Define Beauty.

men's inner turmoil continues.

*** I almost deleted this post. Out of a fear of being misunderstood. Noticing I’d lacked diligence at points. As an instinctive reaction to unexpected critique. Instead, I’ve sat in the discomfort. Need to heal that shit, to be honest. Anchor my intention. I was already working on a post about abandonment. Panic in the wake of a potential misstep. That might come next.

I’m taken aback by how many aspects of a single TikTok I can despise at once. I’ve experienced a cacophony of suffocation. In less than a minute. You might have seen it, but I’ll describe.

A young, unhoused man is stood at a traffic light in the US. Unhoused not homeless. Because not having a house is in this society is despicable. There is no reason why. No, it isn’t their fault. Greed only. Top down mugs. So this young man is stood there. On a mild day and he’s visibly low. His eyelids, his posture. It’s hard to watch because it shouldn’t be a reality. And yet, I am watching it.

I’m watching it because some fucking moron is filming him from his car. Not only is he filming this man without his consent. He’s filming him because the unhoused man is noticeably attractive. His facial bone structure is remarkable. Beautiful hair and beard. The moron filming makes the point.

“Ladies, make that investment”

All a lady would need to do is to make an ‘investment’ and they could have this gorgeous man. Actually, before he makes that point, the moron cameraman has to clarify that he himself is not gay.

In fact the man filming continually reminds anyone watching that he’s not gay. He’s not gay for being able to identify that another man is attractive. Have to deep it. The depth of despair. Who is he afraid of? Some boys club? Pathetic. Does my head in. Living life on the wrong side of a manhole cover.

And regardless. Why is that the priority. For people to not think he’s gay. Not, instead, wondering how this man he’s filming has found himself without a roof over his head. With a distant gaze and minimal movement. In front of a crowd of pedals. Ready to speed past him and jump back on the hamster wheel. This man doesn’t seem to have the mental dexterity to feel empathy. Merely objectification for the sake of some attention.

I need to catch myself.

I’m calling the man a moron because this kind of shit makes me angry. If I’m to breath through and step back slightly, I can see the ice. The ‘frozen love’ as my friend Donna says. I would hate to power a body so disconnected. Unaffected. Fragile and frightened. Asleep. I should send love to the cameraman to wake him up. He is asleep. Probably never uses a straw when he drinks. Permanent laughter mask. ‘It’s not that deep’. It’s a constant barrier. Brick wall. But of course, we need intimacy. And we need enough social awareness to know it’s not gay to identify beauty in another man and also actually it’s bizarre to prioritise a TikTok over concern for his community.

I hope the clip became viral out of annoyance and not agreement.

I saw a woman post this clip and dissect our values. How we choke on beauty. Because we do. She challenged the idea that pretty privilege is misunderstood. Look at this pretty man with no privilege. It doesn’t mean anything. And even my friends who aren’t pretty are very happy, she said. Maybe more happy than the pretty people.

I agree to an extent. Every privilege pays a price. Every one. Some beautiful women that I’ve encountered in my life have felt muted. Some times uninterested. Perhaps this pattern of nonchalance has formed in the wake of minimal effort. People bending to whims. Within reason. I interviewed a brilliant friend once about her career. She spoke of being considered unattractive in school. She actually thanked that reality because in her words she ‘developed a personality instead’. It’s always stayed with me. I think she’s right. Much like anything, resistance creates form. Different ways to garner attention. What makes a good comedian?

If you’ve followed me for a minute you’ll know my last resort is classifying people by gender. Most of the time, I hate it. Because there are intersections. There’s variation. Beauty however is infected en masse by capitalist patriarchy. This video is an example of the pretty privilege for men being virtually non existent. The only privilege I can think of is women romanticising men in the wake of murder. Or something like that. Killer but he’s hot kind of thing. Fan mail. Whatever. But these men are sentenced regardless.

On the other hand I remember the pretty young white blonde girl from Eton or Oxford or one of those places, who stabbed her boyfriend in the hand with a kitchen knife, but was acquitted on account of her ‘promising future’. The majority of tension between male extremists and women arises from the frustrating reality that women are able to make their beauty a commodity. Having done ‘no work’. According to the extremists. We, as men, literally create the value in suggestive beauty and then get riled up about it. As if we ourselves have no autonomy. I think it’s worth reframing the demand before critiquing the supply. Stop hiding. Challenge our habits. Also everyone just needs to go outside again.

Some women are ‘lucky’ enough to be born with ‘value’. However, for the large majority of men, their value remains in capital. Cue montage of mid range men and their beautiful wives. Earn enough money and you can buy love. The sexual economy. I hate it. But it’s still a reality. I spoke about this the other day. It’s currently seen as empowering for women to ‘not sleep with broke men’.

I may be wrong, but I struggle to imagine seeing a conventionally attractive women stood at traffic lights asking for change. It’s images like these that muddy the gender debate. Especially when these realities go unacknlowedged. In spite of ‘all men benefitting from patriarchy’, this beautiful man was unable to avoid the full force of its exploitation. In fact, the majority of unhoused people are men. And in the UK, almost every unhoused death is a man. Outreach organisations for people on the street have a priority system in place terms of who they help first, and unsurprisingly, ‘solo male’ is at the bottom of that list.

Aesthetic beauty means so little. Even for the women who leverage it for financial gain. Yes, you have to find people attractive. But real connection extends beyond that, of course. Shared values. Passion. Sensitivity. Most of the time men find themselves besotted by the idea of a woman. They fall in love with total fantasies. As if we aren’t all fallible. If there’s one thing being worth reminded of, it’s that people are always more complex than the versions we make of them in our imaginations.

Beauty doesn’t mean people aren’t cold. Or mean. Or insecure. Or troubled. It doesn’t mean people are willing and open and full of life.

In this case, I wish the moron filming had spoken with that man. Or returned home understanding that something needs to be done in order for people to not be in those circumstances. But we’re all guilty of that. Rolling the window up and carrying on with our day. Because it’s overwhelming. It’s all consuming. In the words of Gabor Mate, ‘if your heart is open, then it’s going to be broken’. We need to not be afraid of that.

At the very least I hope that this man has returned realising there are more pressing issues in life than an invisible group of judgmental men thinking he’s gay. But I doubt it.