The Philippine Online Chronicles

Really yours, that is. Because in fact in recent years, the local leading man in films, romantic and otherwise, seems to be all about an audience that isn’t me, i.e., that isn’t woman.

But maybe the question is whether or not it’s for the Pinay. Because it’s entirely possible that the general opinion about sex on the big screen is that it’s still unacceptable and forbidden, and for those reasons we do not walk out of the theater. We get embarrassed. Yes, we get embarrassed, i.e., we shift uncomfortably in our seats, uncertain of whether or not we’re supposed to cover our eyes, or just look straight on, and pretend it’s nothing to us. Who even wants to be called a prude, right?

Yet, discomfort isn’t the word we’re looking for here. Nor is it embarrassment. In fact, we least expect these bodies to be on the big screen, because yes, usually they aren’t. Case in point, if you’re of the generation that saw Gerald Anderson as a teeny bopper, yet to let go of his baby fat, and right there in a movie with Kim Chiu (who is still teeny bopper) why should we expect any moment of toplessness?

Oh but there is precisely that moment in the movie Paano na Kaya? And because there is no love scene to speak of – where it is usually default to see naked men – we saw Gerald topless where? All together now! The shower. Yes, that is where we saw that he has been working out, now has a version of abs, and some of those biceps. Yes, because the camera just happened to show all that as he took a bath, all two minutes of it, maybe? Possibly about five. Yes, the show of developed upper body muscles happens in a movie where there is no love scene to speak of, and where there is a whole lot of love and friendship, and very little of libog and that kind of, uh, active relationship.

But what of movies with lots of activity? Well, you’ll find that very little of it is about you as a female viewer when what you see are the woman’s hands going oh so slowly over the man’s hands (Angel Locsin and Piolo Pascual in Love Me Again). You know it isn’t for you when most of what you get out of a love scene by the shore of the beach is, tadah!, a view of Derek Ramsey’s body taken from the top, which is barely exciting. The view of men’s bodies is not what erotica for women makes.

Because what we want is to see the whole thing happening. What we want is romance in the images of love and its making. The view of a man’s abs ain’t going to do it for us, unless he’s doing some moves with the woman who we imagine to be us. Yes, it isn’t so much about the man in these movies per se, as it is about the woman, and the possibility of it being us. That has been the rationale in love teams since forever. That is the rationale in a love story still. You don’t want to be the girl in general, you want to be the girl that this leading man desires.

And you desire this man too, but not in the way that those abs will make you fawn, or that an image of a body will make you shrivel up and die (OA naman!). You want a guy who moves around and loves the girl, the guy who isn’t all about his body, but what he does with it, where he takes it, who it loves. And we don’t get this in movies anymore, not since the leading man’s bodies ceased to be just ours, the woman viewer.

So congratulations are in order, or at least, a shout out, literally: Mabuhay Ang Federasyon! The landscape of male objectification in cinema has evolved because of you. I might complain, but I do with all my heart, appreciate it. After all, plenty needs to be said about the fact that women can now fawn if they wish to. And that is thanks to you my gay bestfriend who has become the bigger market.

Objectify the male? Check!

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