their current lifestyles.

I agree with the commenter to the first blog post, in that while there may be shifts in male identity, I’m not sure if I’d call it a crisis. I also think that men and women should be working together to change our perceptions and notions of who and what men and women are and what we do, as men and women, in society. Pitting women vs men against each other isn’t going to help us understand each other and certainly won’t make things easier. I doubt that things will ever go back to the way they “used” to be.

Body Image in Art and Design

Over the past week or two, I’ve been collecting a lot more information about body image, or the body, in relation to artists’ works. Particularly, scholars who’ve written about the body, artists who use the body in their art, or artworks featuring the body or body image. It’s been actually quite interesting to look through all of this information. Here’s a list of what I’ve come across below. For some of them, I’ve written some short thoughts or descriptions about what I’ve seen or understood.

Marina Abramovic, (performance art) Rhythm 0:

In Rhythm 0, Abramovic placed about 70 articles of pain and pleasure in front of her, and then stood as an object while the audience manipulated the objects with her body. Starting out innocently, the performance turned more malicious and aggressive as audience members began to cut her skin, tore her clothes, fondled her breasts and even put a loaded gun to her head. (She provided the gun and the bullet.) When a guard announced that the performance had ended, Abramovic, now teary eyed, walked towards her audience as one of them, yet many or all of them literally ran away. The artwork questions how we objectify each other and tests the limits of our civility towards each other.

Carolee Schneemann, (performance art) Interior Scroll:

In Interior scroll, Schneeman reads a paper scroll as she simultaneously pulls it from her vagina. Definitely an act of reclaiming her body and her ownership of her sex.

“I thought of the vagina in many ways– physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the sources of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation.”


Barbara Kruger, (photography collage) including Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face, Your Body is a Battleground, You Are Not Yourself:
I have to admit that I don’t quite get the art, but I really like the phrase, “Your Body is a Battleground”. It represents so well how strongly we have to remain conscious of the fact that we have a right to not look like how the media, fashion, and the contemporary body aesthetic tells us we should look.

Cindy Sherman, (performance/photography) including Untitled Film Stills and other photos series in which she dresses up as other people/identities:
This is an amazing selection of images that challenge identity and image. When I looked through these photos, I thought “Who are we really?” Is our identity ours, or do we in some way embody the identity of others? I’m still not so sure I know what Cindy Sherman really looks like….
Link

Pipilotti Rist (video performance) PickelPorno:
Pipilotti Rist apparently made her mark with this video. It features a man and a woman, some nudity, and a fish-eye camera, along with other imagery; some sexual. At first, I really didn’t like the video because not only did I not see any intention, the production quality is fairly poor. (I guess I’m used to HD!) I turned it off, and then returned to watch it. After a while, I found enjoyment in the unusual or overlooked perspective views of the body. For instance, with the camera so close to the body, human skin is seen as it really is – hairy and imperfect. I found that while I often wanted to turn away, I couldn’t. It was like a visual exploration of the body, reminiscent of the way 2 lovers explore each other’s bodies.
View film on YouTube
"Pickelporno", Pipplotti Rist, 0:57"Pickelporno", Pipplotti Rist, 4:17"Pickelporno", Pipplotti Rist, 6:35



Ana Mendieta (performance/experimental) Cosmetic Facial Variations:
She was a Cuban artist whose work included a series of “Cosmetic Facial Variations, such as looking ambiguously male and/or female.




Orlan (‘whose medium is plastic surgery – commenting on the world of artificial changes to the body to be perfect/beautiful’):

Seems as though she has undergone a series of plastic surgeries, and then uses not only the surgical results as artwork, but also the surgery videos. She also seems to want to push our interpretations of chasteness and sexuality in religion, and the openness, or lack of openness, of female sexuality.

Laura Mulvey, (scholarly writing) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema PDF”. “A seminal work on ‘the gaze’ – how female identity is structured through the male gaze”:
Points

  • Women are Passive and receive the action; Men are Active and give the action
  • Men are both the lead actors and the spectator; women are there for them
  • Women’s lack of a penis is a threat of castration and unpleasure; are “disarmed” simply due to lack of phallus/phallus-symbol
  • Scopophilia, “love of looking”
  • Cinema defines space, time and size
  • Image of women used for detachment and voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms


Interview with Vanessa Bancroft, from The GuardianInterview with Vanessa Bancroft:

The artist makes performance pieces featuring up to 100 semi-nude and nude models, many of whom resemble the artist and/or have eating disorders. Bancroft admits that she has been struggling with eating disorders (exercise bulimia) since she was 12.

Janine Antoni (process) Gnaw:

The artist took two blocks of chocolate and lard, bit into them piece by piece, and then made a chocolate box and lipstick out of the pieces she’d bitten. I appreciated this for the repurposing of the lard and chocolate, but biting into lard feels viscerally creepy. Detailed description from MoMA and from Brooklyn Museum. Link

Chris Woebken (design, technology)Animal Perception Helmets:
I love that these seem so game-like, fun, and goofy. My favorite is the ant, because it’s such an abstract view of the world. It also reminds me of Pipilotti Rist’s work, Pickelporno. I’m considering the use of magnification in my project.
Ant helmet



Simon Høgsberg (photography) Faces of New York:
A photography project featuring 10 New Yorkers who Høgsberg found immediately fascinating after a month of looking, 7 hours a day.
Musician, TV show hostNewspaper boyUnemployed Link

Phillip (“Mr Toledano”) Toledano (photography) A New Kind of Beauty:
Features a series of still photographs of people who have clearly undergone some type of plastic surgery. The people themselves did not look “normal” – as in, their plastic surgery procedure(s) was very obvious – but their portraits were beautiful. For the most part, I found that many of them looked alike, both men and women, as if the same facial aesthetic was the same for both men and women. They seemed so much like a new species of hermaphroditic, male/female neutral people, I wanted their names to be more exotic than just Steve, Yvette, or Michael….
GinaSteveYvette



Something-Fishy.org
A few links on eating disorders in men and ballet dancers. (Note: There are few reference links provided, so the factualness of many of these statements cannot be easily verified, but the anecdotal information is useful.)

“A ballet dancer is very aware of what her body looks like. At each practice she attends she wears skin-tight clothes and dances strenuously in front of large mirrors. A dancer has to look at herself for many hours in a day and this can cause a realization in the dancer. The general public may look in the mirror for a few minutes a day, hardly aware of what they really look like, but a dancer has no choice but to stand in front of a mirror and compare herself with others in the room…. The truth is as stated by a dancer, ‘In the real world people who are not thin do not get jobs.’ “


Emma Hack (skin illustrator, photographer, sculptor), Various skin illustrations:

I just came across this artists work and found the camouflage aspect of her art really interesting and beautiful. And, I enjoyed how the work focused less on the body and more of the body’s disappearance into the art. Her website is emmahackartist.com.



Genesis 1:27 God Created man in his own image:
Lastly, I was just listening to the radio the other day, and there was a guy talking about homosexuality and tolerance. The man speaking was relatively conservatively religious, except that he advocated for tolerance towards gays and lesbians (though not towards gay marriage.) In any case, he quoted the Bible and it seemed to fit with my body image interest, so I’ll just add it here, too. Link.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Prepping for a talk from Johannes Birringer

Over the past year or so, I’ve been mulling ideas over in my mind surrounding the confluence of dance and movement, technology, business, psychology, anthropology, design, architecture…just many, many ideas. Not only has it been hard to keep these ideas straight for myself as I develop them, it’s also been very difficult for me to articulate my thoughts to others or to find research articles that reflect my thoughts. At one point, the best I was able to do was to create a semi-affinity diagram on notebook paper, with lines connecting all my terms to each other. Sadly, it just looked like a very sophisticated, yet abstract word find.

Searching for justification of my ideas was frustrating, and it was hard to find any information relating to what my interests were developing into. I knew there was something out there that must have had some relevance to my interests, but it was discouraging to come up empty so much. I had never come across it anything combining movement, performance, business, technology, and design it in any of the literature I was familiar with relating to human-computer interaction, or even user experience design.

Finally, sometime last year I found an editorial written by Johannes Birringer. It had been published in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, on the Digital Cultures Lab, held at Brunel University in London in 2005. After I read it, I think I’m pretty much convinced that the man is a genius. Not only was he able to completely articulate everything that I had been trying so desperately to articulate, he had also figured out how to practice his theories, something that I can still barely imagine.

Tomorrow, in an event sponsored by Barnvelder Movement/Arts and Dance Source Houston, he will be in promoting his new(est) book and giving a presentation on the interrelationship of digital media art, performance, and choreography in his own choreography. In his talk, “he will address the recent history of dance and technology and the emergence of interactive art and bio art in an international context of art & science collaboration.” I had to reschedule my going away dinner, but this is an opportunity I cannot pass up.

Here’s what I had to say on his article, after sitting on it for months.

From the within the perspective of a cultural acceptance and embrace of digital technology, Johannes Birringer (2005) discussed the aesthetic impacts on traditional notions and classically held assumptions regarding dance and performance disciplines. The 2005 Digital Cultures Lab attempted to more clearly define the cultural effects of digital technology, “what digital cultures are, how software, design, programmability and discrete digital coding transform older continuous media, and how we can grasp art and performance within increasingly technological and globalised contexts in which we live” by facilitating “provocative” collaborative projects between disparate domain practitioners – e.g., interaction designers, fashion designers, choreographers, dancers, and software. It appears that although these collaborations produced interesting and intriguing projects, the lab concluded with lingering questions regarding the cultural and definitive meanings behind these collaborations. Despite this, I mark the Lab as a successful attempt at collaboration between dance and performance, and design and technology, and I seek to add to this work.

Tomorrow, I expect to be wowed.

“Birringer is artistic director of the Houston-based AlienNation Co. and directs the
Center for Contemporary and Digital Performance at Brunel University, London”

More info…