Manchester Is Not Paris – The Alcohol Years By Carol Morley

It seems appropriate that I should be writing this review of The Alcohol Years with a slight hangover. Carol Morley’s (2000) documentary is about a hangover to beat them all. Not only did she forget some of the events of a drunken night out, the experimental film-maker managed to lose track of pretty well a whole period of her life.

The film, about her late teens/early 20s in Manchester in the 1980s, is how she reconstructed herself out of other people’s memories and accounts, 15-20 years later. Many of the people Morley interviewed (off-camera, with no indication of what she asked them) were ex-lovers. So the stories they tell on film, in a set of seemingly one-sided conversations, are infused with sexual tension, or lack of it, or jealousy, or indifference, or love, or in one or two cases possibly, with hate. As you might expect conversations with exes to be.

I first saw The Alcohol Years when it was shown late at night on channel four, not too long after it had been made. It formed a lasting impression on me, and seeing it in the cinema in 2012 brought it all flooding back. Carol Morley was at the screening I attended, and in the introductory talk she said she herself had not seen it for years. So she was remembering a film about her memories! Meta.

One or two of the ‘characters’ in the film are indeed very memorable. A man is one of the first to speak (I don’t know his name, this is not a typical ‘talking heads’ documentary. The viewer is allowed to get to know the people on film gradually, as they might a character in a fictional drama). He is (well he was in 2000) in his mid 30s I’d say. He has dark hair and wears glasses. He looks as if he has swallowed a lemon. This man is angry. He seems to be angry with Carol for daring to make the film at all. For coming back to her past, to people and places she left in a hurry, without any warning or explanation. He seems to be angry that she has dared to make a film about herself. 

Why don’t you look at the world around you? he asks accusingly. Why don’t you make a film about that? Why does this have to be about you?

I remember when I first watched the documentary, taking an instant dislike to this man. I thought he was very rude, to someone who was actually doing something that seemed brave to me. Facing up to her past. Facing her exes. But he thought Carol was cowardly, by refusing to sit infront of the camera, refusing to be the one who was interrogated. I just thought she was clever. Twelve years on, I actually found him quite funny. Because in the youtube/Big Brother/facebook world we now live in, making a film about yourself is a VERY normal thing to do. In fact, one might ask somebody why they DIDN’T. So this sour-faced man ( or maybe he isn’t sourfaced anymore, let’s hope not) was placing the film very much in a specific time. He made it historical.

And The Alcohol Years is full of history. Manchester, so much to answer for, has a rich recent history, especially around the music industry and scenes. Footage shot in the Hacienda and the GMex centre, and interviews with Manchester musos such as Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks (who had been in love with Morley) and Dave Haslam the DJ, brought that history to life. Even in 2000 when the film was made, the Manchester I knew, the one that caused me to apply to go to university there in 1990, was already faded and worn. Now it seems like a distant memory. The scenes of dark alleyways and grimy clubs and pubs are part of a pre-regenerated Manchester. It is much lighter now, cleaner. And arguably less interesting. ‘Manchester Is Not Paris’ , the slogan on the postcard (above) that advertised the film when it first came out, was said on screen by Alan Wise, when he described going for breakfast with Morley to a local greasy spoon, ‘the morning after’. He was older than Carol, a kind of ‘sleazy’ not hugely attractive man, who served to suggest that the young Morley was not always the most discerning of ‘experimental’ film makers. But he had some great lines. I just wonder if nowadays, Manchester, like most Western cities, IS Paris. You can get cappuccinos on Deansgate much the same as you can on the Champs Elysees.

Dave Haslam, who is a bit of a local historian* of all things Manchester and music, made some pertinent observations in the film. He said that Manchester is a city that is very good at mythologising itself. And he added that Carol Morley was mythologising her own life, as well as making a film about Manchester.  He, of all the interviewees, seemed the most self-aware, and the most aware that the film would be a permanent record of something. I got the feeling listening to him, that in his sections, Dave was talking to the future. He also seemed to be talking to a fellow artist. A lot of the people in the film treated Morley like a ‘slag’, an ‘ex’, a ‘fuck up’. But Haslam seemed to have always identified in her a fellow spirit and a quite driven, creative person. I suspect he might have been the least surprised of all the interviewees,  to find out that Morley has now made her first feature-length docu-drama, Dreams Of A Life.

But the ‘slag’ reputation is also fascinating, emerging as it does from these individuals’ accounts of their memories of Carol. I distinctly remember when I first watched The Alcohol Years, wondering what it would have been like, to hear the words that these people were saying about you, to your face. Hurtful words. Years later, now I fancy myself as something of a ‘sexuality expert’, I notice a few things about their words.

One is that it wasn’t just Morley’s promiscuity that caused people some discomfort. Though one of her exes, a woman, said Carol was ‘a role model for promiscuity’ in such a damning tone that I flinched in the cinema. Her bisexuality also caused some of them problems, and especially a few of the women she spoke to.

The ‘role model’ woman asked Carol at one point how many people she’d slept with (we never got to hear the answer of course. Like I said, she’s clever). Then she corrected herself and said ‘how many men? I don’t care about the women.’  It is as if for a woman to have sex with women is ‘not really sex’. It doesn’t count. This reminded me of Mark Simpson’s work, and his comments on trysexuality. He says women are more free than men to experiment with same-sex sex. If a man does it he is labelled as ‘gay’. Simpson and I have argued about this a few times. I agree up to a point. But I think Carol Morley shows that for a woman to step out of whatever box she has been put in (whether it is ‘lesbian’ or ‘heterosexual’), it is still not accepted wholeheartedly by many. In fact, Carol Morley shows that the ‘slag’ stereotype and the ‘greedy bisexual’ stereotype are alive and well – or they were in 2000. I personally don’t think that has changed.

Has Carol Morley changed? I guess we’d have to ask her that. Though again, in the introductory talk at the screening I went to recently, she said The Alcohol Years is about how we only really exist via other people’s versions of us. So maybe I am as well placed as anyone to answer that question. My view is yes and no. On one hand of course she has changed. It is clear that she could not sustain herself in the lifestyle depicted in the film. She has grown up and moved on. But The Alcohol Years provides us with an early glimpse of what is most definitely an impressive talent. I haven’t seen Dreams of A Life yet, but all reports tell me it is excellent, and is only a continuation of and a development of the ideas and skills shown in The Alcohol Years.

So if Morley was a role model in the 80s (for promiscuity, drinking, being young) she still is one now. But a role model for honest and challenging documentary film making. Long may she continue to be so.

*thanks to Dave Haslam for the top image, which he had filed in his archives. I told you he is a historian!

A Nice Line In Neckerchiefs – John Wayne As Metro-Icon

When did metrosexuality begin? It is an impossible question to answer. The phenomenon, that seems as natural to us now, as Gucci manbags and orange man-tans, has crept up on us.

This following exchange between masculinity ‘experts’ Mark McCormack and MetroDad Mark Simpson, shows some of the confusion about the origins of metrosexuality, and what being a ‘real man‘ might mean:

@_MarkMcCormack US much more attached to trad ideas of masculinity than the UK. They had a national nervous breakdown over metrosexuality.—
Mark Simpson (@marksimpsonist) April 01, 2012

@_MarkMcCormack He didn't have very flexible hips. But he did have a nice line in neckerchiefs.—
Mark Simpson (@marksimpsonist) April 01, 2012

I of course agree with Simpson. John Wayne did indeed have a ‘nice line in neckerchiefs’. And, however rugged and American he may have been, he, like all men film stars, ‘desired to be desired’ as much as their women counterparts. His ‘star’ quality, like Tony Curtis’ and Elvis’, meant he was a precursor to the tartymetrosexuals we know and love today. Oh, and, he also did some dancing on screen!

*

Puritanism In A Permissive Age?

In the UK, the year 2012 has begun with a trial that could have come straight out of the 1960s – and even has some resonance with 19^th century sexual morals and laws. R v Peacock, which already has its own wikipedia page, has been described as the obscenity trial of the decade.

The defendant in the case, a male escort called  Michael Peacock, was cleared of all charges of ‘depraving and corrupting’ the people who watched the dvds he sold, featuring men involved in sadomasochistic  acts. Writing in the Guardian after  Peacock’s acquittal, Nichi Hodgson asked:

‘Why is [the verdict] so important? For one, Peacock … challenged the notion of obscenity in law, a law that was last updated in 1964, and has stood since. A law that is expressly designed to tell us what is “deprave and corrupt” – defined by Justice Byrne in 1960 as “to render morally unsound or rotten, to destroy the moral purity or chastity; to pervert or ruin a good quality.”‘

Chris Ashford, an academic with specific knowledge in the field of law and sexuality, also commented on the outcome of the trial, saying:

‘The case brings some much needed clarity to this area of complex criminal law.  I understand that the Metropolitan Police will be sitting down with the CPS and the BBFC and this is a welcome step.  There will obviously need to be some revision to the CPS guidelines on prosecution in light of this case.  Longer term, there are sure to be questions about the continued appropriateness of the law in this area, and whether we still need this obscenity law’.

The overwhelming verdict from those outside the courtroom seemed to agree with both the jury and the ‘liberal’ press. As Hodgson put it in the Guardian, with a cheeky reference to the four finger rule employed by many pornographers featuring ‘fisting’ in their work:

‘For gay rights campaigners and for everyone of us that believes in social and sexual liberty, it’s a day to make a five-digit victory sign.’

I too welcome the verdict but I am not quite so jubilant as many seem to be about it. Nor do I like the tone and possible ‘agendas’ appearing in some of the media discourse around the case.

My first problem is with the fact this case was brought to the courts at all, in the digital 21^st century. Shouldn’t we be up in arms about this puritanical and oppressive legislation, before celebrating that someone has avoided being criminalised by it?

As Michel Foucault put it more eloquently than I could:

“But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.” ―

It is not just the archaic and anachronistic Obscenity Laws that are directed at ‘potentially guilty’ actors in the sexual sphere. Contemporary  legislation exists that continues to execute the ‘Law of Sex’ both in the courts and out. In 2009 for example, extreme pornography  legislation was included in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. This makes it illegal to possess and even view pornography that shows injury to the breasts, anus or genitals, or that suggests a potential threat to life. This has potentially criminalised whole sections of society, including myself, who express sadomasochistic desire.

As Jane Fae has indicated, maybe we should keep the champagne on ice.  On her blog she wrote:

‘However, opponents of censorship need to be very cautious indeed: what comes next is likely to be a thoroughgoing review of obscenity and, in the current climate, my expectation is that that will see a widening and toughening of existing restrictive laws such as the Criminal Justice Act (2008) – more colloquially known as the ‘extreme porn law’.

On the politics.co.uk website Fae also pointed out the difference in numbers between prosecutions under the OPA and the ‘Extreme Porn’ law.

‘This once proud piece of legislation [OPA], intended to be the last word in moral high ground, was down to 71 prosecutions last year – as against just shy of 1,000 for “extreme porn” and several thousand each for various forms of malicious communication and indecent images of children.

The prosecution attempted to use the ‘extreme porn’ law in R v Peacock, as the prosecution also did in the Vincent Tabak (murder) trial. Both attempts failed but it shows how this law is very much at the forefront of lawyers’ minds, and their legal artillery, when it comes to cases of sexuality and (sexual) violence.

One of these attitudes is the idea that some people are ‘normal’ sexually, and others are abnormal, or perverts.

Again as Michel Foucault has said (and as he was partially quoted in the Peacock case):

“…if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing”

Who are the ‘perverts’ and the ‘sick’ and ‘abnormal’ people in this ‘permissive’ age? Well, apart from the obvious ‘paedophiles’, judging by this and previous obscenity cases, people who commit ‘violent’ acts in a consensual sexual context are still considered perverse to some degree. Especially men who do so. It is a rarely quoted fact, that the ‘dominatrix’ trade continues to boom without too much regulation (apart from isolated incidents e.g. the Max Moseley case) or criticism, because there it is women doling out the ‘violence’, usually to men.  In our culture, women dommes ‘punishing’ willing men victims, seems to many to represent some kind of ‘justice’ or ‘payback’ for all the apparent crimes of ‘patriarchal’ men against women.

And when it comes to heterosexual men, feminism demonises them so successfully that often they do not have to be brought to trial in courtrooms at all. Men are ‘the potentially guilty’ in the Foucauldian sense. Think of the discourse of rape culture that presents all men (all heterosexual men) as potential rapists (of women) and we can begin to see how this ‘law of sex’ works.  In other words, as Mark Simpson has observed, ‘The feminist is Ms Whiplash’.

 

I also think that the emphasis in the media surrounding this trial on the ‘gay’ identity of the defendant and the people who watch his porn, is positioning other men who have sex with men who do not identify as gay, as ‘abnormal’.

Hodgson in the Guardian  emphasised the significance of the defendant here being ‘gay’ and called this a victory for ‘gay rights campaigners’. I disagree. Though Peacock himself identifies as ‘gay’, there is no evidence that the actors in the dvds he sold or the people who bought and watched them are ‘gay’.  As Mark Simpson has written, straight men enjoy watching men’s cocks in pornography.  Also, many women watch ‘gay’ pornography. Again as Simpson has told us,  Manlove for the Ladies is a big market and getting bigger. And many men who act in ‘gay’ porn are only gay for pay. So this divide between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ porn is false and limiting.

During the trial I didn’t see any ‘gay rights campaigners’ speaking up for Peacock (with the exception of  Chris Ashford).  Maybe this was because ‘gay rights’ activists are often puritanical themselves, as they separate the ‘gay’ identity from ‘homosexual’ sex, making it respectable and almost ‘heterosexual’.  If the men hadhave been heterosexual, and fisting and urinating on women, how would the feminist Guardian have presented the case?

I wrote previously at Graunwatch about how gay activists such as Paul Burston have taken a dim view of men demonstrating their homosexuality in public. I am not surprised this case was not taken up by ‘Teh Gayz’.

Once again, Foucault nailed this issue of the ‘gay’ identity being prioritised over everything else when he wrote:

‘If identity becomes the problem of sexual existence, and if people think they have to ‘uncover’ their ‘own identity’ and that their own identity has to become the law, the principle, the code of their existence; if the perennial question they ask is ‘Does this thing conform to my identity?’ then, I think, they will turn back to a kind of ethics very close to the old heterosexual virility.

http://www.michel-foucault.com/quote/2009q.html

Currently people involved in s and m activities, if they commit ‘serious’ assault on each other as part of their consensual sexual acts, for example by drawing blood, are breaking the law.

Myles Jackson , Obscenity Lawyer, wrote:

‘I urge legislators and the Law Commission to reconsider the law surrounding consent to sexual assault.’ But as yet he has not had a commitment from the Commission that they will do so.’

Whilst very few people have been convicted for ‘assaulting’ their partners during known consensual sexual activity, the fact the law exists matters.  It has ramifications for domestic violence and sexual assault cases. If someone is accused of either of these crimes, and violence has definitely occurred, it is impossible for the defence to argue that ‘consent’ is a significant factor in the case.

Again this situation is highly gendered. Men were only counted amongst potential rape victims in the UK in 1994, and in United States  in 2012! And, in UK law, women are not able to ‘rape’ men technically, as a penis is required for that specific crime. This enables feminists to continue their assault on ‘rape culture’ and to portray men as predators of women.

I welcome this ‘not guilty’ verdict. I hope  it leads to the end of the obscenity law in the UK. But I do not think it necessarily signifies the end of ‘puritanical’ or ‘oppressive’ law in the realm of sexuality in the UK.  I believe the ‘discourse’ of sexuality is where most of the power occurs. And, the discourse around this case has not been ‘liberating’ so much as business as usual for those such as feminists who invest in continuing sexual repression, and in particular the demonization of men’s sexualities.

—————————————————–

Originally appeared (in edited form) at Open Rights Group Org:

http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/features/2011/puritanism-in-a-permissive-age

The Metro-morphosis Of Narcissus

‘In classical mythology, Narcissus was a hunter who fell in love with his own image that he saw reflecting off water from a river.  He eventually fell into the river and drowned in the image of himself.  The myth became a metaphor for intense self-love and pride to the point of destruction.

In his influential and controversial essay On Narcissism, Sigmund Freud defines narcissism as “the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way as otherwise the body of a sexual object is treated.”   Now, before you get all “Freud is a perv” on me, it should be noted that the terms ‘sexual’ and ‘object’ have slightly different connotations in Freudian theory than they do in everyday conversation.  ‘Sexual’ is Freud’s way of describing anything that contributes to an investment in an organism’s life.  Social behavior, love, eating, communication–it’s all sexual.  An object is anything that is not the self.  Sexual objects, then, are the focal points of sexual energy apart from the self–i.e., the opposite of narcissistic objects.  We love ourselves but not in the same way that we love others.

One aspect of narcissism that the previously mentioned study completely ignores is its ubiquity.  It only speaks to narcissism as a pathological tendency.  As far as I know (and I could be completely wrong) Freud was one of the first thinkers to suggest that narcissism is, on a certain level, universal.  And if it is universal, it must be necessary.  If we accept Freud’s definition of narcissism, then it follows that narcissism can be adaptive.  Notice that his definition focuses on attitude and not behavior.  I would argue that this attitude of taking one’s self as a love object is necessary to exist in any meaningful way.  It is only when this investment in the self becomes completely dominant over all other investments that problems arise.’

By Thomas Wendt (@Thomas_Wendt)

This painting by Salvador Dali is called ‘The Metamorphosis Of Narcissus’. If you look carefully you can make out the figure (golden coloured) on the left, staring  into the pool, an echo of the more classical painting by Caravaggio at the top. I am not going to analyse the surrealist’s work; my academic art appreciation days are over. For now we live in a culture where self-taken photographs are the main portraits we see around us, hung in the virtual galleries of facebook and tumblr.

Here is a photograph taken in the mirror by a contestant on American Idol, apparently, making reality TV and individuals’ self-loving photography  merge in a postmodern mash up. I like the way the edge of the mirror serves as a frame within the frame of the image. I note the golden (tan) glow that resemble’s the colours in Dali’s painting, and I like the way he puts his hand behind his head in a famous pin up pose.

As  Mark Simpson and I have recently written, narcissism, briefly removed from the psychiatrists’ bible, the DSM last year, is now back on the books as a personality ‘disorder’.

Simpson echoes Thomas Wendt’s feelings about how ‘normal’ narcissism is, when he says:

‘Perhaps, being somewhat cynical, the objection to de-listing NPD was driven precisely by the ubiquity of narcissism. It’s certainly a growth market.’

Of course,  Simpson has identified the importance of narcissistic urges in postmodern culture before.  A couple of years ago he observed:

‘We live in an age of Dorians, admiring themselves in webcams, phone cams and online profiles. If there’s a picture in the attic you can be sure it’s been photoshopped.’

In 2008, Professor Metrosexuality examined an advert by Dolce and Gabbana, where a man and a woman seem to be about to meet for a date, but instead of each other, they greet clones of themselves:

‘What, then, is D&G Time? What is the era, the epoch it heralds and meters and so accurately, so tastefully accessorizes? Well, a cloned, digital world in which the driving force, the coiled spring at the heart of the jewelled mechanism, is not heterosexual reproduction, or even homosexual coupling, but rather, narcissistic perfection. Narcissistic perfection achieved through fashion, consumption, cosmetics, technology, surgery and really good lighting. A utopian-dystopian, twinsome future in which men and women date themselves instead of each other that has already arrived.

It’s a measure of how far and how quickly we’ve come that only a few years ago this ad would have been regarded as ‘sick’ by almost everyone, not just a few homophobe holdouts.  But the brazen auto-strumpetry of D&G Time broadcasts that narcissism is no longer a pathological condition – it’s thecontemporary condition. That’s to say, it’s no more pathological today than desire itself – since narcissism and desire are much the same thing, particularly since we’re now surrounded by such shiny, pretty accessories as D&G jewellery.’

Since Simpson wrote his excellent piece inspired by D and G – ‘twinsome devils and the narcissus complex’ visual culture has become full of ‘ twins ’:

I agree with Simpson that the ‘driving force’ of this clone culture is narcissism. But, also from reading Simpson, I am interested in how the result of our self-love being reflected back at us in advertising and pop culture imagery, is that we are being presented as ‘androgynous’, as ‘gender neutral’, as  gender bending,  transexy composites. Stars such as Andre Pejic are models for the present and the future, where everyone:  men, women, and people who identify as neither can be everything, to themselves.

It reminds me of that famous line (which has also appeared somewhere in Simpson’s oeuvre):

‘ I’m more man than you’ll ever be, and more woman than you’ll ever get! ‘

- Car Wash (and Rent, and other sources)

It was in his 1994 ‘lost classic’ Male Impersonators, though, that Simpson really nailed the metro-morphosis of narcissism in contemporary consumerist culture. He wrote:

‘This is the secret behind the growth of male narcissism in Western society. Nineties man’s love affair with his own image, which is itself a misrecognition (to love one’s image is not to love oneself), is but a faint echo of what he takes to be his idealised form reflected from the billboards and cinema screens.

The products and accessories offer a link that appears to marry the three kinds of ‘self’ together that modern media separates: the idealised form (the model using the product in adverts), the reflected images (looking in the mirror while using the product), and the actual body (wearing the product or applying it to skin, hair, teeth etc).  Ideal, body and image thus come together in a consummation of a love that only money can buy. Of course, this is not a consummation at all: all three types of self are kept distinct, and the imperfection of image and body next to ideal ensures that desire is never satisfied and the consumer never loses his appetite.’

But these days, people are able to create more and more ‘perfect’ images of themselves, with the help of photoshop, instagram, facebook, etc. The user/consumer has more control these days, and companies have to work much harder to ensure ‘the consumer never loses his appetite’. Thomas Wendt, who is remarkable in that he is both a ‘semiotician’ using the old school Barthesian definition, as is Simpson, but he also works in marketing/advertising and so understands consumer narcissism as an ‘insider’ in the business that exploits it has something to say about this. He writes:

‘Primary narcissism is essentially an unconscious process.  The infant is not aware of his or her relationship to the world and others.  Secondary narcissism is preconscious–although the formation of the ego-ideal is not entirely conscious, it has the capacity to become conscious.Perhaps the influence of social media creates a third narcissism, or tertiary narcissism, which is a completely conscious and active process.  The individual asserts active power over his or her ego ideal when creating, for example, a Facebook profile.  Everything in the digital media space can be thought of as a tertiary narcissistic process: profiles, status updates, blog posts, comments, etc.  All these activities work to build an individual’s ego-ideal within a space that is relatively controlled by that individual.  I say relatively because the individual certainly does not control every aspect of his or her online presence; at least, it would be very difficult to do so.I think that the relationship between narcissism and social media is reciprocal: social media’s relationship to the individual is greatly influenced by the concept of narcissism and vice versa.

It might be time to rethink the negative connotations of narcissism and examine how this idea of tertiary narcissism can be adaptive.  If one can take an active stance in regard to ego-ideal formation and maintenance, then perhaps identity formation is becoming more controlled in the digital-social age.I suppose the question is whether this amount of control over identity and sense of self is really adaptive or not.  Do we really want that constant burden to manipulate our identity rather than just letting it happen?  Is digital identity adaptive, or does the fact that it is controlled make it a sort of false form of identity and selfhood?’

I don’t know the answers to Thomas’s questions. I wonder if Mark Simpson does. He has definitely reffered to an ‘adaptive’ element of metrosexual narcissism, especially at the level of  consumer culture, if not in terms of each person adapting and using narcissism themselves:

‘Narcissism is outside of tradition. It’s literally self-referential. So narcissism is both a product of and a helpmeet to rapid change – producing ‘individuals’ in identical loft apartments.’

I do think that some people are taking ‘control’ over their ‘narcissism’ for themselves and turning it into capital. Mikey Sorrentino, love him or hate him, is exceptionally talented at ‘winning’ the game of Metrosexy narcissism. He began as a contestant/actor on a reality TV show, Jersey Shore. Rather than be chewed up and spat out by the media company that hired him, as most reality tv participants are, he turned himself into a ‘brand’. ‘The Situation’ reduces him to his six pack, but also gives him a USP in a world full of six packs. Mikey stands out from the crowd. And now his  GTL catchphrase – gym, tanning laundry, the metrosexual mantra of young men across the globe, has become a profitable business. He sells fake tan, and runs tanning salons, he produces work out videos, and he markets ‘laundry’ bags and gym bags.  He also operates on twitter, facebook and youtube, showing that his ‘narcissism’ is, if not adaptive in Wendt’s terms, then at least very much controlled by him for his own purposes.

Ours is definitely and possibly permanently the Dorian Grey age, as Simpson put it. And now these Dorians are also becoming entrepreneurs of the self. Some of them are making money out of their enterprise, others not. The ‘idealised images’ we see in advertising and film, are now much easier to reproduce on our own at home.

But when we look in the mirror will we ever like what we see?

Back in the 20th century, Mark Simpson said no:

‘We’ve totally buffed sex and desire until there’s nothing left but our own reflection. And it ain’t pretty’

(Attitude 1997, Published in  Sex Terror 2002).