James Bond: Muscle Mary
The lines between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ fashion are more blurred than ever, in part thanks to James Bond. Nevertheless, stereotypical assumptions about the clothing we choose to wear still persist. Craig’s Bond carries off a classic ‘gay look’ down to a (very tightly fitted) tee.
In my teens, traditionally a time when most want to look attractive to others, I cared little for what I wore. The baggier the better. The darker the better. Clothing was just a necessity, nothing more. I didn’t want to look attractive to anyone because that would mean facing up to my seemingly intractable problem: if a girl fancied me, I knew it couldn’t go anywhere. If a boy fancied me… well, that would be even more of a nightmare.
If you were to open up my closet right now (metaphor fully intended), you’d find things are quite different. For once, my clothes are almost exclusively brightly coloured. Most of them are also a fair bit smaller than when I was younger. Part of this is because I lost a couple of stone in weight in my early twenties. And another part of it is because being as an out gay man, there’s an expectation that I wear fitted clothes. If I’m caught between buying a small and a medium sized item I will go with the small. If I don’t, I will get my gay membership card withdrawn. Or something like that. I don’t make the rules!
Well, in all seriousness, we do. We can all wear whatever we want of course, whatever our sexual orientation. Having said that, social codes do of course exist. And although these codes may have become somewhat muddled, making it harder to pin down whether someone’s outfit makes them ‘gay’ or ‘straight’, tightness usually carries gay connotations. Even if you don’t have much muscle-definition to speak of (mine would barely warrant a whisper), gay men generally wear tighter clothes than most straight men.
There’s a reason an otherwise innocuous photograph of four lads on a night out in Birmingham (near where I live) went viral in 2020. To many people’s eyes, their tight-attire made them look ‘other’.
While many of the comments they attracted were light-hearted, many were not, making erroneous assumptions about the men just based on their appearances. Some of those who turned the image into a meme judged that their tight-jeans and conspicuous musculature meant the men were stupid, racist and even headed out for a night of violence. Inevitably, some anonymous trolls threw homophobic abuse their way.
Straight eye for the queer guy
You don’t have to be gay to receive homophobic abuse.
You don’t have to be gay to ‘look gay’.
But there are apparently some items of clothing which immediately mark you out as less-than-straight.
A 2013 article in The Atlantic attempted to be more nuanced than merely gay/straight, putting different trousers on the Kinsey Scale, ranked by how tight they were. With his tongue thoroughly in his cheek, writer Alexander Abad-Santos went from the ‘exclusively heterosexual’ dad jean to the ‘predominantly homosexual’ chino, right up to the ‘almost exclusively homosexual’ designer jean (as worn by the four lads above) and ‘exclusively homosexual’ jeggings for men (meggings).
Writing in 2017, Paul Flynn, author of Good As You: From Prejudice to Pride – 30 Years of Gay Britain (strongly recommended), looked back on the fashion of the last 30 years and concluded that gay style has become more mainstream. Of the seven key styles associated with gay men, one of these has had particular crossover success: the ‘muscle Mary’. Flynn identitied figures like Mark Wahlberg, David Gandy and David Beckham as being especially responsible, making it more socially acceptable than ever before for straight-identifying men to show off their muscles - and what’s in their underwear.
A descriptor for a subgroup of gay men, ‘muscle Mary’ has been in use in gay circles for decades but (as is always the way with slang amongst minority groups) has only recently been codified in dictionaries.
Craig’s portrayal of James Bond has surely played a substantial role in bringing muscle Marydom into the mainstream.
Breaking his tailor’s heart
The much-discussed swimming trunks Casino Royale were a watershed moment, showing that shedding almost all of your clothing in the water is just as acceptable for straight-identifying men as gay men. Straight men who wear trunks with such a low rise and a short inseam want to be seen and if it’s a gay man gazing on they should be flattered, not flustered.
Several of Craig’s shirts in Casino Royale were designed with showing-off-muscles in mind. But over successive films, his wardrobe has continued to shrink more and more. For those experts who are offended by poor tailoring, such as Matt Spaiser, the creator of the endlessly interesting Bond Suits. According to Spaiser, the suits of Quantum of Solace help tell the story, with their darker colours reflecting that film’s characterisation of Bond. They are “trimmer” but, not too tight.
But by the time we get to Skyfall, and particularly Spectre, they are simply too small. Spaiser says Daniel Craig is the one who must “take responsibility” for these circumspect style choices, not costume designer Jany Temime, and certainly not Tom Ford whose suits are not supposed to fit the body as they do Bond’s in Skyfall and Spectre.
Spaiser argues that, while irksome, there is a method in the madness:
“The too-tight fit of Craig’s suits also follows the same reasoning as his cropped hair style: it makes him look more menacing. Bond’s suit looks like it is bursting at the seams, which is a reflection of Craig’s Bond’s suppressed anger that makes him a dangerous person.”
So Bond’s suits reflect his psychology. His barely-buttonable jacket suggests he could burst out of his second, fabric skin, akin to a transforming Incredible Hulk.
But why is he so angry in the later films? If anything, don’t the Craig films show him becomingly progressively less angry and more at ease with himself? His suits follow the reverse trajectory, becoming tighter as he works through his trauma. And it’s not just his suits: his casual wear also becomes more form-fitting.
This might just be accidental - an outcome of the films’ retconned continuity - but it could also suggest something which resonates with gay male viewers in particular: Bond’s need to stay young and relevant. This isn’t just the subtext of Skyfall but the actual text and even metatext - a fifty year film series trying to stay on top of its game.
In the early noughties, fashion writer Charlie Porter observed:
“Gay men are obsessed with youth through lust and fear: lust for what we covet and fear of what we will inevitably lose.”
Whereas many straight men in the 30s and 40s are content to wear clothing which is shapeless, gay men stick with fitted alternatives with youthful connotations. Porter explains:
“In a more competitive environment, gay men have a much stronger interest in showing themselves off than heterosexual males. By sticking to the boyish look into their 30s and 40s, gay men with no interest in fashion still have a sense of style. I have friends who find fashion too boring to hate it, yet they still look good because they rely on this predefined and identifiable wardrobe. It means that gay men appear to know what they are doing with fashion, even if they don't. Hence the belief that gay men are more fashionable.”
Bond’s dissatisfaction with aging leads to fashion choices experts find questionable. But it also makes him relatable to men, especially gay men, who will go to any lengths to maintain their sexual attractiveness.
The Workouts Are Not Enough
A muscle Mary is someone who prides themselves on their appearance, taking every opportunity to flaunt their assets.
And if you’ve got it, why not?
But what if you’re never satisfied with what you see in the mirror? Bond does a lot of mirror-gazing in the Craig films. Does he ever like what he sees?
Body dissatisfaction issues can affect anyone (most of us?) but muscle dysmoprhia, does disproportionately affect gay men. Commonly referred to as ‘bigorexia’, this anxiety disorder causes someone to see themselves as small and weak, despite actually being big and muscular. For gay men especially, working out obsessively is another potential consequence of trying to heal the low self-esteem we battle with as a result of self-shaming from early childhood. Could Daniel Craig’s insistence that he wears too-tight suits be a way of implying that Bond is suffering from this under-recognised illness? Is he wearing tighter and tighter clothes to draw appreciation from others about his physique, which he himself believes to be inadequate?
It appears that Craig’s Bond will always be ill-at-ease and have clothing which reflects this. The trend looks set to continue into No Time To Die. Although some of Bond’s retirement looks appear more relaxed in terms of textiles and colours, the fit is still generally tight. Spaiser notes that, based on the footage released so far, at least one of Bond’s new suits appears to have an “improved fit” but the tailoring is still “not perfect”.
Muscle Mary, goodnight?
Mark Simpson, the ‘Daddy’ of the metrosexual, who coined the term in 1994 (to describe straight men adopting traits typically associated with gay men), traces Bond’s metrosexual tendencies back to Connery:
”...perhaps the most proto-metrosexual aspect of the first James Bond is that he is also a sex object almost as ravishing as any of the ladies he ravishes, almost as fetishized as any of the objects of desire he toys with...”
While this aspect of the character may have been hiding in plain sight for decades, it was shoved in our face when Daniel Craig took over - quite literally if you were sitting on the front row of the cinema during the scene where he walked out of the sea!
Now that James Bond has unequivocally become a sex symbol with physical attributes of a stereotypically image-conscious gay man, it seems unlikely that these components of the character will ever be put back in the box. Muscle Mary Bond is probably here to stay.
Whoever takes over the role after Craig has big shoes to fill - and smaller-than-they-should-be clothes to fill out.
Acknowledgements
My knowledge of fashion is relatively limited. I found Matt Spaiser’s Bond Suits website invaluable for supplying me with the necessary terminology. Links to the pieces I found especially invaluable are included in the main body article above.
