Rapper DPhill Spanglish Man is a on a mission to blur the lines between genders and look good while doing it. He’s started what he likes to call the XY movement, I think it sounds fantastic but I’ll let him explain it himself.
I’ve always been in awe of men/women who aren’t afraid to step outside the norms of what’s considered acceptable when I was 16 my best friend was a guy who would where eye liner, nail polish and women’s T shirts I thought he was the coolest guy in the world. Along with people Courtney Love, David Bowie and Morrissey now I think I can add mr Spanglish Man to that list.
As you can imagine DPhill’s been getting allot of heat for this but judging from the interview he seems to be really serious about his intentions and I wish him all the luck in the world.
“Girls can have a “tomboy-ish” style and can pretty much wear whatever they want and it’s all considered acceptable.”
As someone who’se friends with several masculine looking women, I’d just like to point out that a woman who dresses in a masculine way does not get an easy ride by any standards.
If I ever saw a men walking down the street in a skirt and high heels, I would remain completely indifferent.
Girls can have a “tomboy-ish” style and can pretty much wear whatever they want and it’s all considered acceptable. So why couldn’t man do the same?
At the end of the day, a man is still a man. It doesn’t matter if he’s wearing cotton, polyester, wool, a skirt or pants and whatnot. LOL He is still a man.
It changes nothing. So who cares.
This is something I’ve noticed, that frequently when people are challenging gendered assumptions it’s often the case that they’ll use the transgender/gender variant argument, to say that the people who are doing whatever it happens to be or dressing in a certain way are doing so because they are something other than male or female. Transsexual people are often considered, in the mind of most people, to be a third sex, not “really” the sex they claim to be, and not really the other, either (even as they say that you are the other sex, because they want to third… Read more »
I was thinking about this the other day, and it reminded me of a short film I saw a while ago about gender variance. It was done in the style of a 40’s public information film and started with a group in a park and a woman who wanted to play football with the guys and a man who wanted to sit and do knitting, then someone else came along and jumped straight in with the concept of transgender as a way to solve their problems. This is something I’ve noticed, that frequently when people are challenging gendered assumptions it’s… Read more »
@ Hugh Oh, I mostly meant teh Menz. Although, in line with what L said, my only g/f who was goth with me couldn’t afford, or wasn’t that interested in, most of the glitzy stuff ,and she didn’t get much fancier than dark colored clothes, jeans, boots, hair-dye, make-up, and a couple of studded leather accessories. Heck, even her hair dye was often kool-aid powder, and her make-up came right out of a Halloween supply kit you could get at Kmart. 🙂 So, I guess if you counted her look against the look of the guys she dated, she was… Read more »
I used to date a lot of girls who dressed that way… kind of stopped a few years ago. But I’ve got to say, very few of them would have regarded themselves as performing masculinity when they put on their makeup, corsets etc etc.
@ The L Yeah, this trend was right about the same time I got my first job. Later on my little brother was able to put together some outfits way more awesome than mine, because they had er, wotcha call, Hot Topics(?) all over the place by the time he got up to that age. I was goth-lite by comparison. My best outfits actually had bits borrowed from the above friend. (Who says dudes never borrow each other’s clothes?) He was fiscally much better off than my family was, but even he stretched his budget out by getting together with… Read more »
Jay: When I was a kid, i wanted to dress like that, but when you’re 14 and get maybe $5/week in allowance–fishnets, skirts with lace and chains, and black makeup are seriously out of your price range. (And good luck getting my mother to stop by Hot Topic!) I tried to compensate by wearing shirts with loose sleeves in dark colors, but…if it’s not designed to be goth, it generally doesn’t LOOK goth. By the time I got my first job and/or was handy with a sewing machine, the urge to be a Child of the Night had faded. I… Read more »
You know, speaking of gothic and gender bending, anyone else here ever do any black lipstick, mascara, mesh shirts, or corsets? You want to talk about a sexual masculine icon, Brendon Lee’s The Crow went off like explosion in my neck of the woods. One of my best friends was such a hard-core goth… I remember, he’d moved away while in middle school and then his parents divorced and he moved back into town to live with his older sister. He snuck up behind me in the hall, in high school, and, like, gave me a ‘Boo!’ I whip around… Read more »
I mean, so much of what I think of as stereotypically feminine attire – fishnets, cocktail dresses, eyeshadow, LBDs – is stereotypically black. Isn’t it ironic that I don’t consider those things to be feminine? I consider them to be “reserved for women, under threat of serious beating”, but not feminine. My dress has an aesthetic flair that cocktail dresses can never have. My dress itself, whoever wears it, is aesthetically pleasing, a cocktail dress is made to make the body of the wearer pleasing to the eye. Hence cocktail dresses are accessory for visual porn, rather than actual clothing,… Read more »
Sure, pink can be masculine of feminine or whatever, same as black. But not that dress ;). That dress looks like something Grayson Perry’s Claire persona would wear.
“You think a guy wouldn’t lose more “masculinity creds” dressing in that pink dress compared to a black+white obviously dark-themed one?”
No, I honestly don’t. I accept that my interpretation isn’t everybody’s, but I think your idea that black is somehow more masculine than pink is equally personal. I mean, so much of what I think of as stereotypically feminine attire – fishnets, cocktail dresses, eyeshadow, LBDs – is stereotypically black.
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a213/Sara_Zeal/Loli_Sara9.jpg
Tell me this is not more feminine projecting, and it has no accessories (I don’t own a umbrella, hair piece etc, and I don’t wear shoes in the picture).
You think a guy wouldn’t lose more “masculinity creds” dressing in that pink dress compared to a black+white obviously dark-themed one?
It might not be much still. To many, wearing a skirt alone would be worthy of being beaten to a pulp, let alone an elaborate dress.
This is my most expensive dress, and I kind of like it a lot, even if I hardly wear it.
I dunno, all the gothic lolitas I’ve seen are extremely femininity projecting, and the whole dark thing doesn’t seem to contradict that.
“Being gothic and dark is a masculine thing?” If you consider that being cutesy and light (as in the opposite of darkness) is feminine, then yes. And that does seem to be a Victorian attitude. Note that Gothic Lolita is not “US/Europe Gothic”, or even close. It favors darker colors and that’s the most glaring similarity. I’m a fan of sweet lolita (cutesy colors and prints), and a cis guy who would wear that would get the most retribution (from homophobes and transphobes), and get no “guts” points unless done as a bet. Heck, I usually can’t muster the courage… Read more »
Interestingly, the artist that the video notes as his most direct precedent is Prince, and lately I’ve been re-listening to Prince, and I’m shocked by how up-front Prince’s sexuality was. It must have registered when I was younger, but not in the same way. I would say, though, that Prince was not only androgynous in his look but also in his music in a way that artists like Bowie weren’t. His falsetto was truly feminine at times, although he was always singing to women. Prince was upfront, agressive in his sexuality, but he was also very feminine (one song, “Do… Read more »
“or in J-rock, wearing lolita fashion while being more gothic and dark”
Being gothic and dark is a masculine thing?
A lot of feminine/androgynous men in rock compensate for one instance of femininity by being all the more masculine in another area, like mixing muscles and makeup or torn jeans and long hair, wearing a skirt made of dark leather, being gay in as butch a way as possible, etc. When the Danish crown prince cried at his wedding, commenters said he got away with it because the population knows he has a military career and has seen him cross Greenland on a dog sleigh, diving, parachuting etc. or in J-rock, wearing lolita fashion while being more gothic and dark… Read more »
Exactly. Rock has a long history of gender flexibility, but rap is still seen as very traditional in that aspect. I also think a lot of rock stars are mixing it more. The front singer of Twisted Sister does push-ups before concerts, explaining that he doesn’t think anyone wants to see an old man wearing makeup unless he’s pumped. A lot of feminine/androgynous men in rock compensate for one instance of femininity by being all the more masculine in another area, like mixing muscles and makeup or torn jeans and long hair, wearing a skirt made of dark leather, being… Read more »
@debaser71
The difference here is the genre – rap. A genre with very, very strict gender behaviours and expectations. So, no, he’s not the first male musician to wear lipstick, but probably the first rapper.
Does anyone else remember the 80’s hair bands? I’m just wondering what’s new about this? Facebook?
@Tumbleweed: Yeah, that’s NOT his color at all. Maybe something a little more orangey.
And yeah, WTF is with the camera focus? If you’re interviewing someone, we want to see zir FACE. Not constant cutting/panning between zir legs and zir lips. We want to feel like we’re looking the interviewee in the eye.
Very cool.
Also, ditto what AB said.
Good observations about the whole emotions being feminine issue, I must admit its something I didn’t consider when I originally watched the video guess I was a bit caught up in the sheer boldness of the concept.
I’ve been a fan of rap music for most of my life and I see what DPhill is doing as fitting with what the genre used to be all about. Namely pushing the boundaries both musically and stylistically and a general willingness to experiment.
That was really uplifting, apart from my general dislike of rap and the comment about emotional=feminine, which are mostly nitpicks.