Like them, I was a product of conditioning, taught to think only these white muscular men were desirable.Ĭhristian appealed because he knew all this, understood the theory that animated my anxieties. But I took such evenings as concessions and kept on with the chase. Even in my Calvins, it was clear I wasn’t one of them, the men who held me at arm’s length even when they were inside me. While some men took this bait, more common were those who disclaimed in their profiles, “no fats, no femmes, no Asians.” (Or “no spice, no rice.”) Sometimes, men who wrote such slurs fucked me anyway, reminding me how racists might make exceptions in the name of conquest. I didn’t see myself as anything but a twink, at the ages of twenty and twenty-one, with only the nubile charms of a Filipino boy to leverage in uber-competitive New York. Whenever I met up with Christian, or Gareth, or Adam, or any of my nameless men, I always made sure to wear my Calvins, even though they couldn’t make me look like Marky Mark or David. And I bought Calvin Klein capitalized on my need for validation, for mythic signs of virility. They then use those standards to sell their products to anyone who will listen, queer or otherwise, implying that their products provide an avenue to that beauty. Still, the people behind such ads and images-very often queer men themselves (who do you think drew the swollen muscles on Hercules and Zeus in the Disney film?)-set the standards of male beauty. Underwear ads alone don’t dictate the gay male obsession with whiteness and masculinity various cultural phenomena also teach racism and internalized femmephobia. They sold the very myth of American masculinity. As a young Filipino immigrant beginning to engage with American culture as practice, I didn’t question the messaging and bought into it instead. Here were two lessons bundled into one for queer little boys: what to desire and what to desire to become. They gave the impression that to be white and muscular were prerequisites to being sellable, worthy of being wanted.
From the first Calvin Klein ad in 1982, featuring the Olympian Tom Hintnaus viewed from the bottom, to Mark Wahlberg in his Calvins in 1992, to David Beckham smoldering in repose for Emporio Armani in 2008-those campaigns and images were persuasive, even when they were diluted into less intentionally provocative images on packaging for Fruit of the Loom.
The blinding whiteness of those underwear aisles was not lost on me. Just as I once bought a studded belt and bracelet at Hot Topic to better resemble the classmate I was crushing on, I took those opportunities to buy what I hoped would make me desirable, would link me to other men. After taking in a visual feast of chiseled bodies, I’d rearrange my erection and pick a package I could take home. I would abscond to that PG-13 corner of Macy’s whenever my mother gave me money and time at the mall. Many pubescent gay boys go through this rite of passage, stealing glances at the packages on such packages, imprinting on men who’ve come from Olympus itself. That gallery of bodies informed my sexual ideal, those aisles of men seemingly hewn from marble.
Long before the Greek antiquities room at the Met in New York, I had Macy’s at the Fashion Show shopping mall in Las Vegas. David Beckham, Freddie Ljungberg, Jamie Dornan, and-of course, the archetype-the classical Marky Mark. It was there that I first saw them, that carved alabaster lot, a pantheon of idolized physiques.
For me, it began in the men’s underwear section.