– Opening line of I Am the Walrus by John Lennon
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst who advanced the work of Freud by reinterpreting some of the masters’ basic tenets. Lacan wrote extensively of a “mirror stage” in a child’s psychological development. Above, Philadelphia artist Rebecca Fuchs has applied Lacan’s theory to her stunning new series of photographs.
Lacan maintained that infants pass through a stage in which the external image of the body creates in the psyche a mental representation of the Self — or an I. For Lacan, this mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other. In Lacan’s world, without an other the I doesn’t exist.
Fuchs shows how bathrooms and locker rooms become, for many of us, places where the mirror game takes on a highly-charged, precarious connotation. She stages her photographic narratives in public restrooms and school locker rooms to highlight the acts of mimicry and performance associated with such spaces. Locales where, she writes, “the self is performed and peers are mimicked.”
When I was 16 I loathed the notion of junior high for the simple reason that, suddenly, physical education meant public displays of nudity and furtive comparisons in the locker room and showers. It was the first time my identity, the I I’d solidified within the confines of my parent’s world, was challenged and shaken — an I that, of course, was partially shuttered in the closet.
It was also the first time in my life when I was surrounded by male nudity and bubbling testosterone. Sure, I’d seen my dad and a couple of my cousins naked. But in junior high I was pushed into daily encounters with bulging planes of muscles, dangling scrotums and bouncing cocks. This is why Fuchs’ art resonates for me. That period in my life, over time, became misted over. Deadened.
Studying these photos I began to wonder: Are gay teenagers thrown into a sort of arrested development when they enter this important phase of their post- adolescent development?
The psychic landscape of a gay adolescent’s life is often riddled with sink holes. And where most heterosexual boys find the locker room to be a kind of tribunal, a place that tests their nascent manhood, with comparisons and mirroring; for gay teens, the terrain can be intimidating and overwhelming. The gay teen wants to look, to compare, to size-up — as the straight guys are doing, but he is also aroused by what he sees.
It’s a Rites of Passage double bind, and too often it provokes a closing down of the self. A repression of passion that occurs just when, according to Lacan, there should be a new level of mirroring, a new level of identity that pushes beyond the adolescent. Into his future manhood.
Is this why, for many gay men, locker rooms and jock straps evoke buzzing arousal? Arousal that stretches beyond the obvious attraction to rugged, butch men. Men that we associate with the discipline and vigor of sports and physical competition.
Through fetishism we return to libidinal objects or locales as a way reclaiming, or attempting to reclaim, a part of the self that has gone into cold storage. At least that’s my understanding of how a fetish works. Perhaps it is possible to reinstate some of that magic, some of that mirroring that we missed in the high school locker room. It’s a pleasing idea.
Or is it all just a figment of my imagination? A dream?
Paging Dr. Lacan!
By the time I got to middle school it was the late 90s, and if boys didn’t want to be naked around each other, they didn’t have to be. Therefore, no one ever was. I don’t remember a single person taking a shower in the locker rooms between Middle School and High School - that is, a public high school of about 2,000 people. Stripping down to our boxers to get in and out of the gym shorts was fine, but we never had to be completely naked in front of each other, and aparently all the straight guys were just as nervous about it as I was because none of us were ever nude.
My own ground-zero for insecurity and fetishism was an entirely different place: Boy Scouts. My friend sneaked a bunch of Hustlers magazines out of his stepdad’s closet and brought them on Summer Camp year after year, and I suffered nervewracking anxiety trying to pretend to be turned on by the photographs of wide-open vaginas, hoping I was savvy enough to figure out which girls were hot and avoid saying I liked the wrong one. Meanwhile I was more than a little aroused by the thought of my guy-friends being turned-on by the magazines while in such close proximity to me while we were in a tent together. My first “sexual experience” was in a snow cave I built and was sleeping in with a straight guy one winter trip when I was 13. It wasn’t a very intimate event; we just jerked off in front of each other, and it only happened once. But it was still pretty intense for me at the time, at an age when just looking at a guy in a swimsuit was novel and stimulating enough to practically make me cry.
I really like this article. As for the picture: what’s up with the dude on the bench? Who brings the weights into the locker room?!
Wow. Interesting set of photos.
In high school, few boys took showers in front of each other, but the ones that did had the confidence levels of giants while the smaller late bloomers like myself had to fend off the weekly attacks from those most hairy. I hated gym, primarily because I think group sports are seen as more important than anything in life but also because of the insecurity this brought on. Every week, I was begging my art teachers who smiled wide and gladly gave me the passes I needed, to stay out of gym for some supposedly large art project that wouldn’t get done without my help.
For the times when I had to make an appearance, the changing in the locker rooms was the most frightening thing a kid with no armpit hair could experience. Imagine being one of the very last boys in high school to hit puberty and to only do it in your junior year. Now mix that in with a bunch of preppy jerks you already despised outside of the locker room who delighted in torturing every nerd or misfit.
I remember distinctly thinking I’d have to be much more clever in combating all those who fell before me.
It finally came like a gift from the gods. This game developed while changing called “Captain Brown Eye”. If you think I’m making this up, than welcome to my formative years. One guy would spread open his ass and jump, butt first, onto a guy’s head or face and yell “Captain Brown Eye”! Mentally and developmentally, I wasn’t ready for this and it shook me to my very core. I saw countless guys get “brown eyed” and I didn’t want to be one.
I was asked by some girl classmates what went on in the locker room and I let slip the Tale of Captain Brown Eye. To much to their squeamish delight and to my pleasure, my power over them and the locker room lay in their reaction! I knew that if I so much as saw an ass cheek, put their cock on my shoulder while changing, stuffed me in a locker or threatened me with so much with a swirly - I’d counter-threat to turn to the opposite sex with a tell-all exposé of what stupidity took place there.
I rode the rest of my junior year and subsequent track and field experience through without one problem.
Well, there was this one time I was peed on in the shower, but by that time I kind of knew where I was headed but that’s a different can of worms.
David your article is much more interesting than any of the photographs. Amazing stuff. I realized that I also stuffed the locker room experience and now I know a little more of why that is. As gay teens, we do have different developmental needs and none of us are ready for the in-your-face activity of the locker room. Thanks.
When I went to school (class of 04) it was all underwear and everyone awkwardly went to their locker changed quickly and escaped the cave of horror. I don’t think they were all gay (oh boy!) but I think the locker room is harrowing for all, Just we have it kinda double because we have the thing where we are in a “candy shop”. There was no torture towel snapping or such tom foolery hardly even conversation. Except for the jocks but they were jaded and down thier alot. I am a natural at public nudity so the locker room quickly became easy for me and I think my constant chatter unnerved all around me. I remember commenting on a friends undies once lol. I must be a pain to deal with.
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwow
it’s all i love