Vanity

The homoeroticism of looksmaxxing

‘Did you ever think that maybe there’s more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking?’ So asks Derek Zoolander, before pulling his trademark pout, exhibiting cheekbones that look like they were engineered by Brunel. Zoolander came out a quarter-century ago, but now looks prophetic. Ben Stiller’s gullible, self-obsessed moron would fit right in to today’s world of extreme male vanity. You must take methamphetamines, inject testosterone aged 14 and spend $35,000 on a double-jaw surgery Of course, humans, and, dare I say it, especially a certain type of man, have always been vain. However, for all the time Louis XIV or Rudolf Nureyev spent on their appearance, they did have other strings to their bows.

Looking on in anger: Happiness and Love, by Zoe Dubno, reviewed

The fantasy of telling disagreeable friends how awful they really are is a relatable one. But rarely does it find such extravagant, relentless expression as in Zoe Dubno’s debut novel Happiness and Love. The narrator is a nameless woman who finds herself among former friends in New York. While she never succumbs to an outburst, her interior monologue issues forth like a furious esprit d’escalier. The dramatic scenario – modelled on that of Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 novel Woodcutters – is a dinner party in the loft dwelling of an ‘art world’ couple with whom the narrator used to live, following the funeral of one of their cohort.