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Philippe I, duke of Orleans, in the robes he wore to his brother Louis XIV’s coronation in 1654, oil on canvas. Palace of Versailles. The Met’s “Camp” show would define the bisexual cross-dressing Monsieur as camp, but would he?

Whose identity is it anyway?

May 12, 2019

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion” (through Sept. 9) was inspired by Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” which she defined broadly as style over substance characterized by theatricality, irony, playfulness, masquerade and unselfconsciousness. It’s a definition and a show that cuts a wide swath, but in the end it turns out to be less about camp and more about identity — its mutability and its ownership.

Nightmare on Elm Street – the return of Anthony’s ‘weiner’

November 1, 2016

On Halloween, the scariest night in this god-awful election season, you have to feel sorry for Hill – a woman seemingly destined to be haunted by men who just can’t keep it in their pants.

First, of course, came Bill. Then came Trumpet. And now the compulsive exhibitionist who is the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman, Huma Abedin – Anthony the Weiner. (Technically, that should be spelled wiener, but who has time for technicalities with so much at stake?) Talk about your triangulation.

We are left with two questions – the same two questions we’re always left with, because they can never be answered:

Why are men obsessed with their privates?

And why do smart women make such foolish choices when it comes to men? ...