Self-Portrait Challenge- Testosterone Injected Glamour

All right! No more pussyfooting around. Enough is enough with the make-up, the homoerotic undertones, and the barefaced sissy-ness of my last few portraits. It is time to inject this month’s glamour prompt with a bit of testosterone. I have gotten a bit soft in my life of ease, but I can’t be blamed entirely- I live with my wife, my infant daughter, and my mother. About ninety percent of the middle school staff I work with are women, and most of my regular readers here at Intrepid Flame are too. Since I've stopped drinking, the idea of getting drunk and hanging out with the boys, even though I have no real close guy friends here, doesn’t sound too appealing, so I watch Will & Grace with my wife and dance around the house with my daughter.

Because I feel that may have been connecting too comfortably with my feminine side, I decided this week to finish this month’s challenge with a little old fashion manliness. It started on Friday when a few teachers and I participated in our first game of a student run flag-football tournament. We won our first game 27-0 and I threw two TD's and caught another one. I guess I should mention that as luck would have it, our first opponents were the 8th grade girls, but hey if you’re gonna play football, you gotta be tough. This was meant to be my all-man weekend and damned if I was going to let a bunch of little girls soften me up.

After the football game, it was time for our monthly poker game with the boys. Since we are all dads now, there is not too much talk about…well whatever it is that guys talk about when they are away from the womenfolk. We burped and farted and played cards till about 2am. It was a good time, and I won a decent amount of cash. Too bad I was sick with fatigue the next day. Man, am I getting old!

This brings us to my portrait for this week. I wanted to portray as masculine a rendition of glamour as I could. I thought of the actors of the past: Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and Humphrey Bogart. What was it that they had that made them so captivating and glamorous? I think what made these men so alluring was the fact that they were unapologetically tough, but somehow still maintained a very subtle gracefulness and vulnerability. Although they appeared to be suave, debonair, and obviously smelled great, they weren’t the type of men you would want to mess with. They could kick your ass in a bar fight, but than get to the business of taking care of the ladies.

After several weeks of hiding behind make-up and exploring the tangential points of masculinity, I decided to make this week’s portrait be all man. In order to maintain my love of gender role ambiguity, please keep in mind that while I was taking these photos I was listening to Rufus Wainwright. There is something about his music that is very glamorous. I hope I have captured the mood. So come on ladies, give it up. Are you swooning?