According to the popular nursery rhyme, boys are made of ‘frogs and snails and puppy dog’s tails’, but in today’s grown up world it’s a little bit harder to put a finger on what boys are made of exactly. Take Thomas Beatie, the famous ‘pregnant man’ as an example; just this month he gave birth to his second baby. Odd? Possibly, but let’s not baffle ourselves with that and focus on the portrayal of male nudity in photography instead.
It may be the case that the male form has been photographed in its entirety since the dawn of the camera but whilst the female physique burnt its way through taboo and into pop-culture by means of men’s magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse, the easy association of the male body with homoeroticism has proven to be a high hurdle to overcome and has, in turn, left jobs like starring in Italian TV sunblock commercials solely to well endowed, yet, sparsely clad women, and certainly not men.
Things, it seems, are not on the mend. Just last year in an essay for British GQ STYLE titled 'Masculinity Stripped Bare', Tom Ford himself wrote the following:
"As much as I've tried, it has been consistently harder to get images of nude men onto magazine pages and billboards than it has nude women. In a society where images of brutal violence are consumed during breakfast, the male nude is one of our last taboos. There's a double standard at play here: magazines that are happy to fund ads featuring an artfully lit female nude will balk at an image of her male counterpart."
Hearing this from the man who on numerous counts has teamed up with Terry Richardson to produce a series of ads for clothing lines which at times feature very little of what their meant to be selling may sound a little surprising, but like it or not, this is where the world stands.
So if this is the reality of the situation in the ‘progressive’ U.S., then what about Malta? Considering the conservative state of things, the future is not looking so bleak. During the month of July, No 68, St, Lucy Street, Valletta will be hosting an exhibition titled ‘The Life Model - Between Nude and Naked’ featuring works by, Vince Briffa, Anthony Calleja, Alexandra Pace, Patrick Dalli, Jeni Caruana, Astrid Steinbrecher and Zygimantas Augustinas. The exhibition, curated by Patrick Fenech, will amidst, a variety of approaches of the female form also feature male nudity in its aim to encourage debate and push the boundaries of the acceptable through visual art.
‘The Life Model - Between Nude and Naked’, part of the fourth edition of the Malta Arts Festival, is open at No. 68, St, Lucy Street, Valletta from the 3rd to the 31st July.
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