Your Money vs. Beauty, Style and Celebration
If anyone ever gets the idea from me that developing a more responsible relationship with money has been easy, I must do more to present a realistic picture of the constant work it takes to take control of my money.
With each daily struggle I face, I’m forced to pay attention to little nuances that make my personal finances a challenge. Recently I was inspired to look at my spending from a new angle and ask myself some hard questions after a mentor of mine commented on the ways I put high amounts of pressure on myself regarding fitness and appearance.
He said to me, “You certainly have an expression of the ‘gay gene.’ There is a keen appreciation you have for beauty, style and celebration, and there’s a different set of pressures that comes along with it.”
I’m still having trouble digesting his comment. However, the ‘gay gene’ comment beautifully summed up a set of traits that can be applied to some or many LGBT people we know who, like it or not, have some level of social influence in our community. Often, the straight population may also be quick to look at us in the same light. I couldn’t help but wonder, 1) Do we really have a greater than average appreciation of beauty, style and celebration in the LGBT community? 2) Could it be possible this influences our spending? 3) To what degree could these influences extend?
There are just too many ways to approach the first question; picking one won’t do the topic justice. Even mentioning a touchy topic like this is opening a can of worms. But since the can is open, I’d like to mention that I took a stab at getting free information about LGBT spending patterns. I was disappointed to find almost nothing on lesbian spending. It seems there is an obsession with tracking gay male dollars, or lumping lesbian spending with gay male spending. This seems to be an oversight market researchers or the media may want to correct.
An online poll for gay men asked “What do you spend most of your money on?” The top three answers were Clothes, Travel and Fine Dining / Going Out. However, there was no additional demographic information about the respondents, so it’s hard to say whether or not spending better reflected a certain age group or income range. I couldn’t help but wonder what the top answers of straight people would be if they answered this poll.
I don’t really have answers here, just questions about whether or not it’s true that beauty, style and celebration together have a distinct role in the LGBT community. I wasn’t happy with the comment my mentor made to me. I took offense at having a stereotype attributed to me that I associate with rabid consumerism and vanity. But then again, Zac and I spent the weekend preparing our new apartment with meticulous attention to detail, planned a fabulous housewarming party, and then saw that we spent a considerable amount of money to get rave reviews from our friends about our new place. Maybe my mentor was on to something that I don’t necessarily want to admit.
As Zac eloquently put it, “Only a sucker wouldn’t ask questions about what they’re spending money on?” Some questions are hard to ask and even harder to answer. These questions are particulary tough.
John,
This is a very interesting question: is there some connection between gay identity and certain cultural attributes (like an appreciation for style, as you put it)? And if one cannot deny tout court a connection, what is the basis of such a connection?
I would respond in a few ways: First, let’s establish from the onset that existing stereotypes about LGBT folk are very diverse and contingent upon context. The “Queer Eye” lifestyle (which I think the show reproduces qua expression of “gayness” without sufficient self criticism and, thus, heads in the direction of problematic stereotyping) tend to be affixed onto more middle class, often white and professional class, gay male bodies. Alternatively, the media (both the self identified “gay” press and the mainstream media) seems obsessed with the whole “down low” thing among urban blacks (and other men of color). Those are two examples of the diversity.
Market and media attempts to define the contours of identity will always fail and will always exclude and distort. That’s a truism that holds for all of us who embody this consumer society. Of course, there are many professional class gay men who are not connoisseurs of haute couture and who are, in fact, happily slovenly by the standards set forth by the cultural stereotype. And, the down low thing is very complicated. I’ve often wondered if part of the problem is that urban men of color (and working class GBT men in general) look at the Queer Eye standards of identity (or “Will and Grace”, “Queer as Folk”) and say, “hey, if that’s what gay is, that’s not me”. Due to the class and race issues unfortunately prevalent in the visible gay rights movement (like HRC), even empowered, seemingly self-motivated deployments of positive representations of gays in media can violently exclude and can trap us into these boxes…the idea that our rights should be secured because we are fun and fabulous and can help straight women with their fashion issues. That’s no way to establish any long-term security for gay rights…it’s a dangerous ploy that could come back and kick us in the ass.
Now, this is to say that the stereotypes are definitely there and that none of our communities fully escapes the effects and dangers of commodification. I watch the “L Word” and am dismayed by the fact that there is a store associated with the show where one can shop for Lesbian chic clothes, etc. The dangers associated with connecting “Lesbian” to a certain set of highly classed practices are apparent to me and many LGBT activists and academics. Yet, it us undeniable too that these visible markers of community–even if they are more linked to markets than we’d like to admit–help people through coming out processes and support people’s subjectivity, existentially. So, it’s complicated and there’s a mix of good, bad and ugly in the reproduction of gay niche markets–which, in my view, are most to “blame” for the reproduction of stereotypes about LGBT folk (religion is also a biggie, of course).
The comforting news for me is that I don’t think we LGBT folk are alone in any of this. Think about the cultural scripts for others–like straight men. If you stop and think about it, is there anything essential about straightness and a baseball cap or watching football? Markets and material practices have just as much to do with the reproduction of straight bodies and the deployment of “straightness”. “Natural law” is highly cultural and material. Just don’t tell the Pope this!
We all need to find ways to claim freedom without succumbing to a romantic idealism that simply dismisses the effects of culture and markets on the formation of identity. I have my own way of doing this but we will all do this in particular ways. What’s your way of saying “not quite” to the stereotypes that confront you?
John,
My bad. I omitted something that is absolutely key. There are many valances at play when we talk about stereotyping through consumption in this society. Oftentimes, women and LGBT folk are chastisised by straights for being more materialistic, shallow and prone to fetish than the heterosexist white, male, straight norm (they’ll gladly take our money but still name us as somehow less than reasonable). So, yeah, I am someone who wants to critique the excesses of American consumerism in any context, including the visible gay rights community and “gay media”. But, I also need to be careful not to reproduce the idea that consumption and materialism are “feminine” and gay while distance from consumption is and materialism is “masculine”, straight and “reasonable”. The truth is that straight men and the homogenized sets of practices that indicate straightness are highly consumptive and no less prone to excess (everything from Friday night happy hour to baseball to suburbia to weddings to the culture of business networking). I am a “jeans and a tee shirt” guy (well, actually, sweaters and slacks in a professional context) *but* I work hard to try to weed out the inevitable remnants of this carrying connotations of positing a certain reasonableness over and against Queer materiality. When I was still using online dating, I noticed that “jeans and tee shirt” often went hand in hand with “straight acting”, a term I absolutely abhor. My larger point is that there is nothing inevitable or natural about jeans and tee shirts or Prada having anything to do with any sexual or gender identity, regardless of what both “gay” and “straight” media sometimes (implicitly or explicitly) claim. The associations are cultural, political and can be changed. Maybe the mere fact of association is what presents the ethical dilemmas whether we are LGBT, poor, immigrants, people of color, women, Jewish or Muslim, etc.
I can always count on Harvard Student to raise points and pose questions that get me thinking for hours and hours. Thank you for that. This is part of what makes writing for Queercents so much fun.
I’m going to respond to your question about stereotypes that confront me.
I believe I developed a sensitive awareness of discrimination or treatment of “the other” because I grew up rather ethnically ambiguous in a predominantly white and conservative area. One of the first things I often saw people around me turn to for justifying outwardly or indirectly bigoted views was stereotypes.
I’m taking for granted that I can apply my experiences with my ethnicity towards my experiences with sexual identity. But in all truth, I believe how I came to confront questions and understanding of ethnic identity shaped how I respond to sexual identity.
It’s mostly an emotional response I have when people turn to stereotypes. Some people who didn’t know I was Latino would turn to me, make fun of someone who was Latino, and expect me to chime in with them. I’ve had experiences where I was taunted in some incredibly racist ways just for speaking Spanish at home. At the same time, I couldn’t really turn to other Latino kids for acceptance because I didn’t look like them, or they didn’t think I was Latin enough. It’s a familiar story in suburbia by now.
These experiences made me aggressively anti-identity labeling or identifying for a while. Since I felt I couldn’t really please anyone around me, I made it a point to others to assert facts. [Case in point with a running dialogue: “My parents are from South America. Yes, I know I don’t look Latin. Thanks for reminding me. Yes, I know we’re one of the few minorities in this neighborhood. Why must we move? Are you telling me you’re expecting us to be poor? What’s the logic here?”] Yet, I can assert all the facts I want, I’m often correcting people by saying I’m a second-generation Latino. I check off Latino in forms. I don’t have issue with identifying as Latino anymore because I feel comfortable enough to demand from people that I’m a unique Latino in appearance, and they must understand that not everyone in a ethnic group must conform to what they know or see in stereotypes.
I don’t have that same assertiveness with issues around my sexual identity. Essentially, as I grow more into and establish a firm sense of adulthood, I work on a trial and error basis of how my sexual identity fits with my sense of adulthood. I’ve reached a point where acceptance by peers means less to me, but judgment by peers can boil me. I don’t consider the LGBT community my full range of peers. I encounter people professionally and socially from all circles. At a base level, all I ask for from peers is mutual respect. Part of that respect I would extend to someone upon introduction is leaving stereotypes at the door. Going back to what I said earlier, I associate stereotypes with judgment, looking down on “the other,” and an expectation to conform to stereotypes.
So now that I think I’m older and wiser, my mentor points out that one vulnerable spot in my character regarding superficiality. I tell myself that my money is going to go to more important goals, but then a claim is made against me regarding a heightened appreciation of beauty, style and celebration that may actually be true, because that’s where some of my money is going instead of saving. It has really made me wonder, is this something specifically related to being gay, or this related to being an adult with a flair for style? I never really think I’m stylish because that’s what people expect of a gay man. The idea I could play a role in perpetuating a stereotype I critique is rather unsettling.
As I integrate sexual identity into my adult life, I wonder why I can’t shuck off concerns about stereotypes associated with the LGBT community the way I can dismiss and deflate the power of stereotypes attributed to Latinos. If I could, I think I could be on something, but what, I’m not quite sure.
John,
I am myself Latino and second generation as well. I identify as multi-racial (all the major food groups are there in the last three generations) but have come to have a growing appreciation for the complexities of Latino identity. In Boston, where there is a less politicized Latino public identity, I often pass as white or, at least, not black, not Asian, not obviously native. Most people probably think I am Brazilian–which in these parts is closer to being Italian or Greek than it is in New York City, my hometown.
In New York, on the other hand, my experience is that when I walk around I am usually coded Latino, which is its own thing in the context of this city (given the history of immigration and a strong history of Puerto Rican political activism). When I am dressed down, unshaven and wear a baseball cap, I am likely to be followed in stores (that’s happened to me a lot; last month a lady working behind the counter at a local dinner thought I was going to steal a Linzer tart I was getting for my dad).
It’s kind of strange (or not) but I think it’s probably harder to be black in Boston than in NYC (I’ve actually been told this) but easier to be Latin in Boston than in NYC at the cost of greater invisibility. So, “easier”/ “harder” is actually subjective. Would I rather be recognized the way I identify or lumped in with other swarthy “ethnics”? That said, being pegged for anything is always risky and often flirts with the possibility of stereotyping.
I have also been told I wasn’t Latin enough by the Latino identity police. For example, one fellow classmate at NYU Law actually told me I was “suspect” because I didn’t like dancing salsa and merenge (frankly, I am an awful dancer of any music…a double whammy for a gay Latino). She was being totally serious. In the context of an elite law school, lots of people get anxious about losing their cultural identity and, therefore, close ranks. The problem was that it seemed to me that in order to be a Latino in good standing in this context had almost everything to do with consumption (going with the gang to Gonzalez y Gonzalez for dancing or going to the new, hip Cuban restaurant and listening to the new Latin artist du jour). You would think that at a law school this wouldn’t be true but people were less interested in my politics or all the grappling I have done with my family history or Latin American literature. I remember thinking that it was very dangerous to ping “Latinoness” on things that are designed, at base, to make money for–often–non-Latinos! Somehow, for some of my classmates, consuming at restaurants that serve Latin food became “subversive” and I wasn’t buying it…
As far as your questions at the end, I personally try to do two things. One: remain critical of the visible representations of LGBT identities–whether they come from a major, run of the mill corporation or a “Queer” project like the “L Word” or “Queer as Folk”. What do these images and scripts leave out? How do I relate to the traces of what and who’s missing? Two: Point out how straight people are just as interested in style and beauty and are just as material and prone to materialism as I am. Jocks have their own code and keeping up with it entails spending a ton of dough on sports outings, memorabilia and eating certain foods. Businessmen and women like to do the happy hour thing and go to their singles bars, don’t they? Don’t they dress to impress? Academics aren’t just born inhabiting the norms and patterns of style I see around me. They shop for an aesthetic too because clothes don’t just drop from the sky. In the end, the question still is for me how to reclaim a space for self-criticism, social criticism, broad social justice and freedom within the context of consumer society, whoever we are. This means on some fundamental level claiming my sexual and gender identity in spite of or despite the market niches and branded lifestyles. I can’t fully escape, of course, but I can say: “the good I seek or hope to embody is not yours to give me, Wall Street”. The necessary step is checking my idealism at the door and being honest with myself about the fact that markets do shape racial, ethnic and gender identity”the philosophers’ protestations aside. Then, the work of cultivating something new begins.
P.S. Something that I think links urban people of color and the mainstream visible gay movement is precisely this complex situation with consumer society. Hip-hop cultures definitely do support the subjectivities of many people and provide existential props in a racist, classist society. Similarly, techno clubs and the TV shows do the same for many gay people. In both cases, however, there are manifest dangers and there is corporate abuse and exploitation.
John,
Sorry to double post again. But, I was rereading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for my general exams and came across a very a propos quote. In Book I, where he begins his query into what the “highest good” is, Aristotle writes of what he calls “ordinary” and “vulgar” people: “On the good and happiness: to judge from their lives, most people, i.e., the most vulgar seem–not unreasonably–to suppose it to be pleasure; that is just why they favor the life of consumption.” I think he ultimately juxtaposes emotion and pleasure to reason and self-control, though not as dichotomously as Plato.
In our society, I think women, gays, blacks, in some ways Latinos (though there is the myth of the poor, happy Latino making due with little money and much love) and Jews are singularly singled out for being out of control viz. money, whether this is by spending too much of it or obsessively hording it. The sexism, racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism in all of this run very deep. The funny thing is that when I look around at those who can only point the finger at others and never at themselves, I see lots of materialism! It’s just masked by rhetoric that equates the habits of the straight, white, middle-class world with “reasonableness” and balance.
A metaphor, if you will: people often look at Catholicism and see pageantry, lots of smells and bells and, therefore, code Catholicism as highly “ritualistic”. The same people might look at a Presbyterian service and see severity, by contrast. This has often led people to think of Presbyterians as more fully embodying a religion of “reason” and discipline. The truth is, though, that Presbyterian churches are just as interested in issues of style and have their own rituals and liturgies. It’s just that the aesthetic intends to convey the divide between as opposed to the meeting in time of human and divine. My point: let’s not confuse differences in style with the idea that some people have it/embody it and others do not. Self-proclaimed “neutrality” and “reasonableness” have always been the weapons of heterosexist, racist and classist America.
And, on the other hand, this also does not mean that Queers (or straight women, the working classes, blacks, Latinos or Jews) can’t fall into pits of destructive materialism like anyone else.
John,
As you can see, your extremely provocative post has me deep in thought and reflection.
I spoke with the guy I am seeing and this came up: OK, so if you (like many of us) worry about the role you play “…in perpetuating a stereotype…”, one might approach a solution in a way, I think has problems. That way would be to say, “fine, I’ll mix and match feminine and masculine traits so as to destabilize my identity.” In the most vulgar sense, this would mean taking as a given that football is masculine and interior design is feminine and saying, “I will play football AND decorate my home well JUST TO SHOW THEM!” This probably wouldn’t all be done rationally or consciously but you get my drift. Internalized homophobia might prompt us to start doing something coded “masculine” (like watching football) and avoiding activities coded “gay” (like appreciating show tunes). A more active, political approach, like I said, might mix and match, dialectically, things coded “straight” and “gay”. My friend thinks this is a fine solution but I very much disagree (at least, for me). I want to ask why activities are coded “masculine”, “feminine”, gay or straight in the first place. Did the gods send down some tablet I somehow missed that commanded women and gays to shop Prada (or whatever) and straight men to drink beer and eat hotdogs at Fenway, their three-year-old boy children at their side dressed in full Red Sox regalia? From my point of view, this is the basic issue–denormalizing the whole sets of mundane, consumptive practices by which Western capitalism reproduces “man”, “woman”, “masculine”, “feminine” straight and gay.
A friend once commented that my pad didn’t seem very “gay” because I’m not the world’s neatest person. The sheer stupidity of the comment and the sheer cultural power behind the comment struck me. So, if I were you, I wouldn’t stop decorating your home as you and your partner see fit but would, instead, challenge both gays and straights that want to call this “gay”. I used to feel guilty for not being “gay” enough in my dress and some other habits but have realized that there is no good reason for me to take lessons in gay citizenship from darn marketers intent on preserving certain highly contingent differences in order to sell their wares to niche markets. If you read what I write, know my politics or know me in any way, it’s pretty clear who I am and who I am proud to be…