THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Regarding male (or “male”) model, Andrej Pejic – the photograph of him that you reproduced today is creepy and disturbing. I reacted to it with visceral loathing. My guess is that, whatever sexual neurosis Pejic is acting out, he is also aiming precisely at the effect of being creepy and disturbing. If such a person had manifested himself in a public place in 1950, he probably would have been arrested and, if not charged with indecency, then placed under psychiatric detention pending a cure. Nowadays he enjoys a “career” and is a “celebrity.” Our afflicted society produces these grotesques one after another and in droves, a sign of how profound the cultural malaise is. 

In a more or less related story, the female “pop” singer Miley Cyrus, on turning eighteen, recently made a video of herself sucking toxic fumes out of a bong and then slurring her speech as she slumped over in an inebriated swoon. 

I say the two stories are related, “more or less.” What is the relation? The actual girlishness of a not untalented teenaged girl, Miss Cyrus, is destroyed before our eyes by publicity agents and marketers push their client into notorious and demeaning roles while an unhealthily confused male adolescent makes himself over into the simulacrum of a teenaged girl, or maybe of a drugged teen runaway pressed into the lowest echelon of prostitution by a pimp.

                                                                     — Comments —

Stephanie Murgas writes:

I disagree with Mr. Bertonneau’s assessment of the modeling photograph you posted. My first impression was that it was a photo of a beautiful, albeit sad-looking, young woman, therefore I do not hold it to the masculine standard I have for fleshly men. If someone handed me a photograph and told me it was a cat, (and I then perceived that it was in fact a dog) would it be morally correct to say, “no, that is a dog” or “that is one sick-looking cat”? I believe that in the assessment of art we are at a similar crossroad. If this young man has decided that it is in his best interest to embrace the feminine and reject his natural maleness, then that leads me to believe there is much more wrong with the men in this world that he should be identifying with. If women are in such a position where men desire to be like them, then surely this means that women are superior to men, else “real” men would not spend so much time being threatened by confused adolescents who have been turned completely upside-down by the attitudes and backward actions of the preceding generation. But what haunting image do these new(o)men aspire to be? The age-old La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Laura writes:

Mr. Bertonneau did not indicate he felt threatened by the photo. He said he loathed it. It is, however, perfectly normal and healthy for men to feel threatened by effeminacy and homosexual exhibitionism. It would be correct, by the way, to point out that a photo of a dog is a photo of a dog. The real issue here is not the psychological motives of this boy, but the decadence of a culture that gets a kick out of watching adolescents destroy themselves.

If women are in such a postion where men desire to be like them, then surely this mean that women are superior to men…

That is one of the more novel theories for modern sexual confusion. By this logic, women must want to be soldiers and CEOs because men are superior to them and men must want to be beautiful women because women are superior to them. Could it be that neither sex finds a clear path to its own identity and that our culture revels in nihilistic uncertainty?

I do agree with Stephanie’s suggestion that Pejic is to be pitied. And the photo initially struck me as a beautiful, sad woman too, until I knew it was a boy. 

Karen I. writes:

What does it say about our standards of beauty when a scrawny young man with a face plastered full of makeup, large visible moles, a vacant look in his eyes and a bad dye job passes for a hot, “feminine” model?

Mr. Bertonneau responds:

Stephanie Murgas writes: “My first impression was that it was a photo of a beautiful, albeit sad-looking, young woman.” By contrast, my first impression was that, whatever “it” was (male or female), “it” was peculiar in the nastiest, most repellent way. Two or three seconds were sufficient to tell me that “it” was a male making a weird pretense of femaleness. “Beautiful”? Well, chacun à son gout, mais ce n’est pas mon gout. But I want to commit myself to more than the casual subjectivity of “taste”: I say that Pejic projects an image that healthy, civilized people will recognize as objectively, harmfully abnormal, and that they will, at least to themselves, censure and abhor such a perverse self-presentation. “Art,” Murgas writes. Recently a charlatan named Serrano claimed that a Crucifix immersed in a tube of urine was art. Must we abandon every criterion, every instinct? If Pejic passed me on the sidewalk, I would immediately check myself for fleas.

Mr. Bertonneau adds:

Continuing the thought: “Sad” is a word that applies legitimately in the case of Miley Cyrus, a conventionally pretty girl who enjoyed teenaged stardom under the Disney imprimatur as the sweetheart-singer “Hannah Montana.” Before he acquired an actual girlfriend, my son liked watching Miss Cyrus on television and I could understand why. Unfortunately for Miss Cyrus, she lives on Planet Hollywood, where the publicity men and “star makers” have convinced themselves that genuine girlishness is not chic or marketable and that female adolescent entertainers, in order to keep and expand their audience, must act like tramps. This is what has happened to the poor, no doubt spoiled daughter of a so-called Country and Western singer. She made a whorish appearance in a dance video and has now videographed herself getting high on marijuana. She will likely progress (so to speak) where other young women in her seemingly enviable position have progressed – into profound neurosis, substance abuse, profligate sexuality, and a “breakdown.” Pejic, who I have decided is evil, is trading on the image of what Miss Cyrus will be when she has reached the “breakdown” stage of her descent. What people call “entertainment” or “popular culture” is nowadays nothing but a spiritual pismire that all decent people should decisively reject, and from which they should keep their children as isolated as possible, as if protecting them from a plague.

Mrs. Murgas responds:

I would agree with Mr. Bertonneau on most regards but I do not want “art” to be confused with “entertainment.” Art, to me, is extremely subjective, and is a creative contribution despite whatever critical acclaim it does or does not receive. It asks us to evaluate it on standards beyond this world, because it is in large part fantasy. Entertainment is merely vehicle: if it sells, it is. When it does not, it ceases to be. For some reason, these subjects are nearly always linked together in the media, and I would like to make it clear that I do not think the photograph itself is art, but in the context of what it claims to be, what niche it seeks to fill in society, I believe that it must be evaluated and compared in the same method that art is. In many ways I thought that the photo invoked a feeling of satire, and because of that I took the message as a cautionary one, but I am sure that was not was intended. It does not offend my “tastes” because I can only see the vague copy of what so many great artists have tried to capture for millennia, and it is fraud so I dismiss it. As for Miss Cyrus, I do not believe she is a tramp at all. She is faithfully wedded to the business, and like any “good” wife, she is willing to do whatever it takes to make it work for as long as she can. I don’t have very much to say about her since my tastes do not revolve around the transitory, but I hope she understands the very fine line she is treading.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

Here is what the exchange between Stephanie Murgas and me tells me – Women instinctively defend deviance; men perspicaciously suspect it. That is why society needs men, not cross-dressing “fashion models.”

Laura writes:

I think it is more accurate to say that women instinctively avoid conflict and will defend deviance to avoid conflict. 

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