Scruffy Masculinities
A visual analysis of gay bear representations in Walter Van Beirendonck’s runways
Iulian Suman
Department of Media Studies Stockholm University Master’s Thesis/ Fashion Studies (30 credits) Spring 2021 Supervisor: Chiara Faggella
Abstract
Despite the vast research regarding non-conformative bodies, there is little material on the gay bear representation in fashion modelling. This thesis investigates the bear embodiment in the runway shows of Walter Van Beirendonck, respectively W< Autumn/Winter 1995–1996 Paradise Pleasure Productions, W< Autumn/Winter 1996-1997 Wonderland, Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2010 Wonder, and Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2011 Read My Skin. Critical visual analysis follows the gay bear symbolism in the video recordings of the runways, revealing how it challenges the fashion industry’s body standards and, in a broader frame, the dictates of hegemonic masculinity. The concepts of gender performativity and biopower provide the theoretical frame of the study, while Madison Moore’s theory of ‘fabulousness’ and José Esteban Muñoz’s understanding of ‘utopia’ lead to the articulation of performances both masculine and queer. The findings lead to the discovery of non-dual and body-inclusive gay bear embodiments that challenge the relationship between body and dress and can extend beyond the limits of the runway.
Keywords: Walter Van Beirendonck, W<, Fashion show, Hegemonic masculinity, Gay bears, Non-conformative bodies, Gay masculinity, Queer masculinity.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Chiara Fagella for her guidance and continuous support throughout my research process.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my teacher Louise Wallenberg that suggested the topic of my thesis and introduced me to queer and gender studies.
Lastly, I would like to thank Stefan for his limitless moral support during the process of writing this thesis.
Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 1
Research Aim and Questions ...... 6 Theories ...... 7 Methodology ...... 12 Empirical Sources ...... 13 Visual Analysis ...... 15 Criteria for Classification of Bears in the Selected Collections ...... 17 Literature Review ...... 18 Walter Van Beirendonck, as Seen by Fashion Scholars ...... 18 Bear Studies...... 19 Fashionable Male Bodies and Runway Shows in the 1990s and 2010s ...... 21 Delimitations ...... 24 Thesis Outline ...... 25 Chapter 1. Rubber Men and Fairy Tale Beasts ...... 26
Paradise Pleasure Productions ...... 27 Wonderland ...... 37 Chapter 2. Is Queer Bears an Oxymoron? ...... 52
Wonder ...... 52 Read My Skin ...... 61 The Venturesome Journey of Bear Masculinities in Walter Van Beirendonck’s Runways: A Final Discussion ...... 66
Conclusion ...... 69
Sources ...... 72
Bibliography ...... 73
Image Sources ...... 78
List of Figures Cover photo. The finale of S/S Wonder Paris, 2009 Figure 1. Cover of Bear Magazine No38, 1996 ...... 3 Figure 2. Cover of Bear Magazine No21, 1992 ...... 3 Figure 3. Walterman figure; Retrospective Exhibition Dream the Dream Away, Mode Museum Antwerp, 2011 ...... 5 Figure 4. Ikonik Karl artwork: Karl Lagerfeld web shop image, 2021 ...... 5 Figure 5. The Finale of A/W collection Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 ...... 27 Figure 6. Model wearing red latex suit with flowers A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995...... 29 Figure 7. Model wearing black latex suit, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995...... 29 Figure 8. Matching garment 1, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 ...... 32 Figure 9. Matching garment 2, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 ...... 32 Figure 10. Tulle embroidered shirt and feather headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 ...... 35 Figure 11. Tulle shirt embroidered with flowers and feather headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 ...... 35 Figure 12. Model wearing the top “Finally Chesthair!” front, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 39 Figure 13. Model wearing the top “Finally Chesthair!” back, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 39 Figure 14. Model wearing faux fur trousers and t-shirt with the text ”Bears”, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 40 Figure 15. Bear model wearing a top printed with a scenery containing the backside of a bear, a mushroom, and the word ”Cute!”, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 40 Figure 16. Model wearing a crop-top nude illusion garment, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 41 Figure 17. Models wearing hoodies with rounded ears and gloves, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 42 Figure 18. The Finale of F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 43 Figure 19. Kinky King model wearing a top printed with crowned swans and heart, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 44 Figure 20. Kinky King model wearing a top printed with the image of a hairy chest and nipple clamps, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 44 Figure 21. Models wearing ”bear superheroes” tops with rounded ears hoodies, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 46 Figure 22. Model wearing an outfit in red and green, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 49 Figure 23. Model resembling the Santa Clause archetype, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 ...... 49 Figure 24. The finale of S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009 ...... 53 Figure 25. Bear model S/S Wonder, San Franciso, 2009 ...... 56 Figure 26. Bear model with long beard, S/S Wonder, San Francisco, 2009 ...... 56 Figure 27.Model wearing a pink jumpsuit, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009 ...... 57 Figure 28. Model wearing a green jumpsuit, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009 ...... 57 Figure 29. Model wearing a pink shirt dress with the text “Hi!”, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009 ...... 58 Figure 30. Model wearing a khaki skirt, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009 ...... 58 Figure 31. The Finale of S/S Wonder, San Francisco, 2009 ...... 60 Figure 32. Model dressed in pink, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, 2010 ...... 62 Figure 33. Model wearing a breastplate, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, 2010 ...... 62 Figure 34. Model wearing garments featuring the technique Broderie Anglaise, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, 2010 ...... 64 Figure 35. Model wearing a harness made from fabric, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, 2010 ...... 64
Introduction
I am familiar with the work of Walter Van Beirendonck since the 1990s. As a teenager growing up in post-communist Romania, I used to watch fashion shows on TV all the time. His youthful and edgy shows stood out to me as a world where gender-bending, futurism, and rave, fuse beyond dualities and contradictions. At the time, the Belgian designer worked under the label W< and released collections marketed towards youth. Then, as well as now, he was able to project alternative possibilities of existence, where art, self-expression, sexuality, kink, and techno merge in a queer utopia. Never afraid of controversy, he kept designing fashion with a message. As a designer with a focus on menswear, he suggested that gay, masculine, and flamboyant are not contradictory concepts. Walter Van Beirendonck is a Belgian designer that belongs to the collective known as the Antwerp Six, a group of Belgian fashion designers who studied at the Royal Academy. The group’s other members are Dirk Van Saene, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, and Marina Yee. Their breakout success came at the British Designer Show in London in 1987. Unlike the stylistic minimalism associated with the Antwerp Six and other Belgian designers such as Martin Margiela and Raf Simons, Van Beirendonck’s aesthetic is bright and colourful, constantly challenging the fashion system with an irreverent and humorous discourse. Though his collections are shown in Paris, Van Beirendonck lives and works in Antwerp, where he began teaching at the Royal Academy in 1985.1 During a heavy minimalist and historicist fashion trend that dominated the 1990’s, Walter Van Beirendonck was a futurist and a maximalist. In the heroin chic era, which featured nihilistic and self-destructive imagery, he stayed an optimist. During his lengthy career, he continuously expanded his design language, and fearlessly marched on the beat of his own drum. The dark undertones present in his collections are backed up by imagery that reflects upon political, environmental, and human rights issues. Lastly, his runways featured a diverse cast of models of various ages and shapes. Displaying gay bears in his fashion shows, he challenged body politics of the fashion industry. Nowadays, plus- size models are common, but back in the mid-’90s and early 2000s fashion models were generally thin and young.
1 Paula Alaszkiewicz, “Walter Van Beirendonck,” in Fashion Photography Archive (Bloomsbury, 2015) https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fashion-photography-archive/article/walter-van-beirendonck.
1
The thesis will analyse the representation of a specific masculine non-normative embodiment, the gay bear. Bear identity is primarily distinguished from other gay male identities by the physical attributes of being heavyset and hairy. The specific embodiment of masculinity within the gay bear community is associated with being natural, highly sociable, and unconcerned about one’s physical appearance.2 Les Wright, the historian, and founding father of bear studies consider that, between 1987 and 1989, several different events, led to the emergence of a shared bear identity in San Francisco, which afterward spread to other parts of the United States. In 1987, a group of gay men in Berkeley and San Francisco began holding “play parties” (i.e., parties involving group sex) for men who were marginalized by other gay men because of their weight or age.3 San Francisco is a city with a rich history that gave birth to many contemporary gay subcultures, as well as to the modern movements of sexual liberation and gay rights.4 In 1987, BEAR magazine debuted in San Francisco and showed men that were hairier, larger, and older than the men in the ‘mainstream’ gay pornography (as seen in fig. 1 and fig. 2). BEAR emphasized working-class masculinity, with men typically appearing in clothing associated with ‘blue-collar’ workers (such as truckers, mechanics, or lumberjacks). The magazine gave access to a form of embodiment that is both masculine and gay. 5
2 Rusty Barrett, From Drag Queens to Leathermen : Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 14. 3 Les Wright, “A Concise History of Self-Identifying Bears,” in The Bear Book : Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 29–30. 4 Martin P Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone (New York and London, 1998); Shaun Cole, ’Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Barrett, From Drag Queens to Leathermen : Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures. 5 Wright, “A Concise History of Self-Identifying Bears,” 31–32. The first editions of the magazine consisted of small, photocopied editions put together in San Francisco by Bart Thomas, who died of AIDS related complications before the launch. Richard Bulger took over and created a lifestyle magazine that incorporated a leftist sexual political ethos, built on a blue-collar embodied masculinity. In only a few years, the magazine expanded in size and status, and from word-of-mouth circulation to international commercial distribution with a full line of videotapes, photo sets, and accessories. Connected to the spirit of San Francisco South-of-Market bar scene, the Bear magazine offered a free- spirited, anarchic, blue-collar representation on masculinity, that disdained the middle-class pretentions of mainstream gay culture. Bear magazine represented the American lower classes, the misfits, the eccentrics, and other “rugged individuals” types historically drawn to frontier towns and their saloons.
2
Figure 1. Cover of Bear Magazine No38, 1996 Figure 2. Cover of Bear Magazine No21, 1992
Initially confined to the West and East Coast, the bear community rapidly found favour with gay men everywhere in the United States. According to the historian Tommy McCann, during the 1990s the movement found success in Europe, mainly in big towns. In Germany, bears communities grew in gay cities such as Berlin and Cologne. Other countries from Europe include United Kingdom, Holland, and Switzerland.6 During the mid-’90s the bear subculture became a global phenomenon that developed mainly in urban settings. The bear clothing style has been correlated with the attire of straight blue-collar workers.7 The bear community is a very white phenomenon. According to historian Rusty Barret, “there are perhaps more white, working-class men involved in bear subculture than in leather or circuit subculture.”8 It has been argued bear embodiment attracts white, middle-class men because it
6 Tommy McCann, “Atlantic Crossing: The Development of the Eurobear,” in The Bear Book (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 255. 7 Peter Hennen, “Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?,” Gender and Society 19, no. 1 (March 1, 2005), 26. 8 Barrett, From Drag Queens to Leathermen : Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures, 107. Circuit boys represents a gay subculture defined through specific social practices, including recreational drug use, bodybuilding, and dancing. Leatherman subculture focuses on alternative sexual practices, particularly bondage/domination and sadism/masochism(BDSM) and fetishism.
3 reaffirms class and race privilege “through the apparent discovery of ‘comfort’ and erotic fulfilment in the celebration of white-working class masculinities”.9 This issue is acknowledged, yet it will be left out from the analysis since its complexity exceeds the limitations of my MA thesis. Walter Van Beirendonck featured mostly white models in his shows featuring bear bodies. This important observation can be the subject of analysis for future research. Another problematic issue of the gay bear subculture is connected to its specific form of masculine embodiment that coexists with their same-sex attraction. As described by Peter Hennen, due to their ambiguities and contradictions, they are one of the most intriguing groups to appear on the queer cultural landscape in the last decades.10 By intriguing, Hennen means that gay bears have a non-linear relationship with the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. ‘Hegemonic masculinity’ is a controversial term. In this thesis, it will be understood as a form of gender practice based on domination and inequality. This gendered practice is expressed through many discourses such as appearances (fit bodies), affects (rational) sexuality (heterosexual), and behaviours (assertive).11 Hegemonic masculinity is the benchmark against which all other forms of masculinity are judged and subordinated, especially the gendered practice of gay men. The gay bear subculture has been accused or defended based on its perceived relationship to hegemony. In this thesis, hegemony will be analysed in relation to the bears’ representation on Walter Van Beirendonck’s runway shows. In general, fashion designers did not include gay bears as a source of inspiration or as models. Walter Van Beirendonck is the only menswear designer that chose to represent bear bodies on his runways. Design elements referencing bear symbolism form one of the recurrent themes in his design language, which was repeated and detailed during his lengthy career. The thesis analyses the runway shows of the collections in which bear models and imagery are preeminent. Gay bear iconography is so relevant to the work of Walter Van Beirendonck that a stylized representation is even included in the designer’s brand identity as a logo which is instantly recognizable, exactly like Karl Lagerfeld’s image. The effigy is the drawing of a middle-aged man called ‘Walterman’. Based on the designer himself, the character has a heavy body and a long beard. His penis is visible, and his belly is marked by a curvy line. This effigy is replicated in clothes, adornments, prints, patterns, in the booklets of his runway shows, and is as recognizable as
9 Eric Rofes, “Academics as Bears: Thoughts on Middle- Class Eroticization of Workingment’s Bodies,” in The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (New York: Harrington Press, 1997), 89–99. 10 Hennen, “Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?, 25.” 11 R W Connell and James W Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (December 1, 2005): 829–59; Ben Barry and Nathaniel Weiner, “Suited for Success? Suits, Status, and Hybrid Masculinity,” Men and Masculinities 22, no. 2 (June 6, 2019): 151–76.
4 a logo. ‘Walterman’ is present in many Walter Van Beirendonck collections, even if they do not feature any other ‘gay bear’ elements. This thesis does not follow the evolution of the logo ‘Walterman’ during the numerous collections in which it appears as a symbol or logo, because this is complex and extensive research in itself. It is mentioned due to the significance of the ‘designer- as-a-gay-bear’ symbol. ‘Walterman’ conceptualizes the constant focus of Walter Van Beirendonck on the representation of the gay bear. It also marks the identification of the designer with the gay bear subculture. By naming a bear mascot ‘Walterman’, Van Beirendonck calls himself a bear. By repeating this symbol many times, he elevates ‘Walterman’ to the status of the iconic logo through which one can instantly recognise a Walter Van Beirendonck garment. In the book Dream the World Awake, Tim Blanks notices the self-fashioned of the designer: “In all his years in fashion, he too has been playing a role to perfection. Walter Van Beirendonck is a bear.”12
Figure 3. Walterman figure; Retrospective Figure 4. Ikonik Karl artwork: Karl Lagerfeld web Exhibition Dream the Dream Away, Mode Museum shop image, 2021 Antwerp, 2011
12 Tim Blanks. “Walter and the 33 Bears”, in Dream the World Awake (Lanoo Publishers, 2013), 88.
5
Research Aim and Questions
During the ’90s and the 2000s, the bodies of the fashion male models were young and lean.13 Walter Van Beirendonck challenged the industry’s conventional body shapes and normalized a vast array of non-normative bodies. Mature, hairy, fat men were central in several of his collections. At that time, no other designer celebrated bear bodies or gave them a space on the runway. Existent research mentions Van Beirendonck’s work in relation to clubwear, technology, futurism, and political activism, yet his contributions to body inclusivity remain to be acknowledged. To fill this gap, the purpose of my study is to investigate the non-normative body types included by Van Beirendonck in his work and their relationship to hegemonic masculinity. The research aim is to analyse how are the non-normative bear bodies represented in his collections and how is his representation political. My research aims to provide an answer to the following questions:
1. What is the contribution of the Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck to body inclusivity in the fashion industry? 2. How do the gay bear bodies present in Van Beirendonck’s runways challenge the idea of hegemonic masculinity? 3. How does the representation of gay bear bodies in various collections change during the years?
Following these questions, it is furthermore necessary to explore how the idea of masculinity evolved within the gay culture, and how it influenced the different subcultures, mainly the subculture of gay bears. The literature review will prepare the ground for acquainting the readers with the cultural imagery of those decades. Representations of the male bodies that were typical in the 1990s and 2000s did not include fat and non-normative bodies, yet they were included in the work of Van Beirendonck.14 The contribution of the Belgian designer to contemporary body and appearance dictates on masculinity are analysed in this thesis, with a specific focus on bear bodies.
13 Tim Edwards, Men in the Mirror : Men’s Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society (London: Cassell, 1997). 14 In this paper, I use the word fat in the same way as queer scholars reclaimed the word queer. I align my work with the fat studies scholars and fat activists who have reclaimed the word to question the negative connotations associated with the concept, and to create empowerment.
6
Theories
The thesis has a multidisciplinary approach departing from poststructuralist philosophy, queer theory, and feminist studies, with the purpose of examining how the bear subculture negotiates non- normative sexualities and body types in relation to hegemonic heteronormativity. The research is built around five central concepts. The notions of ‘biopower’ and ‘heterotopia’, are derived from the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault.15 In addition, I refer to the concepts of ‘fabulousness’, as developed by US scholar Madison Moore in his book Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, and ‘utopia’ as conceptualized by José Esteban Muñoz in his book, Cruising Utopia.16 Lastly, but not least, I refer to the notion of gender performativity as it was theorized by Judith Butler and further developed by the third-wave feminist Iris Marion Young.17 Biopower is a theory developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. According to Foucault, political order is maintained through the production of docile bodies. Biopower focuses on the body as a site of subjugation and highlights how individuals are implicated in their own oppression as they take part in habitual daily practices and routines.18 Biopower operates at two poles: the human species and the human body. A vast amount of queer theory is based on the effect of biopower on queer bodies. Gay bears are subject to biopower because their non-normative bodies challenge the current perspective on beauty, which emphasizes fit bodies. Through the lens of Foucauldian post-structuralism, the discourses promoting a fit, thin, and healthy body are the sociolinguistic manifestation of a larger frame that creates docile bodies by disciplinarian practices. Through the analysis, I will prove how Walter Van Beirendonck’s shows reveal and challenge the dynamics of biopower. Heterotopia can be understood as a physical place where a utopia can become reality. Foucault affirmed that: “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces,
15 Kerry Howell, “Michel Foucault,” in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology (1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2013); Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heteropias,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuite, no. October (1984): 1–9; Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27. 16 Madison Moore, Fabulous : The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018); José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 17 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York ; Routledge, 2006); Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 519; Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality,” in On Female Body Experience “Throwing like a Girl” and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 18 Jen Pylypa, “Power and Bodily Practice: Applying the Work of Foucault to an Anthropology of the Body,” Arizona Anthropologist 13 (1998): 22.
7 several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”19 A heterotopia is a space or environment whose several layers of meaning mirror a utopia, a parallel space that creates an illusion of perfection.20 For Michel Foucault, heterotopic sites are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted, as they exist outside of all the places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality, because they are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak out.21 The four collections included in the analysis contain many dissimilar elements that are “represented, contested and inverted”, as well as an abundance of references, themes, symbols, and body types that simultaneously challenge each other and fuse together, forming a heterotopia. The selected fashion shows belong to the same class of heterotopia of space, as it is manifested in theatre or cinema, because they “bring onto the rectangle of the stage, a series of places that are foreign to one another.”22 Walter Van Beirendonck’s fashion shows simultaneously reference different spaces and body representations that are dissimilar and do not usually coexist in the same space. His runways are understood as heterotopias of space that confuse the common reading of the body politics that idealize a fit, lean fashionable body. The concept of ‘utopia’ has a long history: here I am applying the notion of it as theorized by José Esteban Muñoz in his book, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. For Muñoz, the first definitions of utopia must be traced back to Thomas Moore, the inventor of the concept: “Sir Thomas Moore initially positioned Utopia as a place, an island, and later than formulation was amended to become a temporal coordinate. Utopias became a time that is not here yet, certain futurity, a could be, a should be.”23 Utopia is a reminder that something is missing, both temporally and spatially. More specifically, for Muñoz “utopia is an idealist mode of critique that reminds us that something is missing, that the present and presence (and its opposite, absence) is not enough.”24 Muñoz believed that utopian hermeneutics can be a refined lens for queerness. He believed that the present is not enough for queers and other people who do not feel the privilege of majoritarian belonging and normative tastes. Far from suggesting an escape from the pressure of the
19 Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heteropias,” 6. 20 Adam Geczy and Vicky Karaminas, Fashion and Masculinities in Popular Culture (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2018), 89. 21 Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” 4. 22 Foucault and Miskowiec, 25. 23 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 99. 24 Muñoz, 100.
8 present, he suggested that the present must be known in relation to other alternatives, both spatial and temporal.25 In my analysis, this specific understanding of utopia relates to Foucault’s concept of heterotopia of space, in the sense that the runway is understood as a fictional place that manifests utopias and carries a message of hope and change. Van Beirendonck’s shows reveal possible queer futures and alternative realities. The question that arises is if fashion can be political and if it has what it takes for challenging hegemonic masculinities. The fourth concept, ‘fabulousness’, attempts to connect the belief in a better future (utopia) and agency. I here use the adjective ‘fabulous’ as theorized by scholar Madison Moore, in his book Fabulous. The rise of the Beautiful Eccentric. Moore believes that fabulousness is “always an embrace of yourself when you’re constantly reminded that you don’t deserve to be embraced”.26 For Moore, utopia is political, and it is the foundation of fabulousness because it envisions a world without discrimination and oppression:
I think the reach for utopia, or even a separate dimension, is just as important as the long walk we take to get there. I dream of a world where I am not called faggot or where I do not fear for my life because I am in a pair of heels. I dream of a world where I can walk down the street in whatever I want without being ridiculed, harassed, stopped, and verbally or physically assaulted. I want a world where gay guys stop saying they are “masc. 4 masc.” or that some of us are a bit feminine.27
The last sentence of this quote is especially important because it acknowledges the discriminative actions that can take place within the gay community. Bears, as an embodiment of masculinity, could be suspected of rejecting those that are queer and non-masculine. Fabulousness and its relationship to hegemonic masculinity will be analysed in relationship with the selected fashion shows. Moore believes that fabulousness gives a sense of agency to marginalized people disempowered by capitalism, hegemonic masculinity, and heteronormativity. Fabulousness allows queer bodies to choose the way they represent themselves, and to create every aspect of the individual from scratch, a process called by Moore ‘self-couture’. Moore believes that style is political and that it is impossible to approach style, beauty, and fashion without thinking about how
25 Muñoz, 27. 26 Moore, Fabulous : The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, 8. 27 Moore, 70. Masc4masc is an expression used on the gay dating apps. Man often describe themselves this way to indicate that they're masculine-acting, and that they are seeking other masculine-acting individuals.
9 they connect with race, gender, class, and queerness.28 Style (and fashion) contribute to the design of the queer self. During this thesis, style as self-couture will be identified and analysed in the selected material. As a political designer, Walter Van Beirendonck constantly fused fashion and activism. His collections are developed around concepts involving colonialism, ecology, gender, body politics, and the fashion system itself. Madison Moore’s explanation of the concept of style meets the intentionality of Van Beirendonck’s work as a designer:
Great style never simply style for style’s sake. It is not just about looking good and feeling confident. It is also a form of protest, a revolt against the norms and systems that oppress and torture us every day, things like white supremacy, misogyny, transmisogyny, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, gender policing, and racism.29
Van Beirendonck’s work is political and challenges heteronormativity, hyper-masculinity, and socially constructed gender performativity. Each of the collections included in the analysis is rich in symbols that align with Moore’s definition of style. Moore’s political interpretation of style as a way to gain agency and to break gender difference will be applied to the visual analysis of the chosen runway shows. Judith Butler’s performative theory is a mix of theatrical, anthropological, and philosophical discourses, with a strong influence from phenomenology. In her seminal book, Gender Trouble, Butler questions how non-normative sexual practices call into question the stability of gender as a category of analysis. By making a distinction between gender and sexuality, Butler raised the question of what is a man and, respectively, a woman.30 For Butler, gender is a stylized repetition of acts such as bodily gestures, movements, and enactments that together generate a gendered self. Gender is instituted through internally discontinuous acts that create the ‘appearance of substance’. Gender identity is “a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo. In its very character as performative resides the possibility of contesting its reified status.”31 Butler believes that this fact has profound consequences:
28 Moore, 19. 29 Moore, 8. 30 Butler, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Preface Xi. 31 Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” 520.
10
If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style.32
Various acts of gender generate the idea of gender. There is neither an ‘essence’ nor an ideal of ‘gender’. As a construction that conceals its genesis, gender is sustained by a collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders until “the authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness.”33 Butler believes that gender is a strategy of survival since it is a type of performance that regularly punishes those who fail to do their gender right. In other words, to be a woman (or a man, for that matter) is not a natural fact. One has to become a woman, “to compel the body to conform to a historical idea of ‘woman’, to induce the body to become a cultural sign, to materialize oneself in obedience to a historically delimited possibility, and to do this as a sustained and repeated corporeal project.”34 The performative theory will be used to analyse the gay bear bodies as they enact different gender performances in relation to hypermasculinity and hegemonic masculinity. The gender performativity is constructed differently in the selected fashion shows, and the differentiators will be specified during the analysis.
32 Butler, 520. 33 Butler, 522. 34 Butler, 522.
11
Methodology
Critical theory is the approach that covers my choice of methodologies. Kerry. E. Howell, in the book Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology, admits the difficulty of defining critical theory. Understood broadly as “an interpretive approach combined with a pronounced interest in critically disputing actual social realities”, critical theory focuses mainly on the influence of social and historical forces upon the individual. Power exists in the interplay of institutions, groups, and individuals. According to critical theory, humans are never completely free from the social and historical structures because power shapes consciousness and manifests in social settings, yet the agency may be extended by understanding the relationships between power and control.35 This perspective leads to an analysis of the ways biopower interacts with the non-confirmative bodies of gay bears, as well as on the respective counter-reaction, as it is manifested in the selected runway shows. The concept of cultural hegemony was first developed within Marxist philosophy by Antonio Gramsci and addressed the relationship between culture and power under capitalism. In critical theory, hegemony is an important concept that expresses the consent of the subordinates towards the ruling power. By hegemony, the ruling elite perpetuates their rule and domination through consent rather than coercion. Gramsci believed that consent and force nearly always coexist because the ruling groups seek to win the consent of subordinate groups to the existing social order. For Gramsci, the components of the dominant culture that require the consent of subordinates consist of values, norms, perceptions, and beliefs that support and define the existing distribution of goods. Maintenance of hegemony does not require an active commitment to the legitimacy of the elite rule. Here, Gramsci anticipated Foucault's emphasis on the role of “discursive practice” in reinforcing domination.36 The concept of biopower is mirrored by the idea of hegemonic masculinities. As feminist scholar Elisabeth Grosz said, bodies speak.37 Specifically, they speak age, gender, level of attractiveness, race, ethnicity, and body type. Bears have been suspected of hegemonic masculinity,
35 Kerry Howell, “Critical Theory,” in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology (1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road, London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2013), 3–4. 36 T J Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (May 16, 1985): 568–69. 37 Elisabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Theories of Representation and Difference (Indiana University Press, 1994), 19–20.
12 yet this idea has been debated by several scholars.38 In this thesis, I will perform visual analysis on the moving images of bear models included in the selected runway shows, with a focus on the embodiment of hegemonic masculinities.
Empirical Sources
This thesis covers the period between 1993 and 2021, with a focus on runways. The scope of the research includes only the collections where bear bodies are more preeminent. The many fashion editorials, campaigns, exhibitions, art projects, or theatre, as well as the retrospective exhibition Dream the World Awake that celebrated the first 25 years of Van Beirendonck's career will not be included. Walter Van Beirendonck is very prolific as a designer, artist, teacher, and art curator. The immense volume of these side projects exceeds the limitations imposed by the size of a MA thesis, yet they can supply material for further research. During his lengthy career, the Belgian designer worked under three different labels. He began designing his namesake brand in 1983. The first ten years of this are not included in this research but are featured in Walter Van Beirendonck's 1998 self-published books Mutilate, and Dream the World Awake, published in 2013.39 From the very beginning, Van Beirendonck manifested his interest in non-conformative bodies and from his debut collection Autumn/Winter 1986/1987, named Bad Bay Boys he “had evinced a taste for thick-set, moustachioed gents as models”40. His first collections focused mainly on knitwear and manifested an interest in the transgression of aesthetic and sexual boundaries. The symbol of the teddy bear is included in knitwear, but bear bodies are not included in the runways and photoshoots, with one notable exception, Dare Devil Daddy A/W 1987-1988 collection, which is inspired by circus and freak shows artists and clowns. The collection includes men with non- normative bodies that embody the archetype of the moustached strongman.41 I found no video recordings of the collections or a complete line-up of the cast, therefore my conclusions are incomplete. The first ten years hold many of the elements that will be developed later in the design language of Walter Van Beirendonck, and they can be a rich topic for future research.
38 Hennen, “Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?”; Barrett, From Drag Queens to Leathermen : Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures. 39 Walter Van Beirendonck, Mutilate (Imschoot Uitgevers, Belgium, 1998); Blanks, Dream the World Awake. 40 Blanks, 93. 41 “Europeana Fashion Focus: Sweater by Walter Van Beirendonck, 1987,” Europeana Fashion, 2016, http://fashionblog.image.ece.ntua.gr/tag/newsletter/.
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The period between 1993 and 2021 is divided into three periods. In each of the three periods, Walter Van Beirendonck worked under a different name. Between 1993 and 1999, Van Beirendonck collaborated with the Italian Company Mustang and released under the name W&L.T. (an acronym for Wild and Lethal Trash).42 Between 1999 and 2002 he released five collections under the label Walter Van Beirendonck. At the end of his collaboration with Mustang, between 1999 and 2004, he released four collections under the label Aesthetic Terrorist by Walter. These collections were not presented during any Fashion Week; therefore, do not have runway shows. Starting 2004 until the Fall 2021 Future Proof collection, last to present day, he has released a total of thirty-four collections, all of them presented at Paris Fashion Week under the label Walter Van Beirendonck. The visual analysis will be operated exclusively on videos of the runway shows selected. The empirical sources are comprised of the video recordings of the runway shows, with a focus on bear models and their dress. Four collections, grouped in pairs are analysed, spacing thirteen years between them. I will use the acronym “W&L.T.” when mentioning the first two collections analysed: o W< Autumn/Winter 1995–1996, Paradise Pleasure Productions, also known as ‘The Rubber Show’, the first fashion show where non-normative bodies are introduced.43 o W< Autumn/Winter 1996-1997 Wonderland.44 The second set of collections consists of: o Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2010, Wonder collection.45 o Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2011, Read My Skin.46 Wonder collection was presented twice, in Paris and San Francisco. I found no official recording from the San Francisco show, yet I chose to include it in the analysis, due to the importance of the gesture of presenting in the town where the gay bear community was born. The two cities have a different cast with significantly different physical indicators. Three different videos from YouTube
42 “Waltervanbeirendonck-Official Website,” accessed March 9, 2021, http://www.waltervanbeirendonck.com/HTML/home.html?/HTML/COLLECTIONS/WINTER20202021/public.html &1. 43 Mode Museum Antwerp, “W< Winter 1995/1996 Paradise Pleasure Productions,” accessed April 5, 2021, http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9596.php. 44 Mode Museum Antwerp, “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland,” accessed April 5, 2021, http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php. 45 Mode Museum Antwerp, “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®,” accessed April 5, 2021, http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2010.php. 46 Mode Museum Antwerp, “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2011 Read My Skin,” accessed May 4, 2021, http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2011.php.
14 will be used as sources. The videos consist of various parts of the show yet do not include all the presentation. Still, they reveal the models on the runway and backstage, as well as the feedback of the audience. A photo collage of the entire presentation is extracted from the YouTube account ‘Bearnigno’, while the backstage video is sourced from the YouTube profile ‘Tokyo SF’.47 The third source consists of an amateur video uploaded on YouTube by Ron Doughty that filmed the finale from the perspective of a spectator. This recording is significant because it documents the reaction of the audience at the finale when all the underwear models walk on the runway.48 The two sets of collections will be analysed to compare how the representations of gay bear bodies have been changed over time. The 1995-1997 period is different from the 2010-2011 period in the way it represents gay bodies, and this shift aligns with new perspectives regarding queer bodies and masculinities.
Visual Analysis
The video recordings of the runway show build the referential backbone to the thesis and are the main reference point for my analysis. I have retrieved the videos of the four selected runway shows from the website of the official retrospective exhibition, Dream the World Awake curated by Mode Museum Antwerp (MoMu). On the occasion of the exhibition, the MoMu library has digitalized some of the past videos and posted them on the website of the exhibition, in the section ‘Video’. The exhibition includes all four collections that are analysed in the thesis.49 The method for visual analysis was extracted from the article “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast”, by Philip Locke included in The Bear Book.50 Locke proposes a method for the visual analysis of the representations of male images in bear magazines and mainstream media. Locke observes that it is hard to define bears due to the diversity of body types within the community and chooses to discover, through observation of the images in bear-oriented magazines, how a bear looks like. He noticed that in gay bear media such as
47 Tokyo SF, “Underwear Bears, Walter van Beirendonck, Berkley,” YouTube, accessed May 15, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILmau6mzGyk; Bearnigno, “Fashion Bears Rules!. Walter Van Beirendonck Wonde® -COS!,” YouTube, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHuNK_cMymk. 48 Rob Doughty, “Walter Van Beirendonck Berkeley, CA Show Pt. 2 Underwear!,” YouTube, accessed May 15, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN79pmxrkIY. 49 Mode Museum Antwerp, “Walter Van Beirendonck, Dream The World Awake,” accessed April 5, 2021, http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2012.php. 50 Philip Locke, “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast,” in The Bear Book : Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 103–40.
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Bear or American Bear magazines, the men are large, hairy, and different from the men displayed in mainstream gay media. A content analysis of the images in bear-oriented magazines included several criteria of classifications such as the physical appearance of the men, as well as other notable aspects of appearance and dress. He chose few operational criteria that can help to identify the presence of the bears in the images included in the three types of gay media. His main criteria are: o the presence and absence of facial hair and body hair, o body weight and muscles, with a division between slimmer, muscular, and heavier bodies, o grey hair (as a visual indicator of age).
This is roughly the set of rules that I will use to analyse and classify the images of the models walking on the runway. The images were included if they were large and clear enough to be classified. Locke’s method is used with some alterations and omissions. Specifically, criteria for the face were applied only in the collections where faces are visible, and criteria applying to bodies were applied for the cases where the body silhouette was visible. Only men with body and facial hair were included in the category of the bear. If body hair was invisible due to the garments, facial hair was included as a criterion. The hair criteria do not apply to the Paradise Pleasure Productions collection since the face and body are covered by a layer of latex. For this collection, shape was the main signifier for a larger, possibly bearish shape. Heavier/slimmer bodies are interpreted according to a subjective norm by watching the video images of the models. Heavier bodies possess a larger body. Muscle bears are muscular men with a slimmer silhouette. Slimmer bodies can be defined as ‘trim’, and/or tone. The men that fall in this category are, according to Locke, younger, clean-cut, smooth-skinned, and slim.51 Gray/greying refers to greying of hair and/or beard. Locke includes bald/balding in his criteria defining it as ”pronounced hair loss, not just a high forehead.”52 This criterion was difficult to be applied to the collections since many models have a very short haircut, very similar to the haircut of a bald man. The hair criteria do not apply to the Paradise Pleasure Productions collection since the skin of the models is not visible. For all the reasons above, the ‘bald/balding’ criterion was not included in the analysis. The identification and classification of bear bodies will be the starting material on which the theories will be applied in relation to all four selected collections.
51 Philip Locke, “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast,” in The Bear Book (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 111. 52 Locke, 111.
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Criteria for Classification of Bears in the Selected Collections
Walter Van Beirendonck’s runway shows supply rich material that can lead to commentaries regarding gender and hegemonic masculinity. They also suggest a new way in which bears can embody masculinity and coexist with all the other gender variations. A few clarifications will be made regarding the classifications. The categorizations are purely visual, and they do not refer to the actual body type, sex, or age of the models, but to the visual appearance of body shapes and silhouettes as seen in the recording of several fashion shows. In this sense, they are merely a base for a reflection on gender performativity, and body shape as a concept constructed by societal expectations. The analysis is operated on moving images, as they appear within a larger discourse regarding body representations. Categorization proved to be difficult since the material consists of video recordings, thus I have chosen functional factors that can act as visual indicators for a performance of age, shape, and gender. The factors were heavily influenced by Locke’s classification described before in this thesis.53
Therefore, the classification that I adopted in my analysis is the following:
o All non-bears have slimmer, hairless bodies, without facial hair,
o All bears have beards/body hair,
o Chubby bears are defined as individuals with a less slim silhouette,
o Muscle bears have a slimmer, muscular silhouette,
o Cubs represent younger-looking bears,
o Polar bears are individuals with white hair (including beard and body hair).
53 Locke, “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast.”
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Literature Review
The multidisciplinary and multi-methodological approach of this thesis covers three main different fields: Walter Van Beirendonck’s work, bear identity within the larger context of gay masculinities, and, lastly, fashionable bodies and fashion shows.
Walter Van Beirendonck, as Seen by Fashion Scholars
Walter van Beirendonck is known to a lesser extent than designers contemporary to him, or, for example, other Belgian designers such as Martin Margiela, Raf Simons, or Dries Van Noten. An explanation for this can be the fact that, after parting ways with Mustang in 1999, Van Beirendonck has preferred to remain independent ever since, free from the confines of a co-ownership with a fashion conglomerate like LVMH or Kering. This independence explains in large part why Van Beirendonck is lesser known than his peers and even some of his students.54 In the book Belgian Fashion Design, the editor and art historian Luc Deryke observe that, in his work, Van Beirendonck introduced marginal ‘rejected’ codes in dress such as sadomasochistic attributes or science fiction suits. Deryke believes that the Belgian designer is a ‘mythographer’, that recalls images and stories from our collective memory to short-circuit them with elements from contemporary techno and cyberculture.55 Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas dedicate an entire chapter, “Walter van Beirendonck’s Hybrid Science Fictions”, in their book, Critical Fashion Practice. For them, Van Beirendonck’s transgressive design delivers a message through shock value. The authors believe that Van Beirendonck uses fashion as a political medium through which he can comment on important social issues such as safe sex, environmental issues, and racism. In particular, Geczy and Karaminas analyse the Paradise Pleasure Productions collection and see the head-to-toe latex bodysuits as a prophylactic for AIDS.56 This important observation will be further discussed in the thesis, discussing how the bear subculture appeared and evolved in relation to AIDS and HIV. Yet, the academic literature mentioned did not study the contributions of Van Beirendonck in normalizing non-confirmative bodies: my thesis aims to fill this research gap.
54 Thessaly La Force, “The Strange and Beautiful Universe of Walter Van Beirendonck,” New York Times, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/t-magazine/walter-van-beirendonck.html. 55 Luc Derycke, Belgian Fashion Design (Ghent: Ludion, 1999), 10. 56 Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, Critical Fashion Practice : From Westwood to Van Beirendonck (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 147.
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Bear Studies
The second part of the literature review covers the evolution of ideas and trends regarding the representations of gay masculinities and bear bodies. Historian Les Wright has been particularly active in documenting the bear culture, founding the Bear History Project, archiving material related to bear culture, and editing two volumes of bear history, The Bear Book I and The Bear Book II. These anthologies describe the genealogy and the historical development of the bear subculture.57 Born after the Stonewall riots in 1969, the Bear movement grew during the 1980s in big American cities such as San Francisco and New York. Growing from an ethic of care, the community embraced heavier and older men, favouring camaraderie instead of competition. Les E. Wright suggests that bears contest hegemonic masculinity by having sex with other men while adopting masculine attire and behaviour.58 The bear movement developed in the opposition to the gay clone. Martin Levine wrote the book Gay Macho, the first ethnography of the ‘clone’, the form of gay male gender performance that became preeminent in cities like San Francisco and New York during the 1970s. The image of the clone, inspired by American ‘blue-collar’ masculinities, stood for a hypermasculine form of embodiment amongst gay men. Clones did not want to ‘pass’ as heterosexuals. Their radical and transgressive approach made them appropriate clothes differently from the straight men, so there could be little doubt about whether someone was a heterosexual macho man or a gay macho man.59 Clones wore their garments to enhance their physical attractiveness. The uniform of the clone consisted of “a cheap flannel plaid shirts and jeans, or if it is really warm, just overalls, and boots or construction worker’s shoes no matter what the weather is.”60 To achieve an ultra-masculine appearance, clones developed ‘gym bodies’-tight buttocks, ‘washboard’ stomachs, and pumped-up biceps and pectorals, which denoted the physique associated with weightlifters. This approach opened the possibility for a ‘body fascism’ that evaluated
57 Wright, Bear B.; Les Wright, The Bear Book II Further Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture, 1st Editio (New York: Routledge, 2001). 58 Les Wright, “Theoretical Bears,” in The Bear Book : Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 6. The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969, when the New York Police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protest and violent clashes with law enforcement. The stonewall riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the- stonewall-riots 59 Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone, 15. 60 Seymour Kleinberg, “Where Have All the Sissies Gone?,” Christopher Street, no. March (1978): 6.
19 potential sex partners by the look, thus marginalizing the aging, the fat, or the effeminate.61 In the chapter “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast” of the anthology The Bear Book, Locke considers that the effect of discrimination is compounded for gay men that are already marginalized by society because of their sexual orientation.62 The gay bear community was born in this space of exclusion. Bears rejected the exaggerated masculinity of the clones in favour of a more ‘authentic’ masculinity. According to Wright, in the early 1980s, some of the men frequenting gay leather bars in San Francisco and other cities began placing a teddy bear in their shirt or hip pocket to show their interest in “cuddling”.63 According to Wright, this was a way of saying “I am a human being. I give and receive affection.”64 The rise of the bear community is inseparable from the AIDS epidemic. The bear movement is the first broadly accepted sexualization of abundant bodyweight because, in the early days, thin equalled sick or dying from AIDS, while fat equalled healthy, uninfected. This background notion introduces a discriminating criterion that makes the rise of the bear community somehow problematic, and a sort of schadenfreude moment. The reality was different. As contributors of the first Bear Book mention, many of the members of the bear community lost their lives to AIDS, since they were as vulnerable as anyone to the virus. The movement managed to join in the fight against AIDS and grew as the first highly social community of the time.65 The bear movement was one of the first communities that appeared after the arrival of AIDS in the 1980s, one which tried to create safe spaces, where masculinity merged with emotional nurturing.
Bears celebrate masculinity. This fact may be seen as problematic, influencing the way bears create their own identities, as well as their interaction with other people that see gender as a process, not as one fixed, hegemonic form. Most of the scholarly literature regarding gay bears describes the ambiguities and conflicts of this community that rejects effeminacy to resist homonormativity, yet, by embodying masculinity, may be in danger of practicing hegemonic masculinity. Peter Hennen, in the article “Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity. Recuperation, Resistance or Retreat?” suggests the hypothesis that bear culture is a gendered strategy for repudiating effeminacy that simultaneously challenges and reproduces norms of hegemonic masculinity. Rusty Barrett, in the book From Drag
61 Brian Pronger, Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness, 2002. 62 Locke, “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast,” 104. 63 Wright, “A Concise History of Self-Identifying Bears,” 21. 64 L. Wright, “The Sociology of the Urban Bear,” Drummer, 1990, no 140, 54. 65 Wright, “Theoretical Bears,” 15.
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Queens to Leathermen, suggests a more relaxed interpretation of the bears’ masculinity.66 He considers that the naturalness of bear masculinity is consciously constructed, widely discussed, and regularly performed by members of the bear community. Barrett believes that bears discussion of the body involves appropriations from the work of prominent second-wave lesbian feminist authors. He believes that bears may participate in activities associated with working-class masculinity such as sport and camping, but they are as likely to participate in activities that are stereotypically associated with rural working-class femininity like sharing recipes at potluck dinners or crocheting at bear craft fairs.67 Ron Suresha, the author of the article “Bear Roots” from the anthology The Bear Book, suggests that the bear movement has similarities with radical lesbianism, which also rejected the body type of the traditional heterosexist mainstream. Like bears, they made a radical proclamation of their own intrinsic self-worth and challenged the accepted norms of beauty.68 In general, scholars agree that the dress of the bear imitates the dress of the clone: jeans, plaid shirts, work boots reflecting (and continuing) the desire to appear as ‘real men’. The bear culture was against the cult of youth that permeated the gay culture and accepted the aging, non-confirmative bodies.69 The bear body type favoured a ‘natural’ masculine look, and it was a lot more inclusive. Yet, as noted by Les Wright, even if they created their identity in opposition to the gay clones, they adopted the same uniforms consisting of flannel shirts, jeans, bandanas, and boots. This has become ‘the bear wear’.70
Fashionable Male Bodies and Runway Shows in the 1990s and 2010s
What are the body types accepted by the fashion industry, and how did they change at the time in which Walter Van Beirendonck was showing bear bodies on the catwalk? The initial general assessment, on which most fashion scholars agree is that fashionable bodies must be fit, young, and slim. In the book Fashion, Desire, and Anxiety, Rebecca Arnold discusses the creation of modern bodies by the fashion industry as being a result of the industry’s obsession with thinness.71 Arnold underlines that “both men and women find it difficult to view larger sizes positively, even if these are closer to the actual bodies that people inhabit since fashion has reinforced the idea of thinness
66 Barrett, From Drag Queens to Leathermen : Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures, 85. 67 Barrett, 85. 68 Ron Suresha, “Bear Roots,” in The Bear Book : Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 45–46. 69 Cole, ’Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century, 125. 70 Wright, The Bear Book II Further Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture, xxvii. 71 Rebecca Arnold, Fashion, Desire and Anxiety : Image and Morality in the Twentieth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 89–90.
21 for most of the twentieth century”.72 Diet and exercise have replaced the corset as popular techniques of achieving the desired body. These self-disciplinary practices were famously described by Valerie Steel as an “internalization of the corset”.73 Expressing similar concerns, Mike Featherstone expresses in a different way the idea of “internalized corset“ when he acknowledges that the means to alter or improve the body involve reflexive practices of self-surveillance.74 Both authors express ideas reminiscent of the concept of biopower as expressed by poststructuralist philosophy, especially by Michel Foucault.75 If bodies had to fit the silhouettes of the moment, I will briefly describe the evolution of the menswear silhouette from the 1980s until the 2010s to compare them with the silhouettes proposed by Walter Van Beirendonck in the two sets of collections from the mid1990s and 2010s. Scholar Ben Barry acknowledges that in modern Western history, menswear has consistently framed, enhanced, and highlighted aspects of the male body to construct the idealized male body of the moment.76
During the 1980s and 1990s, models were hypermasculine and featured big, muscular physiques, reflecting the commodifying of the male body in developed capitalism.77 In the book Men in the Mirror, Tim Edwards suggests that 1980s imagery used hyper-masculinity as a mean to justify the objectifying of the male body: “The men in question are always young, usually white, particularly muscular, critically strong-jawed, clean-shaven (often all over), healthy, sporty, successful, virile and ultimately sexy.”78. The transition between the 1980s and 1990s did not see a radical change in the body type promoted by fashion media. In the article “Hedi Slimane and the reinvention of sportswear”, scholar Jay Mc Cauley Bowstead suggests that the 1990s menswear shape was dominated by two major influences: sportswear and Giorgio Armani’s oversized structureless silhouette. Bowstead believes that Bruce Weber’s campaigns for Calvin Klein gave the tone of the decade.79 Fashion historian Shaun Cole also acknowledges the importance of Calvin
72 Arnold, 94. 73 Valerie Steele, The Corset : A Cultural History (New Haven ; Yale University Press, 2001). 74 Mike Featherstone, “The Body in Consumer Culture,” Theory, Culture & Society 1, no. 2 (September 1, 1982): 18. 75 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). 76 Ben Barry, “Fabulous Masculinities: Refashioning the Fat and Disabled Male Body,” Fashion Theory 23, no. 2 (March 4, 2019): 275–307. 77 Mark Simpson, Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity (London: Cassell, 1994); Edwards, Men in the Mirror : Men’s Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society. 78 Edwards, Men in the Mirror : Men’s Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society, 41. 79 Jay McCauley Bowstead, “Hedi Slimane and the Reinvention of Menswear,” Critical Studies in Mens Fashion 2, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 23–42.
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Klein’s increasingly sexual campaigns, such as the 1992 campaign featuring the rap star Marky Mark. In the images, he was sporting a muscular tanned body wearing nothing but a pair of white Calvin Klein underwear.80 The beginning of the 2000s marks a clear departure from the hypermasculine silhouettes of the earlier decades. Hedi Slimane, Raf Simons, Commes Des Garcons created new silhouettes for new masculinities. Nick Rees-Roberts describes the influence on menswear by Hedi Slimane at the turn of the century.81 On the runway, he employed models looking like slim, asexual boys. The scholar emphasizes Slimane's thematic focus on adolescence as a model for a more ambiguous model of masculinity, “stripped of any overtly sexual allure”.82 Roberts believes that, even after his departure from Dior, the designer was used as a yardstick by which to measure the male silhouette. High fashion brands and emerging mid-range labels re-appropriated and extended the Dior Homme template.83 This silhouette was still highly influential in the era when Van Beirendonck launched his 2010-2011 collections, Wonder and Read My Skin. He delimitated himself from this shape and proposed vastly different alternatives. Partly because of the changes discussed above, the fashion shows of the 1990s have distinct characteristics that separates them from the the 2010s. On one hand, the first decade belongs to a pre-internet era, where the fashion imagery was distributed (and controlled) by a handful of journalists and buyers. Printed media was still dominant and was able to manifest a centralized power. On the other hand, the 2010s followed a severe economic crisis that affected the budgets of the shows. The development of social media and the internet decentralized the points of power and lowered the influence of printed media. The two sets of fashion shows analysed in this paper belong to these different periods, thus there is the need to explain the characteristics of each era in the section below. In her book, Fashion at the Edge, Caroline Evans analyses the imagery of the fashion shows of the 1990s in the light of the most influential designers of the era. For Evans, the fashion show of the late twentieth century is a form of spectacle that has “a form of commercial seduction through novelty and inspiration, typically in the form of the showpiece designed to attract press coverage on
80 Cole, ’Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century, 137. 81 Nick Rees-Roberts, “Boys Keep Swinging: The Fashion Iconography of Hedi Slimane,” Fashion Theory 17, no. 1 (February 21, 2013): 7–26. 82 Rees-Roberts, 17. 83 Rees-Roberts, 22–23.
23 the catwalk.”84 The photographs and journalists were the driving force that proliferated the imagery of fashion and manifested the commercial reality behind the spectacle. The 1990s was an era of grand and theatrical runways that employed large teams and spectacular sceneries. Walter Van Beirendonck’s presentations from the 1990s employed a large cast and generous budgets and fit within the imagery of the era. His contribution will be developed further on during the analysis. The 2010s was an era that had to recover from the severe 2008 economic crisis. In a tough economic context, the fashion industry had turned towards digital technology. Image and social networks have become key elements of fashion and luxury companies’ strategies. Social networks have become an essential medium (and a vital sales channel) for fashion brands.85 During the 1990s, the fashion show was the central event that promoted a collection. In the 2010s, it was only one of the elements included in the marketing strategy. Internet culture had also a significant impact on design. The ambiguous imagery of the 1990s was replaced with a more overt approach since garments must be sharable, not only wearable.86 Before the digital era, fashion industry thrived on its exclusivity, barring entire population from participation. The rise of the internet transformed it into an open forum, with multiple points of influence. Anyone with a smartphone could take a photo and share it with its viewers. From mediated, the fashion experience became immediate and direct.87
Delimitations
The thesis follows the representations of the bear bodies within the runway shows of Walter Van Beirendonck in which they are preeminent, yet it does not break down all the symbols, garments, and other body representations found in the runways, such as feminine embodiments. Van Beirendonck’s collections have an elaborate symbolism that exceeds the narrow focus of my MA thesis. Yet, when bear bodies are connected to the overall symbolism of collections, description and analysis is performed, but not exhaustively. The analysis of each runway has a specific
84 Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness, Four (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 67. 85 Valerie Moatti and Cline Abecassis-Moedas, “How Instagram Became the Natural Showcase for the Fashion World,” Independent, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/instagram-fashion-industry- digital-technology-a8412156.html. 86 Yotka Steff, “Go Viral, Post #Spon, Get #Canceled: How Social Media Transformed Fashion in the 2010s,” Vogue, 2019, https://www.vogue.com/article/2010s-fashion-social-media-impact. 87 Abad Mario, “The Decade in Fashion: 16 Runway Shows That Defined the 2010s,” Papermag, 2019, https://www.papermag.com/most-memorable-fashion-shows-2010s-2641975788.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1.
24 angle, which emphasizes specific theories and symbolism that fit best the show’s recurrent themes.
Thesis Outline
Following this introduction, the thesis is structured in two analytical parts and a conclusive chapter. All the runways are briefly described to situate the bears' representations within the collection. The first chapter is an analysis of the bear bodies in the runway shows of the collections Paradise Pleasure Productions and Wonderland, in the light of the theories and with a focus on the mechanisms of biopower and their utopian counteraction. The second chapter is an analysis of the representations of the bear bodies in the 2010s collections, Wonder and Read My Skin, with a focus on fabulousness as a disruptive strategy that reassembles the report between masculine bodies and queer dress. Both parts focus on the representations of masculinity, as well as on the resistance to hegemonic masculinity, as they are revealed by the visual analysis of the runway shows seen as a heterotopia of space that elevates body politics to fabulous forms of queer resistance towards biopower and hegemonic masculinities. The conclusive chapter describes the result of the research in the light of the methods and theories, identifying the changes that affected an underground subculture turned into a global phenomenon. In conclusion, I refer to the overarching research aim and discuss any other further research.
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Chapter 1. Rubber Men and Fairy Tale Beasts
Between 1993 and 1999, Van Beirendonck collaborated with the Italian Company Mustang and released collections under the name W&L.T. (an acronym for Wild and Lethal Trash). According to Van Beirendonck, Mustang wanted to create a buzz around the runway shows and gave him big budgets. In an interview with “Your Fashion Archive”, the Belgian designer said:
In the W< period, my backer at that time, Mustang, found out quickly that through my capability to create strong looks, and create strong shows they were generating A LOT of attention from press, buyers and shops. Also, for their own Mustang-label. That’s why they gave me HUGE budgets to create fantastic fashion shows. Which I loved to get together.88
W< shows from the 1990s had a large cast and the financial power to create spectacular fashion performances employing extras, complex pyrotechnics, and animatronics. They created a buzz that acted as a successful marketing strategy. As Van Beirendonck describes in the interview, he was encouraged to create powerful, controversial shows that attracted the attention of fashion journalists, buyers, and the overall public. Both shows create commentaries regarding gender and the politics of the body. Both of them are theatrical and involve a large cast and complex imagery, in which gay bear representation is not central, but an element supporting the overall storyline.
88 Oliver Leone, “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock,” Your Fashion Archive, 2020, https://yourfashionarchive.com/10-questions-with-walter-van-beirendonck/.
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Paradise Pleasure Productions
Figure 5. The Finale of A/W collection Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995
When watching the photo from fig.5, one can see models wearing garments with unusual colours, textures, and materials, on which the most visible is latex. The photo represents the Finale of W< Autumn/Winter 1995–96, Paradise Pleasure Productions. Also known as The Rubber Show, it was included in the official schedule of Paris Fashion Week, on the 26th of January 1995.89 According to a description provided by Mode Museum Province Antwerp:
The audience was seated in a ‘black box’ around a transparent catwalk. Slogans and ‘nature’ images were projected on both sides. During the Finale, one side of the box collapsed and showed all 120 models in line up on a stage.90
In the video, the transparent catwalk is emitting light, which gives the illusion that models walk on a path of light, in the darkness, with the gaze of the audience that comes from below (the catwalk is elevated). The show starts with the instrumental version of the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by
89 Mode Museum Antwerp, “W< Winter 1995/1996 Paradise Pleasure Productions.” 90 Europeana.EU, “W.&L.T. (Walter Van Beirendonck) Paradise Pleasure Productions Collection A/W 1995/1996,” accessed April 24, 2021, https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871.
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Ventures, which resembles the solemn and heroic atmosphere of a western film, while the first two models, dressed entirely in colour blocks of white and hot pink walk with a menacing attitude. From the first song, the archetype of the lonely cowboy connects to themes of hyper-masculinity, danger, and the gay clone embodiment. Paradise Pleasure Productions is a fashion performance where the clothes, the music, the movements, the set design, and the light create a heterotopic space where all the elements are connected seamlessly. The description and the analysis of the rich symbolism of this collection would require extensive research, yet it exceeds the limits of this thesis, which focuses solely on the representation of bear bodies. The music used in this show is one of the elements in a dialogue with the other parts of the performance. Together, they deliver a larger meaning. The models walk in the dark, with a ghastly, quite unsettling stride. Then, suddenly, a latex silhouette walks wearing hot pink feathers on top of the head, as a sinister showgirl. In the air, an artificial butterfly is frantically moving its wings, balancing on a metal wire connected to the headpiece. This element is the first of many discontinuous and disruptive symbols that tell layered stories that aim to disrupt the hegemonic cultural order and gender differentiation. The second song is “Hawaiian Sunset” by Elvis Presley, a sentimental song praising the beauty of Hawaii. The correspondent in the collection can be seen in the numerous Hawaiian shirts and tropical prints, from flowers to Colibri, that are present as a recurrent theme. An intentional overlapping of dissimilar symbolism confuses the viewer, as in fig. 6 that shows a muscular model with his body wrapped in a red latex bodysuit printed with floral motives. The third song of the runway show is “In the Flesh” by Blondie, a deceptively sentimental song about a girl that cannot wait to touch her lover in the flesh, an allusive reference to sex. The song starts while an exceptionally large and muscular silhouette dressed in black rubber walks on the stage (fig.7). The hermeneutics of the scene has various levels of interpretation. First, the lyrics of the song that manifest the desire to meet the lover “in the flesh”. Secondly, the model walking on the stage with his body entirely covered in rubber and showing no flesh. Thirdly, the hypermasculine embodiment clashes with the gentle harmonies of the song. On a humorous note, the visual elements visualize a heterotopia, a space that does not exist anywhere in reality, yet it signals a real possibility of existence. The radical affirmation of difference is also understood as a signal for inclusion.
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Figure 6. Model wearing red latex suit with flowers Figure 7. Model wearing black latex suit, A/W A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995. Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995.
The middle section of the collection is dominated by brit-pop songs such as “Superstar” by Sonic Youth, “Whatever” by Oasis, and Suede’s songs “New Generation” and the triumphant yet tragic “New Life”. Punk undertones in the song “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Revolting Cocks and “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)” by Gary Glitter, mark the transition to eveningwear, where non-bear models walk in dancing steps. The nightclub garments that close the show change the tone of the music, and transition into the rave song “Blood &Sand” by Dolby D. and Matt Muss. The flashy garments are made from reflective and sheer fabrics, styled with feather headpieces referencing showgirls and clowns. At the end of this song, all the models align for the finale and Walter Van Beirendonck salutes the crowd, walking side by side with the last two models. The runway presentation features a cast with quite different body shapes. Their skin is covered in latex suits that leave visible solely the eyes and the mouth. Technically, the collection does not feature bears, since they have been defined as having facial and body hair. With facial features erased, the only ways to identify bears are shape and volume. The collection introduces bears as a silhouette among so many other different silhouettes. The bear shape was featured as one of the alternatives of a truly diverse cast, which is comprised of male and female models with vastly different silhouettes and sizes.
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The cast is formed of 120 models, which appear to be both men and women. Since they wear latex suits, it is difficult to discern bodily and facial differentiators. 75 of the male-looking models have non-bear silhouettes, while up to 11 of them wear large coats and overalls that erase any silhouette, making the assessment impossible. When visible and not covered by garments, the latex costumes hug the body and reveal its shape. A total of 21 models featuring bear silhouettes walk on the runway, on which twelve feature a muscular silhouette and nine a chubby shape. This choice outlines the bear silhouette as one of the many various human shapes. It is not central, yet it is highly visible due to the contrast that it creates when it is presented along with slim bodies. When models walk one after another, one can see that they are vastly different in the way they occupy the space and move. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity comes in handy when watching people wearing similar clothes, with hands and faces covered. According to this, the female models can be identified as ‘women’ by their ‘feminine walk’. This idea will be completed by Iris Marion Young’s feminist perspective on gender. In her now-classic essay “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality” Iris Marion Young applies phenomenological analysis to the experience of women’s movement in space.91 Her essay reflects on the constraints and possibilities of living in a female body and theorizes socially constructed habits of feminine body comportment in male-dominated societies. Her phenomenological analysis of the reasons why genders move differently through space will be the starting part of the analysis. The models walking on the runway of Paradise Pleasure Productions can be read through Young's description of female and male stride. The long paragraph from Young’s article fits very well to describe Van Beirendonck’s runway show.
Even in the simplest body orientations of men and women as they sit, stand, and walk, one can observe a typical difference in body style and extension. Women generally are not as open with their bodies as are men in their gait and stride. Typically, the masculine stride is longer proportional to a man’s body than is the feminine stride to a woman’s. The man typically swings his arms in a more open and loose fashion than does a woman and typically has more up and down rhythm in his step. Though we now wear pants more than we used to and
91 Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality.”
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consequently do not have to restrict our sitting postures because of dress, women still tend to sit with their legs relatively close together and their arms across their bodies. 92
During the Paradise Pleasure Productions show, genders are performed. With bodies and faces covered, loose garments that erase the body shape, and sometimes identical styles for men and women, the performativity of gender is put under a magnifying lens, which makes the viewer pay attention to the way the models move through space. One can notice that some models move their hips and put one leg in front of another when they walk. Other models are waving their arms. The models enact gender characteristics by the way they fill the space, but also by the pace and intensity of their walk. Muscular bodies stomp on the runway with their hands moving energetically on each side of the body. Slimmer models walk lightly, almost dancing to the rhythm of the music. Judith Butler asserts that the social behaviours associated with gender are performative in the fact that they enact rather than simply reflect gendered identities. Butler argues that forms of gender parody (such as drag) demonstrate that performative gender citations have no original source. Gender is constructed by a series of citations involving repetitions of signs, or culturally meaningful behaviours, which are recognized as markers of gender. Performativity suggests that gender is a hierarchical system in which some forms of gender are prioritized while others are marginalized, but it also suggests that gender is subject to change.93 Paradise Pleasure Productions can be seen as a performance of nonnormative genders that erases most of the citations involving signs and behaviours, leaving only a few indicators, on which the most significant are body mass and stride. The intentionality of this gesture is signposted by dressing up men and women with the same clothes and sending them on the runway one after the other, as seen in fig. 8 and fig. 9. Models wearing identical garments, yet enacting different gender signs, are seen three times during the show. The last two models that close the show wear complementary sequined overalls.
92 Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality,” in On Female Body Experience “Throwing like a Girl” and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 32. 93 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (December 1988): 519–20.
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Figure 8. Matching garment 1, A/W Paradise Figure 9. Matching garment 2, A/W Paradise Pleasure Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995 Productions, Paris, 1995
This repeated gesture can suggest the possibility of embracing gender fluidity, as well as non- normative bodies and sexualities. The setup of the show creates a heterotopia that blurs some of the distinctions while emphasizing others, thus emphasizing the ubiquitous nature of biopower that exerts pressure on other points of power when others are relaxed. Joanne Entwistle, in the chapter “Fashion and Gender” from the book The Fashioned Body, emphasizes that clothing, as an aspect of the culture, is a crucial feature in the production of masculinity and femininity, yet “There is no natural link between an item of clothing and ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’; instead, there is an arbitrary set of associations which are culturally specific”.94 For Entwistle, the distinctions of gender drawn by clothes are arbitrary yet, at the same time, they often become fundamental to our ‘common sense’ reading of the bodies. One can argue that in a third-wave feminist reading of gender, nature, and biology are as important as the way gender performances are constructed by family, society, school, religion, in other words by the societal mechanisms through which power inhabits bodies and transforms them into biopower. Queer boys learn that from an early age, when they are told to “walk like a man” and to “stop waving the arms like a little girl”. Butching up, in this context, can be understood as a way to submit to cultural order that attempts to discipline and
94 Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body : Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), 143.
32 control bodies that do not conform to the heteronormative standard. José Esteban Muñoz in his book, Cruising Utopia, describes this experience by recalling a set of childhood memories. Munoz grew up in a large Cuban family where every day, all the family reunited in front of the TV. He describes a moment from his childhood when he walked in front of the TV and accidentally covered the screen, grabbing the attention of men watching a boxing game. The oldest cousin called him out by saying that he wished to have a girlfriend that walked and shake her ass like him. Muñoz asked what is wrong with his walk, while the other men in the room erupted in laughter. In the book, he recalled this experience as being deeply humiliating and painful, and the start of his decision to perform a “masculine walk”, which means a consciously constructed walk that could be read as masculine.95 The comment made him understand that he was different from his cousins and that they knew it already. The long quote is included in the paper, because it offers an important insight into the way gender is a learned performance that is consciously adopted at an early age, due to society’s expectation on how does a man or a woman walk:
This proto-homophobic attack made me sit down and think about my movement, to figure out what it was about the way I moved that elicited such mockery, and such palpable contempt from a room full of males. I wanted to, needed to know: what was it about my body and the way I moved it through the world that was so off, so different? I studied movement from then off, watching the way in which women walked and the way the men walked. I looked at the ways in which men steered a sidewalk and tried to understand how women did it so differently. I noticed a stiffness in the men around me and a lack of stiffness in the women next to them. I studied all these and applied it to my own body. I began to project a butching up, even though that is not what I understood to be back then. I tried to avoid the fact I studied something that came very naturally to other boys. I avoided the fact that heterogender was a space I was strangely on the outside of- I was a spy in the house of gender normativity, and like any spy, I was extremely careful and worried that my cover would be blown.96
This personal queer experience raises the question if the bear community emulates hegemonic masculinity due to a collective internalization of the biopower. It is a possibility that what Muñoz calls a “cover-up” is extended into adulthood. This creates the possibility that the “masculine” performativity of the bears has been born because of childhood trauma. The “reinforcement of
95 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 68. 96 Muñoz, 68–69.
33 hegemonic masculinity” on which bears are suspected can be a constructed gender performance that is practiced in childhood and is mastered in adulthood. If gender is learned and performed through disciplinary practices that are embedded in education and society’s structure, then some queer boys that are “spies in the house of gender performativity”, can master the art of disguise and erase their “otherness” to win the acceptance of the heterogender space. Since it is consciously performed, it can grow into hypermasculinity, which, in this sense, can be understood as a route of survival in the heteronormative world. Muñoz believes that it made perfect sense in the world of the 1990s, as it was, surrounded by the spectre of the AIDS pandemic, yet he wondered how hard it must have been for men that tried to look and act so butch all the time, and observed that “indeed, these men become their own fetish of masculinity in that they hide the conditions of possibility that led to their becoming butch.”97 The conditions of possibility, once revealed, may signal what the sociologist Martin P. Levine called “passing”. Levine believes that passing is one of the strategies developed as gay men to manage their identities and involved “dressing in such a way as to become invisible as a gay man, to be able to negotiate the world under a disguise of heterosexuality.”98 In the article ”Male Impersonators”, Mark Simpson suggests that the strategy of passing could have influenced the behaviour of the straight-acting man of the 1990s that accepted that he is gay, but still desired acceptance from straight society: “By exaggerating his ‘masculinity’ he [Straight Acting] man hopes to woo the straight man and convince him that not all queers are queer.”99 The authors mentioned above suggest that hypermasculinity is an act of survival. This possibility can be significant in the way bear masculinity is perceived as reinforcing hegemony and can also act as an example of the effect of biopower that immediately regroups itself when the bodies subjected to it are seeking freedom. Any reaction to biopower generates new ways in which power manifest itself. Van Beirendonck's runway show for Paradise Pleasure Productions reveals the conditions of possibility of becoming butch, as one of the ways that gender performance is acted by bodies in movement. Van Beirendonck's show played with the interface between femininity and masculinity that is active in any gender, especially in queer ones, questioning the real material conditions of our gender. It is a meditation on the need to become Other in the face of cultural logics of heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity. The stride of the models is one layer of understanding. The music, the clothes, the showgirl references are all invitations for fantastical
97 Muñoz, 79. 98 Levine, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone, 21. 99 Mark Simpson, “Male Impersonators,” Gay Times, no. August (1992): 75.
34 becoming and fabulousness, and represent a departer from the hypermasculine ideal, as well as of the blue-collar attire of the bear. A significant part of the collection contains references to the showgirls and clowns (fig. 10 and 11). The bear-shaped models wear colourful feather headpieces, and garments made from transparent lace. The model in fig. 11 wears matching trousers and shirt made from flower embroidered tulle. His purple latex suit is purple, the same colors as his outfits. The model from fig- 10 wears a transparent red shirt over a black rubber suit. Both wear feather headpieces in pastel colors. Opposite signifiers overlay on bodies: the latex rubber suit that is a reference to sadomasochistic imagery, the hypermasculine performance as it can be seen in body demeanour and stride, and, on the third level, the colourful feather headpieces, and lace garments.
Figure 10. Tulle embroidered shirt and feather Figure 11. Tulle shirt embroidered with flowers headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, and feather headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure 1995 Productions, Paris, 1995
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The relationship between the bodies and the garments can be read through Madison Moore’s concept of “creative strangeness”, which is a form of fabulousness that cannot be interpreted as male or female, and instead “offers a fourth space, a separate dimension where gender meets an end and where bodies are abstracted.”100 This specific understanding of fabulousness works not only towards eliminating gender, but it also aims to destabilize hegemonic masculinity: “The brilliance of fabulousness as an embodies aesthetic is in how it actually exposes the bland, boring nature of rote masculinity.”101 In this process of fabulous embodiment, the elimination of the face is of utmost importance The symbols clash with one another, on a body that is transformed into a tabula rasa, by the innovative procedure of eliminating the distinctive features. Without the face, the masculine archetypes can be ruptured and create new possibilities of styling and wearing different aesthetic elements. Writing about how despotic formations discipline bodies through an over coding of the face, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari claimed that “if human beings have a destiny, it is rather to escape the face, to dismantle the face and facialisations, to become imperceptible, to become clandestine.”102 The collection is a visualization of the idea of clandestinity and suggests that anonymity can lead to more playful embodiments of masculinity, visualized on humorous references to tropical fruits, butterflies, clowns, and showgirls. The colourful, bright garments are very different from the clone and bear uniform and act as a reminder that it is all performance. Fabulousness acts as a counter- reaction to the conditionings of biopower. Instead of heteronormativity and cultural hegemony, the show suggests a postmodern, abundant, maximalist bucket of choices, in which bodies can explore all the possibilities of existence and play/reverse gay stereotypes. Instead of fitting into the heteronormative space, Van Beirendonck suggests many ways in which to get lost and embrace the otherness and the queerness. As Muñoz emphasizes in his book, “queerness is lost in space, or lost in relation to the space of heteronormativity.”103 For Muñoz, to accept loss is to accept queerness and to accept the loss of heteronormativity, authorization, and entitlement. “To be lost is not to hide in a closet or to perform a simple (ontological) disappearing act; it is to veer away from heterosexuality path.”104
100 Moore, Fabulous : The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, 14. 101 Moore, 14. 102 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 171. 103 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 72. 104 Muñoz, 73.
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Wonderland
The 1996-1997 Fall/Winter collection Wonderland was presented on 25th January 1996 during the Paris Fashion Week. The video recording shows the models entering the stage through a dark rectangular opening and walking on an illuminated catwalk remarkably similar to the one from Paradise Pleasure Productions. As an extra element, the models are lightened by following spots that create beams of light projected onto their bodies. As a spectator, and even for the camera, the effect is confusing because the moving spotlight can blur the vision. The catwalk emanates light when people are walking on it, moving along with their stride. It is a stark contrast between the darkness of the hall and the bodies of the models that are illuminated both by the catwalk and the sharp lights of the follow spots. In the book Dream the World Awake, the set design, and the cast are described, in terms not always straightforward. Since the monography is a self-published project by Walter Van Beirendonck, I will extract only empirical data from the chapter “Walter and the 33 bears” written by Tim Blanks, and will not include evaluations. The book describes the setting and the models in ambiguous terms, which will be explained later in the thesis:
The show took place in a huge mushroom-shaped tent, and there were three visual strands in the presentation: 40 bearded men with 30W< children, 40 Colour Stars, and 40 Kinky Kings, modelled on Ludwig of Bavaria, whose castles on the Rhine had inspired iconic centrepieces of Walt Disney’s kingdoms.105
Starting from the description above, I will first explain the meaning of each category of characters embodied by models on the runway. The total cast had 150 models. The 40 bearded men mentioned in the text are all bears, the rest of the cast does not fall into this category because they are shaved and smooth. The 40 bears can be categorized as such: 33 chubby bears, 2 polar bears, and 5 cubs. Wonderland has the largest number of bears of all the collections analysed. Children walk hand in hand with 30 of the bears. The members of the cast called Kinky Kings appear in the first section of the show. They look youthful. A full description will follow below. The 40 Colour Stars are featured in the third part of the show, and they wear neon-coloured headpieces, sometimes with spikes, thus the name.
105 Tim Blanks. “Walter and the 33 Bears”, in Dream the World Awake (Lanoo Publishers, 2013), 94.
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The show was performed with a live symphonic orchestra that played a piece of cinematic music that repeated the same theme for the duration of the first part of the show. In the beginning, the orchestra is tuning its instruments, like in an opera house, then starts playing along with the first model that walks on the runway.106 The runway show tells a story of coming-of-age from adolescence to adulthood, parenting, and beyond, in post-human/alien territory. The gay bear models occupy a significant part of this show. Walter Van Beirendonck explained in an interview the casting process:
For the first Wonderland show, back in the nineties, I cast a lot of nice men in an early stage, and I asked them to grow their beards. At that time, the Bear scene was (also for me) just starting up, and social media were not existing. So, a bear-look was not that common107.
The runway show is separated into three parts, differentiated by clothes, cast, and narrative. Part one: The collection begins with a series of slim and young models, called in the official description ‘kinky kings’. All are wearing headpieces that resemble blond plastic doll-like hair. In the second section of the first part, all the male models wear tight t-shirts printed with body hair that creates the illusion of a nude hairy chest. The only female model from this series is wearing a plastic jacket with inflatable breasts. Her masculine counterpart wears a coat from a similar material that acts as a second skin. These masculine/feminine representations of nudity refer to a safeguarded body. These outfits can be interpreted in relation to the t-shirt worn by the next model, which is printed with the text “Protect yourself”, next to the image of a packaged condom. Most of the visual elements of the first part create a representation of teenage sexual awakening. Many models wear t-shirts printed with images of a hairy chest. As seen in fig. 12 and fig. 13, the last model of part 1 wears a leather overall which he unbuttons to reveal the text written on the back of his t-shirt: “Finally chest hair”. This image contains sexual symbolism: the leather overall unbuttoned leaving visible the illusion of a naked torso as well as the confident attitude of the model that exudes sex appeal.
106 Mode Museum Antwerp, “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” 107 Leone, “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock.”
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Figure 12. Model wearing the top “Finally Chesthair!” Figure 13. Model wearing the top “Finally front, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 Chesthair!” back, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
By wearing a leather overall, the model references simultaneously three queer archetypes: the young smooth man, also known as a twink, the blue-collar worker, and the leatherman. This postmodern mix of dissimilar references is abundant during the show, which freely mixes subcultures, genders, and species. After the “Finally Chesthair!” message, the repetitive musical theme ends and slides into part two, which begins with a different musical background. A live singer performs a mix of soul and jazz songs during the duration of this section that is dedicated to gay bears. Part two features mainly the chubby bears, wearing garments that feature bear symbolism (the bear as an animal is included in this symbolism). The bear models wear styles fit for cold weather that cover their bodies with multiple layers. The model in fig. 14 wears trousers made from fake fur, as well as a t-shirt printed with the text “Bears”. Each bear model wears winter clothes, boots, gloves, and beanies. Several clothes seem to reference the “teddy-bear” symbolism, in hoodies with rounded ears and faux fur trousers and gloves. 30 bear models walk hand in hand with 30 children wearing mini-bear outfits. The styling suggests a fusion between the image of Santa Clause and his elves. Red and green, both colours of Christmas, are heavily used in this section. The bear from fig. 15 wears a blue sweatshirt with mountain scenery that depicts the backside of a bear, next to the image of a mushroom Amanita Muscaria. Above the picture, there is the text “Cute!” and below a frog with a crown is contemplating the scenery.
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Figure 14. Model wearing faux fur trousers and t-shirt with the text ”Bears”, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
Figure 15. Bear model wearing a top printed with a scenery containing the backside of a bear, a mushroom, and the word ”Cute!”, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
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In fig. 16, an adult walks hand in hand with a child. The bear wears a yellow top printed with the image of a crop top that reveals the illusion of a belly. The representation of the chubby bear shape is double, since a model with a chubby shape, wears a top printed with the image of a chubby shape. Both the grown-up and the child wear yellow-colored clothes. This tautologic representation is repeated in other man/child pairs with matching outfits resembling superhero costumes (fig. 17 and fig. 21). In fig. 18, the spandex outfits with little rounded ears are each printed with the image of a superhero teddy bear. The redundancy represents twice the concept of bear superhero, first in the outfit, and second in the image printed on the outfit. In the middle of this act, the designer himself, Walter Van Beirendonck, walks on the runway as a model, wearing brown furry trousers and a jacket. The unique insertion of the designer in the runway show as a model seems to suggest that he also considers himself a bear, belonging to the same community as the bears around him.
Figure 16. Model wearing a crop-top nude illusion garment, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
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Figure 177. Models wearing hoodies with rounded ears and gloves, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
Part 3 features ‘Colour Stars’, a mix of post-human and alien beings, wearing stylized headpieces with spikes. This section has different silhouettes, shapes, and colours. The music returns to the format of uplifting symphonic music. At the finale, all the models align on the stage, while the designer salutes the crowd wearing the bear costume that he modelled during his runway walk. One can see the variety of body types, the different ages, and the explosive creativity of dress that does not differentiate between genders. The image depicted in fig. 18 shows an inclusive runway that is still unprecedented by its attempt to transgress discriminative criteria. The only observation that can be made is that the cast is mainly white, yet a further investigation of this choice cannot be included in this thesis due to the already stated delimitations of this thesis. The rest of this section focuses on the analysis of themes and symbols present in each part of the runway, following their insights towards preliminary conclusions.
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Figure 18. The Finale of F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
Part 1 reflects on a classic dichotomy present in the gay world, humorously represented on the runway of Walter Van Beirendonck: the gay bear and the twink. Twinks are young, slim, feminine men, with physical characteristics vastly different from those possessed by gay bears. In the article “Bear Bodies”, Peter Hennen emphasizes that, traditionally, the masculine is defined against the feminine. Hennen notices then that in bear culture, this pattern is reproduced when bears define their masculinity not only against the feminine but more specifically against the feminized, hairless, and gym-toned body of the dominant ideal of gay masculinity- ‘the twink’, as he is known in bear culture. The twink is the opposite of the bear, and the twink body type is the most represented in fashion imagery. As noticed by Peter Hennen, this positioning against the twink simultaneously challenges and reproduces hegemonic masculinities.108 In the same tone, Wright suggested that "when a bear makes such a counter-statement, that he is not a 'woman,' not a 'twink,' not a 'heterosexual,' he is using his body to participate in changing social practice and challenging hegemonic power."109 Between part 1 and part 2, there is a transition between the universe of the twink and the world of the bear. The images of hairy chests printed on garments precede the second act that is dedicated
108 Hennen, “Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?,” 33. 109 Wright, “Theoretical Bears,” 9.
43 to gay bears. This representation is confrontational towards the exclusionary politics of hegemonic masculinity. The models embodying teenager characters that walk at the beginning of the show are waiting to become adults, and to grow chest hair as a sign of adulthood. Between them (the twinks) and the bears it is not a relation of opposition, but one of continuation. The show suggests the possibility that there is space of manifestation for both identities, as well as their fluid position: the twink can become a bear one day. The theory of gender performativity can bring understanding in the ways that the concept of bear is embodied by the bear models, but also references the bear as an animal, the written word ‘bear’, or design elements such as hoodies with rounded ears, or brown faux fur trousers (fig. 18). The insistence to reiterate the same concept on a different level of communication suggests Butler’s idea that gendered identities are constructed by repeating gestures, words, and rituals. The repetition of gestures and words that include markers of sex and gender is included in the education of children, and it is fundamental in creating identities. The fairy-tale imagery of the show has several references to the idea of princes and princesses. The model for the creation of Kinky Kings was Ludwig II of Bavaria, also known by the name Märkenkönig (the Fairy Tale King) or “The Swan King”, whose castles on the Rhine had inspired the centrepieces in Walt Disney’s kingdoms (fig. 19).
Figure 19. Kinky King model wearing a top printed with Figure 20. Kinky King model wearing a top printed crowned swans and heart, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 with the image of a hairy chest and nipple clamps, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
The designer included intentionally the figure of the eccentric king, as well as the symbols of his controversial heritage, the swan and the castles: “I’m interested in strange connotations. Disney chose that castle for a reason. That king was so loaded with strange stories. And I like translating
44 strange stories into my collections.”110 Ludwig II of Bavaria spent all his royal revenues on funding art and building castles. His eccentricity and lack of interest in state affairs were used against him to be declared insane. Ludwig never married and never had heirs. The fascinating life of Ludwig cannot be included in this thesis, nor a detailed analysis of the first part of the runway where Kinky Kings were modelled after him, yet the symbols connected to the bear representation need to be included in the analysis. Ludwig was a prince and a king, the “fairy-tale king”, whose referential animal was the Swan. On the runway, his symbols, the swan, and the castle (also the symbols of the twinks or Kinky Kings) are mirrored with the symbols of the gay bear (as an animal and as an embodiment of the Santa Clause archetype). In the first part, many of the shirts worn by Kinky Kings are printed with mountain sceneries with blue sky backgrounds, swans that look at each other while the mirrored shape of their neck creates a heart (fig. 19). Swans and fairy tale castles create an obverted idyllic imagery that is subverted by intentionally disturbing elements. One of the t-shirts is printed with the text: “Dream Castle Black Swan Gang”, which can be interpreted in the light of the homosexual desires of Ludwig II, documented in his journals and private letters.111 A shirt is printed with a hairy chest with nipple clamps, as seen in fig. 20. Another t-shirt is printed with the image of a green penis with a crown on its head and the text “True romance”. The image of a green frog wearing a golden crown is repeated several times as print on shirts. From the perspective of performative theory, the prince references are similar to the distinction made by James Loxley between gender acts enacted by boys/knights and girls/princesses. In the book Performativity, James Loxley suggests that gender acts enable the creation of men and women in a manner that reinforces the binary heterosexual matrix. In other words, the options are to be boys and girls that grow up to be knights and princesses. Boys will have racing cars on the birthday cards, while girls will have flowers. The purpose of this performance is to determine girls/princesses marry boys/knights. Consequently, the performances that do not serve to reinforce this law are repressed and denied recognition: “small girls who don’t like dolls will learn to play properly; knights will not grow up to marry other knights.”112 The imagery of the part 1 is overtly idyllic, nodding to Disney scenery, yet it also references a fairy tale with dark, sexual elements, such as the t-shirts printed with images of hairy chests, or the plastic headpieces with controlling devices that suggest that Kinky Kings are programmed or commanded. The overlapping of dissimilar layers of meaning is a strategy that aims to confuse and shock. It can be interpreted as a
110 Tim, Blanks. “Walter and the 33 Bears”, 94. 111 Christopher McIntosh, The Swan King : Ludwig II of Bavaria (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012). 112 James Loxley, Performativity (London: Routledge, 2007), 119–20.
45 deconstruction of the idea that little girls are princesses and little boys are knights. This mechanism can prove to be empowering for queers and misfits that do not belong in the castle of heteronormativity. The repetitions of the symbol of the bear, in the forms mentioned above, represent an educational act that can help young men (or Kinky Kings) to identify themselves as a part of a community. Van Beirendonck’s repetitions in showing us what a bear is can be interpreted as an act of learning to perform the specific embodiment of the gay bear through repetitions of gestures, words, and rituals. The most pedagogical and redundant embodiment of the bear archetype can be seen in fig. 21, where a boy and a man walk hand in hand, wearing bear costumes printed with images of super bears. This type of representation is not constative, but performative. Bears are depicted as fun, non-threatening, and possibly superheroes whose style can be emulated by children. The image from fig. 21 is performative because it displays bears in the language of childhood, as cartoon characters with cute spandex garments, similar to the hosts from the Disneyland adventure parks.
Figure 21. Models wearing ”bear superheroes” tops with rounded ears hoodies, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996
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These different modalities to make statements refer to the first formulation of performativity, which was elaborated by the English philosopher James Loxley Austin, during his William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, and published posthumously in 1962 book, How To Do Things With Words.113 Austin differentiates between constative and performative statements. A constative sentence describes or reports realities, while a performative statement is an event or an action. For Austin, performativity “indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action.”114 Some performative statements can create realities. The question asked by Austin in his first Oxford lecture is: “Can Saying Make IT So?”, by exemplifying that it is even possible to perform an act not by uttering words, spoken or written, but in some other way, yet “the uttering of the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act.”115 This understanding of performativity can be applied in the analysis of the collection, where the utterances of the word bear, in various ways, may it be language, image or bodily representation are all forms of performative statements that do not describe realities, but create queer realities, in the same way as heteronormative education creates gender differentiation. The insistence on this repetition goes deep, showing the condition of possibility of creation of gender, and enabling new ways to learn the performance of masculinity. These repetitions show the elements that create identities and, by revealing them, question the very idea of hegemonic masculinity as it is crystallized in the concept of ‘the real man’. Gay bears are framed artificially, almost in a pop-art way, with very descriptive elements that describe quite literally the fact that they are bears. They wear faux fur trousers imitating bear fur, hoodies with rounded ears, garments printed with the word “bears”. Lastly, they have big and hairy bear bodies. The abundance of literal elements referring to bear embodiment deconstruct the idea of hypermasculine performance and reveals that is a “non- natural” construct. Van Beirendonck is deconstructing the concept of “bear-as-a-real-man”, so often connected to a hypermasculine form of embodiment. The framing of the show does not emphasize or show any representation of “natural body” and “real man”. Instead, it constructs artificial performances of gender. The bear culture glorified the non-toned body of the working man, which has been building his body ’on a construction site’. With a strong emphasis on “real masculinity,” bears took pride in displaying big bulky, hairy bodies, with muscles developed by manual labour rather than the gym.
113 J L Austin, J O Urmson, and Marina. Sbisà, How to Do Things with Words(Oxford: Clarendon, 1975). 114 Loxley, Performativity, 6. 115 Austin, Urmson, and Sbisà, How to Do Things with Words, 7–8.
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The belly was often sexualized, as a direct response to the washboard stomach. This specific form of gay embodiment is not without controversy. In the book Don We Know our Gay Apparel, fashion historian Shaun Cole believes that the fantasy of a working man ran through the iconography of the bear (just as it did with the clones) it was often just a fantasy. Many of these men did not develop their bodies through manual labour, they were naturally big built. However, the reality of the bear culture was an embracing of the diversity of body type, a move away from the homogenization of the gay body into what it is described as the ‘circuit queen’ or ‘muscle Mary’.116 Bears are middle-class men that do lower-class drag. They live in urban areas but mimic nature nostalgia and emulate a blue-collar aesthetic. The numerous problems of the back-to-nature aesthetic of the gay bears were raised comically by Daniel Harris in the book The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, which deserves this extensive quote:
Its hirsute ideal of rugged masculinity is ultimately as contrived as the aesthetic designer queen. While bears pretend to oppose the 'unnatural' look of urban gay men, nothing could be more unnatural, urban, and middle class than the pastoral fantasy of the smelly mountaineer in long johns, a costume drama that many homosexuals are now acting out as self-consciously as Marie Antoinette and her entourage dressed up as shepherds and shepherdesses.117
The references to Marie Antoinette signify the presence of an artificial performance. In Wonderland show, artificiality is signalled by the tautologies and repetitions that question the gay bear identity as a hypermasculine form of embodiment. It is a different form of disruption to dress gay bears in brown fur and garments with bear images and texts. Many of the bears walking on the runway wear green costumes and pointy red hats that resemble the dress of Santa Clause and his elves, as seen in fig. 22 and 23.
116 Cole, ’Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century, 126. 117 Daniel Harris, The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 107.
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Figure 22. Model wearing an outfit in red Figure 23. Model resembling the Santa Clause archetype, F/W and green, F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996 Wonderland, Paris 1996
In the chapter “A French Bear Asks: Are Bears an American Thing?” of The Bear Book, Pierre De May identifies several archetypes that universally define gay bears. One of these archetypes is Santa Claus, which is understood as a man/child of indefinite age, with a strong, jolly, good, playful nature that likes to spoil children.118 This archetype is played within the runway show, where men walk on the runway along with children, as seen in fig. 23. Bears are depicted as caretakers and jolly companions of children. In the context of the runway’s storyline, it suggests the possibility of the coexistence of bears, twinks, children, men, women, and aliens. The storyline assumes inclusivity, regardless of gender or species (as in human opposed to non-human). The children modelled on the runway due to the W< launch of a second line for children. Van Beirendonck is no stranger to collaborations with children clothing lines or launching his own.
118 Pierre De Mey, “A French Bear Asks: Are Bears an American Thing?,” in The Bear Book (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1997), 267.
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In an interview in New Yorker, he mentioned that “Sometimes fantasy is too shocking for adults. But for children is natural.”119 At the time when it was released, the show did not have a universal favourable reception. New York Times journalist Amy Spindler detected intimations of paedophilia in the onstage man/child pairings, and Walter Van Beirendonck himself declared that he received negative feedback from the bear community: “They felt it was a hidden thing going on and they didn’t like that I talked about it. They felt I’d betrayed the community.”120 Understandably, the audience was disturbed since they saw the performance as one show, which included plenty of sexual imagery in the first act, dedicated to Kinky Kings. In this section, bears walk hand in hand in hand with children, and the main references are Santa Clause and his elves, as well as the bear as a teddy bear or a superhero. The proximity of sexual and fairy-tale imagery can lead to interpretations, which can be both positive and negative, regarding the symbolic frame of the person who analyses it. The theories chosen can bring light to this inquiry. The biopower theory can send back to the way men and women are constructed as narrative in which knights marry princesses, and divert from this script to a different story, a heterotopia of space where dissimilar elements can coexist and aim to futurity in which the notion of family can gain new meanings. The theory of fabulousness suggests that people excluded by heteronormative ideals can gain and exert their agency by assembling outfits that generate new relations between the body and masculinity. The elements that seem disjointed such as the symbolic reference to both Santa Claus, the bears as an animal, and the gay bear bodies enable new ways to debate with hegemonic masculinity, while still performing masculinity. Finally, these elements are utopic, yet they have significance because they aim to a possible futurity and remind us that something is still missing. That something can refer to equal rights, in a world where queers do not have the privilege of normative tastes and majoritarian belonging. In this sense, as Muñoz, puts it, utopia is a way to reconsider the present in relationship with other alternatives.121 This narrative is consistent with the overall script that depicts the runway show as a fairy tale (thus the name Wonderland) and embodies a vivid heterotopia of space that subverts the effect of biopower by defining itself as radically inclusive. This inclusiveness distracts the focus from the gay bear group and focuses on a larger scope, where all living beings can coexist together in a heterotopia of space. The queerness of the show is revealed in the essential fluidity of the characters embodied on the runway: twinks that want to become bears, bears walking hand in hand with
119 “The Next Fashion Outrage,” The New Yorker, 1997, http://www.waltervanbeirendonck.com/HTML/PUBLICATIONS/2004/FEBRUARI/newyorker.html. 120 Blanks, “Walter and the 33 Bears”, 94. 121 Muñoz, Cruising Utopia : The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 27.
50 children. Lastly, the post-human creatures from the last part of the runway named Colour Stars call for new and radical forms of embodiment. The lack of clear differentiators marks a fabulous utopia, which transgresses the confines of cultural hegemony. Intentionally unclear, this heterotopia suggests the possibility that anyone can craft his/her/their identity. This postmodern approach aligns with the aim of fabulousness which is the creation of a “self-couture”. The stage becomes a heterotopia of space, which makes visible a ‘Wonderland’. Here, performativity does not stop at gender, because it has a larger scope, the creation of fluid identities that transition from human to animal and expands in the unknown of the alien realm.
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Chapter 2. Is Queer Bears an Oxymoron?
The second set of collections belongs to the early 2010s, when Walter Van Beirendonck worked as an independent designer, under his self-owned label. Free from the constrictions of a large fashion conglomerate, he had more freedom, yet less capital. As he stated in an interview, he could no longer create grand and expensive runway shows: “This type of show is only possible with these huge budgets, so when I stepped out of my W< contract, and restarted from scratch, and became completely independent, I did not have these budgets anymore”122. Because of the financial limitations, Van Beirendonck started releasing collections, with a much-lowered cast, and with simpler runways that lacked the theatricality of the 1990s. These presentations aligned with the ethos of the time, which assumed that the fashion show is no longer the sole element of marketing, but only a part of a larger strategy. Consumers, influencers, and public opinion saw an increased agency that followed the development of the internet. Global communication diffused and fragmented the points of power and representation. Fashion influence started to become decentralized, and the consumer represented himself and, in some cases, became the agent of change. During the 2010s, the men’s self-documentation of their clothes and their physiques converged as a phenomenon in men’s fashion. Within this context, the fashion show transforms into the starting point of a dialogue that goes way beyond its spatial and temporal limitations and continues the fashion blogs and in the world of influencers. Whatever is performed on the fashion runway is shared instantaneously and evaluated in the vast space of the internet and social media. Van Beirendonck was aware of this trend. The runway shows are more reserved, and the proliferation of symbols is more constrained. Walter Van Beirendonck’s runways from the beginning of the 2010s follow the trend of the decade, which situates differently the fashion show, as a part of a multifaceted marketing strategy. With vastly smaller casts and simpler shows, they invite a debate that goes beyond the confined space of the catwalk and acknowledges the importance of the self-representation.
Wonder The runway show of the Wonder collection was presented twice, once at the Paris Fashion Week and the second time in San Francisco at Berkeley University. The alternative name of the collection is “Wonderfur”, and it featured a cast of gay bears. The two presentations had a different cast of
122 Leone, “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock.”
52 models. For the analysis, I mainly use the recording of the fashion show that took place in Paris, on the 26th of June 2009, as it is included in the MOMU retrospective.123 San Francisco's presentation was modelled by members of the local bear community, and it does not have an official recording. Still, with the limited material of backstage videos and amateur recordings, I analyse the componence of the cast, because the gesture of presenting the show in the town where the gay clone, as well as the bear community, was born, invites to a dialogue.124 The two different presentations are compared in the way they represent the bear body type. The Paris show features a cast of 30 men. All of them have masculine, hairy bodies and shaved heads (or short hair). The collection contains 13 muscle bears, 9 chubby bears, 7 cubs, and 1 polar bear. The San Francisco show has a larger cast of 39 men, which consists of 10 muscle bears, 17 chubby bears, 7 polar bears, and 5 cubs.
Figure 24. The finale of S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009
Fig. 24 shows the finale of the Paris presentation, where the models are aligned in the back while a new set of underwear models walks on the stage closing the show. In a backstage interview
123 Mode Museum Antwerp, “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®.” 124 Bearnigno, “Fashion Bears Rules!. Walter Van Beirendonck Wonde® -COS!”; Tokyo SF, “Underwear Bears, Walter van Beirendonck, Berkley”; Doughty, “Walter Van Beirendonck Berkeley, CA Show Pt. 2 Underwear!”
53 regarding the Paris runway, Van Beirendonck admitted that his casting was a statement towards the body politics of the fashion industry: “The idea was as a reaction to all the skinny models in the fashion world, to those girls with anorexia. I wanted to put on the catwalk these big men with beards.”125 The video recording of the Paris show starts with the upbeat of the electronic song “Warp 1.9” by The Bloody Beetroots Feat. Steve Aoki, while the models walk on the runway at a fast pace. The rhythm is fast and the bass deep. If the previous set of collections from the 1990s required a long description, Wonder show has a predictable structure. The models walk on the catwalk, while the audience watches from both sides. The stage is always bright and there are no light changes. The music has the same rhythm for the duration of the show, which plays a long mix of the same song. At the end of the show, Walter Van Beirendonck salutes the audience. He is dressed in garments from the Wonder collection. After his exit, all the models assembled onstage, only to be upstaged by another group of bears. As seen in fig. 24, they are fit, white, muscular, and wear only socks, shoes, and white underwear with a ‘W’ sewn in red across the crotch. Wonder collection understands the necessity to create a buzz on the internet. The show aims to a futurity that can be played, performed, and even deconstructed further on by the members of the gay bear community. The finale was made to be photographed and shared on the internet and social media, not only by the members of the gay bear community but by anyone interested in fashion. Asked during an interview about the casting for Wonder show, Van Beirendonck answered that: “For the Wonderbear show in Paris, I casted through social media and online, directly in the bear community, which meanwhile became a huge community”126. Most of the models are slimmer and fit, falling into a category that embodies ideal bearish qualities. The lines between circuit boys and bears were already blurred in the 2010s and the show reflects a subculture that diluted its identity by becoming mainstream. Most of the models are men who perform an idealized version of bear, also known as the ‘superbear’ stereotype. This stereotype is defined by Philip Locke, who suggested the hypothesis that most of the images presented in bear media such as “Bear” or “American Bear” represent an idealized version of a bear, which he calls the ‘superbear’ stereotype.127 Locke’s article is from 1997 before social media created space for self-representation, yet some of his remarks, even if dated, are still useful for the analysis. Locke stated that bear media appeared as a response to sleek, smooth-skinned body types marketed in mass media magazines. Men who did not fit the
125 Sylvia Rubin and Beth Hughes, “Hip Belgian Designer Brightens BAMscape,” SFGate, accessed April 5, 2021, https://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Hip-Belgian-designer-brightens-BAMscape-3262669.php#photo-2412085. 126 Leone, “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock.” 127 Locke, “Male Images in the Gay Mass Media and Bear-Oriented Magazines: Analysis and Contrast.”
54 stereotypes could find alternative sources of images where they could see men like themselves. At the same time, these magazines had to sell, and to do that, they excluded the depth and breadth of the bear community. The magazines presented images that readers could find sexually exciting; therefore, the editors choose models that represent the ideals of the “bear image”. These ‘superbears’ represent men of ideal bearish beauty.128 This strategy can lead once more to exclusion, since one can join the bear community, yet be confronted with images of ‘superbears’ that are nothing but inclusive. Locke signals the possibility that men in this position can be “doubly wounded- they did not measure up the ideal of male beauty represented in traditional gay media, and now they feel inferior within the Bear community.”129 The same strategy of exclusion can appear in the space of social media and online dating that are not only spaces for self-expression, but also mediums where rejection can be more direct and less polite than in a social circumstance where people meet in real life. The San Francisco show includes more non-confirmative bear bodies and has a larger number of chubby and polar bears (fig. 25 and fig. 26). Walter Van Beirendonck describes his experience as a celebration: “When I brought the Wonderbear show to San Francisco, and showing the collection in Berkeley University, was a celebration for the gay community in SFGay or straight did not matter, it was all about FREEDOM and the possibility to express yourself in the best way possible.”130 On his official website, Walter Van Beirendonck names and thanks to each one of the models, a unique gesture that implies that his relationship with the models was much more personal than in his other collections where the models are not named. Looking at the San Francisco videos, one can notice joy and excitement, from the models, as well as from the audience. At the finale, the crowd claps and cheers, and the gesture goes way beyond the appreciation of the clothes. It is the joy of the city that gave birth to all the embodiments of gay masculinities such as the clone, the leatherman, and the bear. The garments are modelled by people belonging to this subculture, in the city that created it. The models signify a return to the roots of the bear movement, which included non-normative, aging, non-slim bodies. From the total of 39 models, most of them are polar bears and chubby bears, a far cry from the men of ideal bearish beauty that was presented in Paris. The models from fig. 25 and fig. 26 look like regular people walking on the runway, and not like fashion models. They have chubby bodies and unedited beards that were not altered by hairstylists or makeup artists.
128 Locke, 133. 129 Locke, 133.
130 Leone, “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock.”
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Figure 25. Bear model S/S Wonder, San Franciso, Figure 26. Bear model with long beard, S/S Wonder, 2009 San Francisco, 2009
The video recordings of the backstage reveal familiarity and friendship between models. When comparing the two fashion shows, the first resembles a runway, while the second appears as a gathering of friends. This suggests the possibility that the San Francisco bear subculture still functions as a community that passes its values from generation to generation, while the Paris cast is comprised of superbears that create a different type of social bond, mediated by their interactions on social media. The two sets of collections feature the same styles of garments, with minimal differences of color. The garments modelled in both collections are tailored to fit bigger bodies, and consist of wearable garments such as blazers, overalls, and cargo pants, mainly in pink, mint, and light blue. Bright-coloured fuchsia blazers are sported with light pink shorts and white socks. The garments are open in the front until the belly button revealing the chest and belly. T-shirts sport the text “wonder” on the front, and “bear” on the back. Read as a statement, it can be understood as “wonder bear”.
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Figure 27.Model wearing a pink jumpsuit, S/S Wonder, Figure 28. Model wearing a green jumpsuit, S/S Paris, 2009 Wonder, Paris, 2009
The last part of the runway show displays light pink combat jackets and hot pink matching trousers and shirts. The colour palette of the collections contains also shades of beige and kaki. The elevated work and daywear garments challenge the classical blue-collar uniforms of the bears, such as plaid shirts, leather, and jeans. As seen in fig. 27 and fig. 28, the jumpsuits, the classical uniform of the workwear, are coloured in dusty pink and mint green and upgraded with quirky details such as paw-shaped rounded back pockets, where one can put his hand in, grabbing the backside in a hug. Zip pockets were heavily featured on the cargo pants and overalls, and they took shapes of dildos, clouds, and letters that formed words in acid pink and neon green. An important section of the runway is dedicated to shirt dresses. One of the models wears a knee-length pink shirt dress, with a big text on the front spelling “HI” (fig. 29). Underneath the shirt, he is wearing a khaki pair of cargo shorts, which balance the look and make it seem less disruptive and easier to wear. Another model wears a khaki knee-length skirt, which features utilitarian/military elements such as pockets on the side and the backside (fig. 30).
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Figure 29. Model wearing a pink shirt dress with the text “Hi!”, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009
Figure 30. Model wearing a khaki skirt, S/S Wonder, Paris, 2009
The skirt can almost be read as a pair of cargo shorts, yet its construction follows the pattern of a skirt with a back slit. The same principle applies to a series of shirts with wide short sleeves coloured in pink, fuchsia, and metallic green, which challenge the perception of masculine attire, yet do not suggest femininity, but a fabulous form of embodiment, where contrasting elements coexist beyond these dichotomies.
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In Wonder collection, Van Beirendonck seems to suggest a queer dress for bears living in the era of self-representation. Free from the confines of the 1990s paper magazines that told them how they should look and dress, bears can embody what Moore calls a “self-couture”. Van Beirendonck’s collections can be interpreted as an invitation towards the bear community to stop building its identity in relation to heteronormativity, and the ideal of ‘real man’. Instead of following a given blueprint, bears are invited to be queer and to explore new possibilities of dressing. When non-normative bodies meet non-normative styles, fabulousness becomes a political act that challenges the perspective of the viewers. These gender-fluid garments are an invitation to reject the way biopower forced the gay bear bodies to butch up and embrace hyper-masculinity as a strategy to survive in a hetero-normative world. If the clone uniform became monotonous, and the bear uniform copied it, then fabulousness can be applied as an “opportunity to work against the sameness of things.”131 Van Beirendonck challenges the mechanism of biopower suggesting clothes that reflect fabulousness, despite the social and cultural norms that dictate what garments are “appropriate” for the gay bears. This shift challenges the very idea of hegemonic masculinities that require masculine embodiments. This initiative can be understood through Eric Anderson’s concept of inclusive masculinity, which is understood as a new practice of masculinity that openly embraces same-sex attraction, femininity, and performances conventionally associated with them. 132 Ben Barry, in the article “Fabulous masculinities”, observes the association of the garments and the body who wears them with masculinity and femininity. Barry believes that the fashion system connects clothes and bodies with specific masculine archetypes, and fabulousness ruptures these archetypes by reimagining how aesthetic elements are styled and worn on the body.133 The dissimilar design elements from the Wonder collection fill the purpose of subverting assumed connections between sex and gender, as well as conventional masculine aesthetics through their dressed bodies. The way that the garments are styled and presented, suggests a new understanding of masculine embodiment that asserts agency. It directly suggests that a gay bear can wear neon colours, skirts, or dresses. The collection also suggests that he can wear less provocative garments, such as blazers, utilitarian jumpsuits, and cargo pants. For Moore, the purpose of fabulousness is to destabilize hegemonic masculinity through original looks and bodies that cannot be classified into
131 Moore, Fabulous : The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, 45. 132 Eric Anderson, Inclusive Masculinity : The Changing Nature of Masculinities (New York ; Routledge, 2009). 133 Barry, “Fabulous Masculinities: Refashioning the Fat and Disabled Male Body,” 8.
59 binary gender categories. The Wonder collection can be interpreted as an embodied aesthetic that “let us tap out of toxic masculinity”.134
Figure 31. The Finale of S/S Wonder, San Francisco, 2009
The Paris fashion show is less inclusive and focuses on superbear bodies, which are young, conventionally attractive, and fit. The San Francisco show featured aging and unedited bodies, with long beards and big bellies, reflecting the diversity of a community that is geographically localized, and connected to its heritage (fig. 31). Both collections suggest body types that are outside the standards imposed by the fashion industry on fashionable bodies and led the way to the current trend, which includes plus size and older models into the runways and fashion campaigns. The presentation from Paris still stands out in comparison with the other shows from the same season, which featured the standard fashionable bodies of the moment. The two sets of models interrogate once more what is exactly a bear. Undoubtedly, the concept itself has evolved, and in the 2010s has gained new characteristics, not necessarily of a physical nature. It can be suggested that the San Francisco community represents the past, while the Paris cast represents the present. The novelty of self-representation is that anyone with a smartphone can take a photo of themselves and create a following. What does it mean to be a bear in this era of
134 Moore, Fabulous : The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric, 14.
60 radical self-representation, and what is the role of the designer? Van Beirendonck hinted towards the underground roots of this community, but also towards the present and future. Bear is a changing concept. Van Beirendonck’s slogan, “Kiss the Future!” is an invitation to look towards the future while staying connected with the past.
Read My Skin
Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2011 collection Read My Skin presentation was included in the official program of Paris Fashion Week, on the 25th of June 2010.135 The collection features 38 models, of which 3 are female and 35 are male. Six of the male models are bears, respectively 4 muscle bears, 1 chubby bear, and 1 cub. The bears are not central, yet they are scattered within the collection, in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. Read My Skin show is included in the thesis because it is the last Walter Van Beirendonck show to date that includes bear bodies. The runway show starts in the dark, with four light spots projected on the floor on atmospheric, ominous electronic music. Slowly, the spots flood the stage with a bright light. In the centre, there is a white catwalk, framed by two rows of seats facing each other. The bright light is directed towards the catwalk, while the audience watches from the shade. The first model walks on the runway, on the Blindoldfreak remix of the song “Before Tigers” by the band Health. The first two non-bear models wear shorts and a corset and walk at a balanced, contrived pace. It is a runway walk that compliments the psychedelic and unsettling tone of the music and somehow has a ghastly quality. The performativity of the walk is different from the other collections included in the analysis. The movements of the models and their facial expressions are less expressive, and more neutral, shifting the focus of attention on garments. One male model wears red lipstick, another one walks in a skirt. The music transitions into another song, “Dragons of Zynth” by Anna Mae, which overlays a deep feminine voice on a solemn, repetitive rhythm. During the last part of the show, models present crystal breastplates and jumpsuits with pierced fabric on the upbeat rhythm of the song “Year of Silence” by Crystal Castles. At the finale, all the models walk on the punk-ish song “Sht Mtn” by the band Holy Fuck, then Walter Van Beirendonck briefly salutes the crowd. He is dressed in one of the garments included in the collection, a dusted pink overall.
135 Mode Museum Antwerp, “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2011 Read My Skin.”
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Figure 32. Model dressed in pink, S/S Read My Skin, Figure 33. Model wearing a breastplate, S/S Read Paris, 2010 My Skin, Paris, 2010
The collection mixes feminine and masculine indicators of dress, and models them on masculine bodies. Several non-bear models wear red lipstick, corsets, and ruffled skirts. Bears wearing crystal breastplates and combat trousers invite the viewers to revisit their narrow gender associations regarding masculine bodies and queer dress. Military elements such as khaki fabrics, bullet pockets and cargo pants are stylized on garments embroidered with the word “Hope”. Utilitarian overalls and blazers are styled with feminine dress elements such as ruffles, coloured stones breastplates, a big pink bow, and red lipstick. Some styles are quite conventional and do not aim to create queer embodiments (fig. 35). The only chubby bear is walking in the middle of the show, wearing a pink T-shirt printed with the words “Walter Says Courage, Never Give up Hope. Live Love Read My Skin” (fig. 32). Towards the end of the show, a bearded muscle bear modelling combat trousers accessorized with pockets forming the word “Hope” (fig. 33). The word “Hope” is also embroidered with rounded holes pierced in the fabric, while the belt is perforated with the words “read my skin.” The same model wears a breastplate with black rhinestones. While his body and the combat trousers signify masculinity, the jewelled breastplate conveys the style ‘gender fuck’ that was popularized by the gay liberating activists in the 1970s and 1980s in which men’s and women’s clothing were
62 assembled into one outfit to intentionally confuse and unfasten conventional gender associations. ‘Gender fuck’ was performed by the members of the Gay Liberation Front, and particularly radical drag queens, who questioned assumptions about male and female roles and masculine and feminine appearances.136 Gay Liberation Front (GLF) appeared after the Stonewall Riots from June 1969 as a gay rights movement strongly influenced by both the international student movement and the counterculture. The purpose of GLF was to achieve equal rights for both gays and lesbians. It organized numerous demonstrations, zaps, street theatre, and social occasions. The GLF believed that gay people should be visible, loud, and outrageous. The Front attempted to create a modern style, and a new vocabulary for being gay. Members of GLF dismissed camp because they saw it as a form of self-hatred more than as acceptance. They also dismissed the strategy of “passing as straight” but created ‘gender fuck’-as a way to “get away from the hard-edged definitions of gendered dress and use conflicting signals to challenge and confuse heterosexual society.”137 During the 1980s, radical drag illustrates another form of gender fuck that did not attempt to present a deceptive performance of the other sex role. Instead, it embodied extreme stereotypes from both male and female dress, “combining workmen’s boots, beards, and moustaches with very feminine dresses and full make-up, with the purpose of causing confusion through the use of conventional gender indicators.”138 Van Beirendonck’s runway show seems to reference this style of revolutionary drag since the male models do not enact femininity yet wear a mix of garments carrying both male and female symbolism. In discussing dress as a marker of identity, the runway show suggests the enabling of a ‘self-couture’ by disrupting gender signifiers. Masculine and feminine symbols are not meant to clash with one another, but to unify in a synthesis. The gender-bending can be understood as an embodiment of fabulousness that transgresses duality. Fabulousness and gender fuck have a common aim to disrupt associations between gender and body norms. The crystal breastplates, the lipstick, the ruffles, the delicate embroidered materials act as proof that, in the heterotopia of space embodied on the runway, fabulous masculinities are not only practiced by men who wear feminine styles and women’s clothes, but also by men who perform masculinity and style clothes in ways that unsettle understandings regarding gender binaries.
136 Cole, ’Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century, 185. 137 Cole, 88. 138 Cole, 51–52.
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Figure 34. Model wearing garments featuring the Figure 35. Model wearing a harness made from technique Broderie Anglaise, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, fabric, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, 2010 2010
A principal element of the collection is the relationship of the garments with their wearer’s bodies and, more specifically, skin. Some clothes are made from fabrics embroidered with several messages such as “Fear”, “Faith”, “Hope”, “Poets unite” and “Read my skin”. These words are pierced in the fabric using the technique of Broderie Anglaise that incorporates elements of cutwork, embroidery, and needle lace (fig. 34). This embroidery technique was widely used during the Victorian era, for women’s undergarments. This technique that cuts holes in the fabric reveals the skin underneath and gives a porosity to the garment. The open and exposed materials are in direct opposition to the protective rubber suits from the Paradise Pleasure Productions collection or with the fully dressed bears from Wonderland, which sported gloves, boots, and hats. As the title of the collection suggests, the viewer is invited to witness the reality of the body, ‘to read the skin’. Porosity takes a step forward. A blazer worn by a non-bear model has big holes in the fabric. The overalls are made from light cotton embroidered with words pierced in the fabric. The zippers are open under the belly button. These symbols signify a visible skin, which can be
64 seen, touched, and sexualized. Walter Van Beirendonck was never afraid to create controversies regarding sex and gender, yet in the collections of the 1990s, he included fully covered bear bodies. The presence of a visible and exposed body can be read as a political statement connected to the advancements of medicine towards the treatment and prevention of HIV. The word that is repeated and again on the garments is “Hope”. Paradise Pleasure Productions also had sexual and fetish references, but they were represented on a completely covered and protected body. Here, the body is vulnerable and exposed. It is the skin itself that is sexualized, not the rubber. Read My Skin is the last collection to date featuring bear bodies. Walter Van Beirendonck’s Fall 2011 Menswear featured a cast of exclusively African models, none of them being a bear. During the last twenty-five collections between 2011 and 2021, Walter Van Beirendonck did not include the bear body type in his collections. His cast follows the general trend in fashion shows, being comprised of young, slim men. Fat, mature, hairy bodies were replaced with slim, young, shaved bodies.
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The Venturesome Journey of Bear Masculinities in Walter Van Beirendonck’s Runways: A Final Discussion
In the conclusive chapter, I am summarizing the findings, as they are reflected by methods and theories. The evolution of the bear representation is assessed as it unfolds chronologically within the specific embodiment of each runway show. In Paradise Pleasure Production, bear bodies are included in a non-binary gender performativity that excludes facialization, yet it expresses itself through body shape and bodily movements. In this collection, bear identity exists only as a shape, and not as a full embodiment. In Wonderland, gay bears are a part of a coming-of-age narrative that includes all the human and non-human species, such as animals (swans, bears) and aliens (Coloured Stars). The extended embodiment of performativity includes human, animal, and post-human. Both Wonder and Read My Skin question the binary order by blurring the lines between genders not by creating a performance of the opposite gender but by incorporating feminine elements in a masculine embodiment. The strategies of gender-fuck are meant to move beyond the idea of ‘real man’ towards a more inclusive masculinity, which does not need to differentiate itself from femininity.
The theoretical frame of biopower has been proven useful in revealing and detailing the conditions of possibility that enable the creation of bear bodies. Each collection has a specific angle that reveals the mechanisms of biopower, with the purpose to enable reflection and agency. Paradise Pleasure Productions can be interpreted as meta reading of the biopower itself, seen as a force that moulds individualities and appoints roles to bodies. The show strips down performativity to the skeleton, and asks what is left when the bodies subjected to it are anonymous, faceless, and sexless? When one can see the face of his oppressor, freedom is enabled as a possibility. No one can totally escape the grasp of biopower, yet resistance is possible when a translation of the language of biopower is available. Wonderland can be understood as a dialogue with the fairy-tale narrative where prince-meets-princess, with the purpose of marriage and the production of new children that follow the same heteronormative matrix. A reading of the mechanisms of biopower unveils the stories that are forced within the bodies since childhood, where celebrations, toys, and clothes teach the language of gender conformity and enable the creation of disciplined bodies. Wonder and Read My Skin signal towards a world with fewer rules and more possibilities for exploration. Both show biopower shifting from heteronormativity and hyper-masculinity, towards a wider perspective. Read
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My Skin questions specifically the idea of masculine embodiment that requires masculine garments, and suggest other ways of masculine performance, outside of the limited confines of hegemonic masculinity.
Fabulousness was applied as a tool of the individual ‘self-couture’ through which the individual challenges the uniformizing force of the biopower by mastering the relationship between bodily appearance and dress, in a way that confuses the dictates of hegemonic masculinity. In Paradise Pleasure Production, shape and movement ‘write gender’ on a medium as close as possible to a tabula rasa, and then re-write it giving birth to the fabulous embodiments of showgirls, clowns, and other fabulous creatures. The visual symbolism of fabulousness worn on the bodies includes birds, exotic flowers, feathers, lace, and vibrant colours. The abundant queer symbolism overlayed on bodies enacting masculinity, suggests that the possibilities for fabulous enactment are limitless. Wonderland builds another route towards fabulousness by breaking the fairy-tale narrative of coming of age that disciplines children's bodies into practicing the princes and princesses roles and suggesting an alternative in which not only gender can be enacted, but also animal regression or alien ascension. Three non-human fabulous alternatives, the swans, the bears, and the stars share the same territory, transform into one another, and can write their own queer fairy tale on queer bodies. The 2010s collections, Wonder and Read My Skin, suggest non-conformative clothes on non- conformative bodies in a way that is similar to gender-fuck embodiment aesthetic of the Gay Liberation Front and radical drag queens. Feminine and masculine symbolism is fused seamlessly to expand the embodiment of masculinity outside the confines of masculine hegemony.
Muñoz’s concept of utopia and Foucault’s heterotopia have common features. Utopia projects a queer futurity that is not an escape but a preview of another possibility of existence that is not here yet. The runway acts like a heterotopia of space that visualizes futurities in the material and temporal dimensions of the stage. Here, utopia becomes flesh and can project a “not there yet” that acts as a power supply for agency. It suggests the embodiment of a masculinity aware of its own conditions of possibility and which, from this point of knowledge, can allow itself to queer up. Paradise Pleasure Productions suggests a futurity of radical performativity, which does not differentiate. Wonderland points out the utopian togetherness where oppositions are replaced by continuations, and different human and non-human characters coexist in a heterotopia of space. Wonder and Read My Skin refer to utopian spaces where masculine embodiments can perform “effeminate” acts without being less masculine. The heterotopias of the fashion shows envision a world where masculine embodiments can put on lipstick, wear skirts, feathers, and jewelled breastplates. They can be princes, they can be princesses, they can be bears, Kinky Kings,
67 showgirls, clowns, swans, or stars. Walter Van Beirendonck’s heterotopic runways signal a life outside hegemonic masculinity and strive to give agency to all the queers that do not live in that world.
From the perspective of Locke’s method of identifying and analysing bear bodies, the distinct categories of bears are represented in different percentages in the four chosen collections. Paradise Pleasure Productions, and Read My Skin feature predominantly muscular bodies, while Wonderland and the Wonder show from San Francisco feature a larger number of chubby and polar bears. The cast of the underwear models closing the Paris Wonder show is formed of white, muscular, fit men, as opposed to a more inclusive finale in San Francisco that contains a larger number of chubby and polar bears. This choice suggests a shift in the representation of bear bodies. The superbear becomes preeminent as the body type favoured by social media. The runway shows that are situated in two different decades, reflect the development of the bear subculture which started in San Francisco as an underground movement fuelled by an ethic of care and ended as a mainstream global phenomenon. The only chubby bear from the runway of Read My Skin, delivers a message of hope, printed on his t-shirt, “Walter Says Courage, Never Give up Hope. Live Love Read My Skin”.
Lastly, an interesting observation was connected to the representations of the gay bodies in relation to HIV. Both sets of collections have elements that are commentaries to the threat of HIV. In Paradise Pleasure Productions, the models have their bodies covered in latex. They are ‘protected’ with a condom-like second skin. The Wonderland’s models are wearing heavy winter garments, with boots and gloves and only their face is visible. In comparison, the next set of collections with a focus on gay bears is dated at the beginning of the 2010s, a period where the combination of antiretroviral therapies and PrEP kickstarted the end of the “age of AIDS” and made the death sentence obsolete. This reality brought back an interest in a sexual process of self- fashioning, and self-liberation that was indefinitely postponed by the AIDS crisis.139 Each runway show of Wonder collection is closed by models wearing nothing but white underwear and socks. Read My Skin contained a vast array of garments altered with the technique Broderie Anglaise, which pierces the fabric and exposes the skin. Furthermore, many of the utilitarian jumpsuits present in the collection were unzipped, leaving the chest and the belly exposed. This shift in
139 Joao Florencio, Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures : The Ethics of Becoming-Pig (Routledge, n.d.), 64. PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is medicine people at risk for HIV take to prevent getting HIV from sex or injection drug use. When taken as prescribed, PrEP is highly effective for preventing HIV.
68 representation of bodies and masculinities seems to indicate a change of attitude towards the body’s exposure.
Conclusion
The aim of this thesis was to shed light on a specific form of masculine embodiment, the gay bear, as it is represented on the runways of Walter Van Beirendonck in the collections W< Winter 1995–1996, Paradise Pleasure Productions, W< Winter 1996–1997 Wonderland, Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2010 Wonder collection, and Walter Van Beirendonck Spring/Summer 2011 Read My Skin. The analysis has been conducted based on the official video recordings of the collections, extracted from the MOMU archives, and on three amateur video recordings for the San Francisco show. This thesis addresses the existing gap in the literature regarding the runways of Walter Van Beirendonck featuring bear bodies. The Belgian designer introduced the bear shape on the runway when the mainstream fashionable body had vastly different characteristics. The representations of the bear body were analysed as a gender performance constructed in relation to hegemonic masculinity. The theoretical frame of gender performativity revealed that each collection reflected upon gender understood as a stylized repetition of acts, or, as Judith Butler specified, the way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds form the illusion of an abiding gendered self.140 The engagement with the critical theory of Michel Foucault and specifically with the concepts of biopower and heterotopia revealed the condition of possibility for gender production, as well positive futurities, which can shift the dynamics of power and destabilize cultural hegemony. José Esteban Muñoz’s utopia and Madison Moore’s notion of fabulousness led to embodiments situated outside hegemonic masculinity. This theoretical frame suggested queer gay bear embodiments of masculinity, which were described and developed in the analytical part of the thesis. The first analytical chapter followed the first two runway shows, Paradise Pleasure Productions, and Wonderland, as they reveal the mechanism of production of gender and broke narratives of coming of age through fabulous embodiments that suggest a radical performativity,
140 Butler, Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 179.
69 which goes beyond gender, and can slide into animal or alien. The second analytical chapter followed the fabulous embodiments of gender-bending, as they are unfolded in the shows Wonder and Read My Skin, where masculine and feminine signifiers are overlayed on masculine performances. The results suggest new possibilities of enacting inclusive masculinities that do not define themselves by opposition to femininity. The final discussion confronted once more the results with the methods and theories for a holistic perspective that unfolds temporally. Thus, the research that questions the non-normative body types included by Van Beirendonck in his work and their relationship to hegemonic masculinity led to their conclusive answers. The first research question, what is the contribution of the Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck to body inclusivity in the fashion industry, was answered by applying Locke’s method to identify the bear shape on the runway and comparing it with the dominant body types of each era. Van Beirendonck’s set of collections from the mid-1990s functioned as an explicit challenge to dominant representations of masculinity. Ignoring the diversity of male body types, the fashion industry of the 1990s and 2010s implied that the range of acceptable fashionable bodies was extremely limited. Van Beirendonck's multitude of silhouettes and shapes, sharing the space of the same runway show, embody a more authentic and less overtly constructed masculinity that includes everyone. By proving that men’s fashion could experiment with silhouette and with the language of masculinity, Walter Van Beirendonck expanded the conditions of possibility in the field of fashion. His contribution to menswear fashion is significant not only at the level of form and aesthetic but also as a manipulation of the visual semantics of masculinity. His runway shows created a safe space where non-normative bodies were represented as attractive, sexy, and worthy. Except for gay bears, many other embodiments are included. Models with different ages, genders, and shapes were featured simultaneously in the selected fashion shows on the same runway, as equal. The second research question, how do the gay bear bodies present in Van Beirendonck’s runways relate to the idea of hegemonic masculinity, led to the conclusion that the Belgian designer elaborated a visual language of masculinity that can expand through fabulous embodiments. These embodiments challenge the traditional heteronormative roles, but also the socially and culturally constructed benchmarks of bear embodiment, on which blue-collar masculinity and its dress, ‘bear-wear’ are preeminent. In the selected runways, Van Beirendonck suggests several fabulous embodiments that oppose hegemonic masculinity, namely radical inclusiveness, radical performativity, and gender-bending. The third research question asked how the representation of gay bear bodies in various collections changes during the years. The research suggested two main findings. Firstly, the bear
70 shape was influenced by the growth of a subculture that evolved to become a global phenomenon. The bear movement started as a non-exclusionary community of non-conformative masculinities. These values are reflected in San Francisco’s Wonder presentation and Wonderland’s runway, which feature older, heavier bodies. The shows from the 2010s preeminently feature the body type of the superbear. Secondly, there are significant differences in displaying visible skin on the runway. The 1990s collections display covered bodies, symbolically ‘protected’ by the threat of HIV/AIDS, while the 2010s shows undress and open the body. This change can be attributed to medical advancements regarding the prevention and treatment of HIV. Concerning bear embodiment in the work of Walter Van Beirendonck, several other research issues are still to be addressed. For instance, a further study of the recurrences of the symbol ‘Walterman’ in Walter Van Beirendonck's design language, as it unveiled in his collections. The gay bear symbolism in Van Beirendonck’s prolific work as an artist and art curator could also be a subject for further research. Another important topic could be a meticulous study and archival research of the first ten years of Walter Van Beirendonck’s work as a designer, following the themes that function as continuous red threads in his career. Lastly, an in-depth study on the political themes existent in Walter Van Beirendonck’s creative endeavours following a post-structuralist critical theory frame could unveil the designer’s work as a disruptor and an innovator.
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Website content Alaszkiewicz, Paula. “Walter Van Beirendonck.” In Fashion Photography Archive. Bloomsbury, 2015. https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fashion-photography- archive/article/walter-van-beirendonck Europeana.EU. “W.&L.T. (Walter Van Beirendonck) Paradise Pleasure Productions Collection A/W 1995/1996.” Accessed April 24, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871. “Europeana Fashion Focus: Sweater by Walter Van Beirendonck, 1987.” Europeana Fashion, 2016. http://fashionblog.image.ece.ntua.gr/tag/newsletter/. Leone, Oliver. “10 Questions With Walter Van Beirendock.” Your Fashion Archive, 2020. https://yourfashionarchive.com/10-questions-with-walter-van-beirendonck/. Sylvia Rubin and Beth Hughes. “Hip Belgian Designer Brightens BAMscape.” SFGate. Accessed April 5, 2021. https://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Hip-Belgian-designer- brightens-BAMscape-3262669.php#photo-2412085. “Waltervanbeirendonck-Official Website.” Accessed March 9, 2021. http://www.waltervanbeirendonck.com/HTML/home.html?/HTML/COLLECTIONS/WI NTER20202021/public.html&1.
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Image Sources
Cover photo. The finale of S/S Wonder, Paris, May 29, 2010. https://dressedfordinner.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/walter-van-beirendonck-bears/
Fig. 1 Cover of Bear Magazine No38, 1996. https://www.amazon.com/Bear-Magazine-Issue-June-1996/dp/B0037Z15Q8
Fig. 2 Cover of Bear Magazine No21, 1992, https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/bear-no-21-1992-brush-creek-media- inc/ewE40V0g9dUlmw
Fig. 3 Walterman figure; Retrospective Exhibition Dream the Dream Away, Mode Museum Antwerp, 2011, Accessed March 18, 2021. http://www.waltervanbeirendonck.com/HTML/home.html?/HTML/PROJECTS/DREAMTH EWORLDAWAKE/index.html&1
Fig. 4 Ikonik Karl artwork: Karl Lagerfeld web shop image, Accessed March 18, 2021 https://www.karl.com/in/game_cod51124802gv.html
Fig. 5 The Finale of A/W collection Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fashion-photography- archive/article/walter-van-beirendonck
Fig. 6 Model wearing red latex suit with flowers A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
Fig. 7 Model wearing black latex suit, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed March 21, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
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Fig.8 Matching garment 1, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
Fig.9 Matching garment 2, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
Fig.10 Tulle embroidered shirt and feather headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
Fig.11 Tulle shirt embroidered with flowers and feather headpiece, A/W Paradise Pleasure Productions, Paris, 1995, Accessed February 16, 2021. https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048208/OBJ28871
Fig.12 Model wearing the top “Finally Chesthair!” front, Paris, 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig. 13 Model wearing the top “Finally Chesthair!” back, Paris 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig. 14 Model wearing faux fur trousers and t- shirt with the text”Bears”, Paris 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 15, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.15 Bear model wearing a top printed with a scenery containing the backside of a bear, a mushroom, and the word ”Cute!”, Paris 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 15, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
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Fig.16 Model wearing a crop-top nude illusion garment, Paris, 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig. 17 Models wearing hoodies with rounded ears and gloves, Paris 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.18 The Finale of F/W Wonderland, Paris 1996, September 20, 2011. https://www.fluxmagazine.com/walter-van-beirendonck-momu-exhibition/wlt-aw96-by-chris- ruge/
Fig.19 Kinky King model wearing a top printed with crowned swans and heart, Paris 1996 Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.20 Kinky King model wearing a top printed with the image of a hairy chest and nipple clamps, Paris, 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.21 Models wearing ”bear superheroes” tops with rounded ears hoodies, Paris, 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.22 Model wearing an outfit in red and green, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
Fig.23, Model resembling the Santa Clause archetype, Paris, 1996, Mode Museum Antwerp “W< Winter 1996/1997 Wonderland.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_winter9697.php
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Fig.24 The finale of S/S Wonder, Paris, May 29, 2010. https://dressedfordinner.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/walter-van-beirendonck-bears/
Fig. 25 Bear model S/S Wonder, San Francisco, January 25, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHuNK_cMymk
Fig.26 Bear model with long beard, S/S Wonder, San Francisco, January 25, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHuNK_cMymk
Fig.27 Model wearing a pink jumpsuit, Paris, 2009, Mode Museum Antwerp. “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®.” Accessed April 5, 2021. http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2010.php
Fig. 28 Model wearing a green jumpsuit, Paris, 2009, Mode Museum Antwerp. “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®.” Accessed April 5, 2021 http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2010.php
Fig. 29 Model wearing a pink shirt dress with the text “Hi!”, Paris, 2009, Mode Museum Antwerp. “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®.” Accessed April 5, 2021 http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2010.php
Fig.30 Model wearing a khaki skirt, Paris, 2009, Mode Museum Antwerp. “Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 Wonde®.” Accessed April 5, 2021 http://waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be/en/video_summer2010.php
Fig.31 The Finale of S/S Wonder, San Francisco, May 11, 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN79pmxrkIY
Fig.32 Model dressed in pink, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, June 24, 2010. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2011-menswear/walter-van- beirendonck/slideshow/collection#23
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Fig.33 Model wearing a breastplate, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, June 24, 2010. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2011-menswear/walter-van- beirendonck/slideshow/collection#36
Fig. 34 Model wearing garments featuring the technique Broderie Anglaise, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, June 24, 2010. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2011-menswear/walter-van- beirendonck/slideshow/collection#22
Fig.35 Model wearing a harness made from fabric, S/S Read My Skin, Paris, June 24, 2010. https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2011-menswear/walter-van- beirendonck/slideshow/collection#5
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