That’s Gay, Man

I know, I know, it comes as surprise, but I’m here to tell you how it is.

so I’m browsing around the interweb, wondering about what I’m going to write about next, and I come across the titillatingly titled “Time To “Man Up” On The Ice?” the second paragraph of the article, excerpted:

In February, Skate Canada, Canada’s Figure Skating Governing Body, announced a new Public Relations campaign to make skating in Canada look “tough.”

qué?

“make skating in canada look ‘tough’”?

okay, I’m all for the breakdown of the patriarchal worldview and acceptance of different models of masculinity and blah blah over-educated blee, but this is just silly. in the context of this article, they’re using hockey as their relative definition of “tough,” and scoring figure skating according to how it presents its athletes along that scale.

yeah, no shit they’re not going to be as tough! but that doesn’t and shouldn’t have any bearing on their masculinity. I mean, okay, I’ve had a kind-of-crush (read = if there was even a slightest chance, I is a clothes-ripping-off god) on US skater evan lysacek since the last winter olympics. let’s (please) take a look at him:

yeah, he’s hot, but he’s hot for a reason. he’s not a model, and by that I mean his job isn’t to look good, his job is to utilize his body in an athletic and artistic endeavor, and the shape he’s in reflects that.

plus, he’s handsome, but that’s neither here nor there. if his face and nothing else changed, he’d have the same body regardless of the shmoop of his countenance.

the reason I chose evan lysacek, though, is because of his story: grandma wants to be in ice capades, so she buys him skates for christmas (”oh, grandma, your pretends are so silly!”); he wants to play hockey in said skates, so mother enrolls him in figure skating lessons to learn how to use them; he kicks ass and takes names in figure skating and sticks with it. a legend is born, a star shines, he wears tight pants and the world dies happy.

and thus the audience was borne off to the fainting couches.

does the fact that he wears ass-hugging, form-fitting pants make him less athletic and less masculine than a hockey player? does his renaissance-festival-esque shirt means that he’s never going to match the toughness level of a man with shoulder pads? sure, maybe he throws his arms out and twirls to music, but I suggest, canada’s figure skating governing body, that you don’t criticize until you can do sixty gazillion crunches, too. that you concern yourself less with the image of the process and more with the integrity.

of course, as far as figure skating toughness goes, evan lysacek is pretty near the “hockey” end of the spectrum. and then there’s johnny weir.

he makes his own outfits, and calls himself ‘princess’.

I can’t judge or fault him for what he does, or how he presents himself. he’s the artist, he’s the athlete, he’s the one who does things with his body I couldn’t even imagine, and he still looks like this:

a bit anorexic, but it’s still muscle directly on top of bone. period.

so what does it mean? maybe he’s more about the hip-check than the body check, but so what? he isn’t “tough,” but does that mean that he’s any less of an athlete? not in my opinion. it only means that he’s less “masculine,” as defined by that hockey scale.

merely the discussion of the topic generate publicity like the canada figure skating board wants. as the article concludes:

To be certain, all of this controversy will certainly still be swirling when the world arrives in Vancouver next February for the Olympic Games. Skate Canada may have solved its television ratings conundrum by simply creating a controversy. But is the boost in ratings worth the tarnished image many now have of the Skate Canada Organization?

yeah, well, damn them. it’d be nice if the world realized that testicles aren’t represented by shoulder pads, though. the hockey players are good at what they do, evan lysacek and johnny weir are good at what they do, they’re not interchangeable or convertible, and that’s that.

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