Not everyone will like to hear (err, read) what I’ll say (write). 

But here it goes, anyway.

I believe Experience Blackout, fashion industry giant Bench’s underwear and denim fashion show, is an opportunistic hedonistic show manipulative of its target markets, which happen to include (in throngs) the gay community (thus my exasperation).

Here are reasons why I think so.

For one, and this is going to be quite long, it managed to turn the homosexualized gaze of the now largely disempowered men by homosexuals (and women, too) into a tool to use against the homosexuals (and women) themselves, thereby empowering, yet again, men, while disempowering homosexuals (and women), also yet again.

In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey introduced the phrase “male gaze,” using the word “gaze” as a “symptom of power asymmetry,” as she noted how, especially in films and the like, the “audience is forced to regard the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events.   The male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects.”  If that’s too complex, Mulvey’s idea is, in simpler words, a critique on how women are used for the pleasure of men, as can be seen in the continuing existence of bikini clad models promoting Tanduay Rhum or Ginebra San Miguel or Goodyear Tires – the other has nothing to do with the other, but are used, anyway, to please – satisfy by titillating, even – the target market, which happens to have a stick (big or not, it doesn’t matter!) between their legs.

And no, these women are not necessarily “willing victims,” so to speak, since even if they say they have no issues, or even qualms afterwards, doing what they are doing, it can still be argued that they may merely be conforming to the hegemonic socially constructed norms that benefit men, thereby stressing the power of the male gaze even more.

Homosexuals somehow changed the balance (at least helped, anyhow, since awareness among women is the other part of what tipped the balance) with the gay/homosexual gaze, i.e. the shifting of the objectified looking at men instead of women.  Sexism, for once, was targeted to the once-supposed dominant sex (i.e. men), and not just by women at that, but by their fellow men (i.e. gays).

This is power – well, at least overseas it has been, somehow, e.g. Marky Mark (before he became Mark Wahlberg) apologized for offending the homosexual community after insulting them while modeling CK that targeted the more fashionable (and more can-afford) homosexuals.  Locally, it annoyingly became a tool to empower men even more, as they used the gay gaze for their own benefit.
Ben Chan’s annual show is the one case in point.

An opportunistic hedonistic show, if ever there is one.

Related still to this, and secondly, the show is one big business – nothing more.  Remember the guidelines and details on how to get free invites to watch the event, wherein every P500 single receipt purchase of Bench or Herbench items (excluding Bench Time and sale items) entitles one general admission invitation; P800, one upper box B invitation; and P1,500, one upper box A invitation?  Elsewhere, where there’s a fashion show, the viewers are to be tantalized by what they see on the runway so that, after the show, they will buy the items they are fooled to believe will look good on them.  Here, no – you buy the items first, and then watch wannabe models (oh, okay, and some real models) wear the designs.  Now multiply even only P500 by 25,000, the maximum capacity of Araneta Coliseum, where the show was held, and how much money are we talking about? P12,500,000.00.

And here’s the third annoyance – the designs are not even great, with most recycled, if at all, so why dub the show as a fashion show?  The idea (and for this one, it will just be an ideal) for the show is Victoria’s Secret, with stars, too (supermodels in this case), in over-an-hour long fashion show of nothing but bikinis after bikinis (and the trademark wings of every kind).  But there, they DO HAVE designs to show, the models mere, well, models of the designs.  That Bench’s focus is on the models, not the designs, makes one think about Bench’s designs…