Moobs: Men and Their Breasts
Moobs will be an experimental documentary about men, male identified, and/or masculine identified people who have breasts either because they are transsexual or transgender, have a genetic or medical condition such as gynecomastia, or have breasts due to steroid or other drug usage. The documentary will contain audio interviews of men talking about their breasts, and their relationship with their bodies because of this. The visual aspect will be composed primarily of grainy black and white portraits of various men’s chests. The experimental aspect will be in form and technique, utilizing alternative processes such as mono flex: masking on a frame by frame level to produce both positive and negative image. The masking will be a strip of tape across the men’s breasts resulting in a negative image across the breasts / chest and a positive image surrounding that area of the frame. The background setting will be dilapidated houses or buildings to portray the concept that the body is a space of dissolution.
Society says that men are not supposed to have “female looking” breasts and that male chests are not to be sexualized, feminized, or objectified. Queer or non-binary bodies are usually hidden and shamed in our culture, experience erasure, and are not typically highlighted or showcased in the media or in a photography. Other experimental processes and techniques will be used to manipulate and deteriorate the image, further compounding on this concept. Audio interviews / stories will also contain experiences of when who have undergone or are planning on undergoing corrective surgeries to reconstruct their chests, why they chose to do this, and how they feel about that decision. Some men may feel gender dysphoria where others may not. Some might feel ashamed where others may have found acceptance or worked through the shame that they feel about their chests.
Female breasts are sexualized in our culture, particularly American culture. Are men’s breasts sexual? What about men’s breasts that look feminine? Where does that boundary lie? This is one question that the film will address directly as audiences play a voyeuristic role and must grapple with this question while watching the film. Why do male identified people need to be void of any feminine features or attributes in order to successfully perform masculinity? Do they? There is a lot of violence and misogyny inflicted upon queer bodies and also men who do not properly perform masculinity. Bullying, policing, and “othering” of male identified people who are queer, have “queer” bodies or non-binary bodies, are gay identified, or have feminine attributes either physically or in their personality or gender expression, runs rampant in our patriarchal society.
This film will attempt to butt heads with misogynistic thinking and expose the truth that bodies come in all shapes, forms, and with various attributes; gender is not necessarily based on biological sex, and sexualizing, dehumanizing, stigmatizing, or objectifying breasts can be harmful to the people that have them whether they are male identified or female identified people. Interspersed with the black and white portraits will be still photographs of men with “perfect bodies,” to show how starkly different the fantasy can be from reality. Both men’s and women’s bodies have been under attack by media images propagated by consumerist capitalist ideology that attempts to make people feel bad, ugly, or imperfect in order to sell them products. Though women’s bodies and minds have been more vehemently attacked by advertisements, magazines, media, television, and movies, men’s bodies too are subject to this type of aggressive commercialism and shame.
The film will be around 5-6 minutes and will be finished on 16mm film with a married optical soundtrack. The trajectory will be film festivals that focus on documentary works, LGBTQI topics and issues, and underground or experimental festivals. Moobs seeks to be controversial, yet approachable by the mainstream, poignant, concise, and professional in it’s treatment of this highly personal and intimate subject matter.
