This advertisement isn't super recent. It was printed in 2008. The guy in this Marc Jacobs add is my old roommate, Cole Mohr. Cole was "discovered" on the streets of New York City by a casting agent in 2007 and a few short months later he was traveling internationally shooting photographs like this one. I was a little surprised with how quickly successful Cole became. He was a good looking kid to be sure, but he didn't have the kind of looks that I associated with a male high-fashion model. Standing about 6'4'' and weighing 145 lbs on a good day, he definitely didn't fit the Abercrombie catalogue profile, but he was immediately well received by haute couture designers like Christian Dior and Marc Jacobs.
This photograph is selling a Marc Jacobs' hand bag (and jacket) to women, yet they chose to use a male model to display the product. The quality of the photograph is washed out and grainy, which gives the impression that there was little preparation and or/editing during production. Though he is holding a handbag and wearing a woman's coat, Mohr is definitely not "in drag." His masculinity is articulated through his posture. His long legs bowed out in a sturdy, chest-out squat instantly read "cocky." He is also gripping the handbag aggressively and has it positioned over what appears to be his nude crotch, which serves as a visual stand in for his scrotum. This physical stance combined with his facial expression conveys a "Check-out-my-big-purple-bag" kind of attitude.
It seems that Marc Jacobs is using the sexuality attributed to the male body to give edge to his women's line. This edge lies in the aggressively confident attitude associated with masculinity. In short, he's trying to sell women's fashion that has balls. On first impression, this photography might read as androgynous or gender-ambiguous, but I argue that it directly recognizes and represents culturally accepted notions of masculinity and femininity. The advertisement achieves its agency through the careful positioning the two ideologies against each other.
This is very interesting! I have never seen an ad that was directed towards women using a male. The way you read into this was also very interesting. I would completely agree that his posture is extremely manly, but he ads a sense of femininity that does wonders for the image!
ReplyDeleteWow! Nothing moves product like some illegal, rule-breaking images. And how homophobic are we? I guess 'pretty much' in my case, since I couldn't stop looking and couldn't stop feeling REALLY uncomfortable. I find it pretty transgressive, gender-bendy.
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