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Pretty Boy: Difference between revisions
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(major update and history lesson on the death of the aesthetic self in the west vs the wodaabe) |
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Fabio Lanzoni could have been the West's egret bird as he was, for a brief window in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the closest thing the West ever produced to a unified male aesthetic symbol. The hair—, flowing, unmistakably deliberate. The physique—muscular but not grotesque, built for romance novels not powerlifting competitions. The face in that precice mascthetic Goldilocks zone: strong jaw, heavy brow but soft eyes. The affect— on women unabashedly romantic, performatively sincere, utterly without irony. He was on 400 romance novel covers. He was on I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! commercials. He was recognizable to grandmothers and teenage girls alike. He was also, crucially, a role. Not a checklist of traits to be approximated through surgery and starvation, but a character you could play: the conquering lover, the rescuing prince, the man who arrives on horseback and speaks in declarations. Men did not look at Fabio and think, I need to measure my zygomatic arch. They looked at Fabio and thought, I wonder if I could pull off that cape. | Fabio Lanzoni could have been the West's egret bird as he was, for a brief window in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the closest thing the West ever produced to a unified male aesthetic symbol. The hair—, flowing, unmistakably deliberate. The physique—muscular but not grotesque, built for romance novels not powerlifting competitions. The face in that precice mascthetic Goldilocks zone: strong jaw, heavy brow but soft eyes. The affect— on women unabashedly romantic, performatively sincere, utterly without irony. He was on 400 romance novel covers. He was on I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! commercials. He was recognizable to grandmothers and teenage girls alike. He was also, crucially, a role. Not a checklist of traits to be approximated through surgery and starvation, but a character you could play: the conquering lover, the rescuing prince, the man who arrives on horseback and speaks in declarations. Men did not look at Fabio and think, I need to measure my zygomatic arch. They looked at Fabio and thought, I wonder if I could pull off that cape. | ||
But the West has no mechanism for transforming a commercial image into a sacred symbol. Fabio was a product, not a totem. His face sold butter, then it sold cologne, then it sold nostalgia. When his moment passed, there was no ritual to preserve him. No generation of fathers taught their sons the Dance of Fabio. No women gathered annually to judge which local man best embodied the Spirit of the Romance Cover. The market simply moved on, and Fabio became a punchline, and the aesthetic void he left was filled not by a new symbol but by a thousand competing micro-templates: the metrosexual, the hipster, the lumbersexual, the e-boy, the K-pop idol, the TikTok pretty boy, the gymcel, the androgynous alt model, the dark triad "[Chad]", the Zaddy for girls with daddy issues, the Silver Fox. Each comes with its own set of measurable metrics, its own forums, its own contradictions. Each is consumed and discarded by the attention economy within months. The result is the "looksmaxxing" mindset: a desperate attempt to construct, from first principles and fragmented data, a personal optimization algorithm that substitutes for the missing collective ritual. This is why Western men are not truly becoming like the Wodaabe, despite the superficial resemblance. The Wodaabe man is vain, yes. He spends hours applying makeup, arranging his hair, practicing his expressions. But his vanity is ceremonial. It is performed for a specific audience, on a specific date, within a specific tradition that gives his efforts meaning regardless of outcome. Even the losers of the Gerewol return to their community with their dignity intact; they have participated in the renewal of the tribe. | But the West has no mechanism for transforming a commercial image into a sacred symbol. Fabio was a product, not a totem. His face sold butter, then it sold cologne, then it sold nostalgia. When his moment passed, there was no ritual to preserve him. No generation of fathers taught their sons the Dance of Fabio. No women gathered annually to judge which local man best embodied the Spirit of the Romance Cover. The market simply moved on, and Fabio became a punchline, and the aesthetic void he left was filled not by a new symbol but by a thousand competing micro-templates: the metrosexual, the hipster, the lumbersexual, the e-boy, the K-pop idol, the TikTok pretty boy, the gymcel, the androgynous alt model, the dark triad "[[Chad]]", the Zaddy for girls with daddy issues, the Silver Fox. Each comes with its own set of measurable metrics, its own forums, its own contradictions. Each is consumed and discarded by the attention economy within months. The result is the "looksmaxxing" mindset: a desperate attempt to construct, from first principles and fragmented data, a personal optimization algorithm that substitutes for the missing collective ritual. This is why Western men are not truly becoming like the Wodaabe, despite the superficial resemblance. The Wodaabe man is vain, yes. He spends hours applying makeup, arranging his hair, practicing his expressions. But his vanity is ceremonial. It is performed for a specific audience, on a specific date, within a specific tradition that gives his efforts meaning regardless of outcome. Even the losers of the Gerewol return to their community with their dignity intact; they have participated in the renewal of the tribe. | ||
The Western looksmaxxer, by contrast, experiences his vanity as existential maintenance. He does not prepare for a ritual; he prepares for all of life, which is to say, for no moment in particular. He must always be camera-ready, because the camera is everywhere and the judgment never stops. He cannot rest, because resting is falling behind. He cannot claim victory, because victory is defined as a moving average. | The Western looksmaxxer, by contrast, experiences his vanity as existential maintenance. He does not prepare for a ritual; he prepares for all of life, which is to say, for no moment in particular. He must always be camera-ready, because the camera is everywhere and the judgment never stops. He cannot rest, because resting is falling behind. He cannot claim victory, because victory is defined as a moving average. | ||