I love how Zohran Mamdani is wearing a suit everywhere. And if he has anything else he puts it ON TOP of the suit. A basketball jersey. A high-vis vest. All worn over the suit. He’s like the mayor character in a cartoon who’s always dressed as The Mayor. If I didn’t know who he was and he biked past me in NYC I’d be like holy shit was that the mayor
Not to bring the serious to a very fun post, but this reaction is exactly what Mamdani is working for with his image, because in a very real way the most effective way for him to be The Mayor is if he looks like The Mayor.
This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.
Despite the fact that a mayor who wears a T-shirt and jeans might “seem more approachable” in the eyes of the average American, Zohran Mamdani knows that someone with his profile fundamentally cannot get away with that the way his White colleagues can. He has instead put in the effort to look professional and BE approachable, because not only does it make it easier for him to reach and represent his constituents, it forces everyone, including both his opponents and establishment Democrats, to engage with the work he is doing instead of judging his image. The fact that he is always seen in a suit and is recognisably The Mayor is, while also something he has fun with, a deliberate choice to ensure he is as inarguably A Professional Politician To Be Taken Seriously. The added humour of e.g. the hi-vis is a bonus, only achievable because he works so hard to Look Like The Mayor.
‘Straight’ men question & police other men’s masculinity and sexuality far too much. Truly, it’s strange how invested some self-proclaimed straight men are in constantly analyzing, judging, and studying other men.
Masculinity is a rigidly policed and enforced social practice. This is in large part due to its competitive, hierarchical nature, and in no small part because men often view one another as threats, both socially and sexually. The preoccupation with the sexuality of other men can be understood as, itself, a form of para-homosexual relation.
I want a video game with realistic dick and balls physics not for any prurient reason, but… okay, so you know how in some games with boob physics, there’s a palpable delay after a character model is instantiated before physics start to apply to the boobs, so it’s like *pop* … *FWOMP*? I want to see the cock version of that. Penis-having character spawns in, there’s a beat, then the physics engine tries to play catch-up and applies a full second of gravitational acceleration to their junk all at once and they just randomly start helicoptering.
