musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

I hold the world but as the world


I suppose very few things resist change; we filter most things through the eyes of our culture after all. But I, an admitted closet-pareidoliac[i], am still amazed at the variety of pattern-reading throughout the ages. What is it that changes the look of a painting, say -its feeling? How is it that the same person in the same picture in the same scene, can be so mutable depending on our moods? Does this say anything about an underlying unity that knits it all together? That weaves it like the warp and weft of a finely patterned carpet: emphasizing different colours and different materials depending on the light? On the setting? On the mood…?

What started me wondering about these things was an article dealing with, among other things, Blue Boy, a painting by the 18th century artist Thomas Gainsborough. As a child, I grew up underneath an elaborately (albeit cheaply) framed reproduction of the painting on our living room wall. To me at the time, it was simply a picture of a be-dimpled unsmiling little boy with impossibly rosy lips, wearing fancy shiny blue clothes and ribboned party shoes he must have got for Christmas. He was holding something in his right hand with a feather on it that I, for some reason, thought might be a cat… (well, it was in a shadow and I could never quite figure it out).

Anyway, the picture was just another part of the house, like the brown chesterfield, and the knick-knacks on the multi-tiered mahogany table in the corner. And like so many things did at that age, I assumed the picture was necessary to hold the living room together, like the stove did the kitchen, and the furnace in the basement did the house. The fact that I could have described the Blue Boy in my sleep was no different than my ability to describe my Grandfather’s straight-backed and incredibly uncomfortable chair in my brother’s bedroom. Things were things -no more, no less- and each owned the space allotted to it like the mirror in the bathroom, or the dresser in my parent’s bedroom. The Blue Boy owned the south wall opposite the picture window which, in turn, owned the street.

So now, whenever I see the Blue Boy, I am immediately transported back to those days in Winnipeg when we both stared through those same windows and watched the swirling winter blizzards and the little birds that clutched the greening branches of the boulevard tree each spring. Blue became the little boy who never grew up and never changed -forever grasping the feathered cat with one hand, and sticking out his other elbow like he was searching for something in his jacket pocket.

It was only recently, though, that I discovered there might be other ways of looking at him.[ii] I didn’t realize that perhaps because of his extravagant costume, his apparently suggestive posture, and his androgynous features, the Blue Boy had become a gay icon. I must admit I had to take a fresh look at the painting to see what I had missed.

Even on a second look, I wasn’t convinced that there was a change, actually: he was still the rather over-dressed little boy who continued to stare at me as if he was bored. Or, maybe he was just tired of posing for the artist in his ridiculous clothes. I did wonder why Gainsborough had chosen to depict him dressed like that of course, but in fact, the only thing that seemed to stand out for me was the colour he’d chosen. Apart from his frilly shirt and the long socks that suggested he’d not washed them for a while, he was a basically a blue monochrome. Oh yes, and I used to wonder why both sleeves of his jacket were ripped -but I barely notice that now; I assume that every artist has to have some sort of recognizable signature eccentricity. I haven’t taken it any further.

I have to admit that there are some resemblances to both the posing and the flamboyant over-dressing as the author Matthew Wilson pointed out in the examples offered in the end-noted article, but he also included a picture of Shirley Temple dressed like the Blue Boy, so I’m a little confused. I mean, am I supposed to be able to spot a gay person solely -and reliably- by their affectations?

We all seek to flaunt our idiosyncrasies from time to time, don’t we? They help to create our identities and assist people in recognizing us in a crowd… or is that just a modern conceit, a media-influenced affectation? When I was in high school, I used to back-comb my hair into what I assumed was a pompadour to make me look taller; it fooled no one, however; it got me no dates, but until someone told me how silly I looked, I was quite content to pursue that that idiosyncratic appearance.

In a way, I suppose that androgyny -if that’s what the Blue Boy actually demonstrated- was a way of blurring the difference and melding the genders. Perhaps it was a way of normalizing however you identified yourself in society. The famous writer Oscar Wilde for example, may have pushed the limits of his era, however, when he often dressed in ‘extravagant historically inspired clothing, frequently with knee-breeches, velvet jackets, cloaks and broad-brimmed hats in homage to painters like Gainsborough.’

Still, when Wilde was imprisoned for his homosexuality on charges of gross indecency in 1895, ‘he became the most famous publicly gay man in the world… and the photographs of him were misappropriated. According to Hedquist [Valerie Hedquist, a professor of art history at the University of Montana], “they eventually ended up in the first medical books that were teaching people how to recognise homosexuality”. It embedded a savagely intolerant view of same-sex attraction, based closely around the stereotyped visual “tells” of Blue Boy’.

But, do gay people really need -or want- to dress like that to show their membership? I would have thought there were other ways to demonstrate their preferences. Of course, maybe Oscar Wilde enjoyed the tease, but he was a writer and they’re known for their idiosyncrasies, aren’t they?

[i] https://musingsonretirementblog.com/2020/08/09/to-see-or-not-to-see-that-is-the-question/

[ii] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220120-gainsboroughs-blue-boy-the-private-life-of-a-masterpiece

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