How Art Basel Got Me Thinking About the Meaning of Jockstraps

Photographed by Ruvan.

When I think of the jockstrap, as I’ve had occasion to do lately, these words from Walter Benjamin dance bloody-eyed across my brain like the shattered go-go boys still de rigueur at certain long-declining gay bars: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” This is the jockstrap, a vulgar person might say, the smushed pouch of civilization in front and the elastic-framed wilds of free-flapping barbarism in back. Squeezed between them is humanity. 

In service of further bastardizing the concepts I’ve introduced, I need to mention that, last Thursday, I attended the mid-Art Basel launch party for Neude, a new line of “luxury shapewear underwear” (i.e., jocks and strapped underwear) for men; that the fete, held at Miami Beach’s premiere gay club, Twist, featured no naked, jock-clad bodies, save the two or three bartenders wearing the brand’s banded briefs; and that the party succeeded according to the relevant criteria, i.e., it was as full of gays and gallerinas as any sensible or staggeringly drunk person could want and plenty convivial in that aggressively sloshed post-fair way, at least until an enterprising sneak pocketed two of my friends’ phones.

Photographed by Ruvan.

The absence of on-site product seemed to disappoint at least one patron, whom I overheard say, “I thought there were going to be, like, supermodels in jockstraps.” I might’ve invited him, or anyone else, to elaborate. I might’ve asked founder/creator Eric Niemand or CCO Christopher Glancy, both of whom were ensconced in a VIP booth when I met them, to explain the dearth of beefcakes. I might have even grabbed every glassy-eyed homosexual by the asymmetrical tank top strap and demanded the whereabouts of my friends’ phones had I not completely lost my voice hours before the event’s nine pm start. 

No jockstraps, no voice: the stars were aligning for a shaky discourse on the utility of absence. What is the jock but a deliberately incomplete garment, one that comes into being precisely through its lack in back? Isn’t the jock a public statement of yearning, a declaration of the need for interpersonal contact, an invitation to the completion only a second body can offer? And what is speech to a winning but shy scene reporter except an impediment to his preference for self-conscious think-piecing?

Photographed by Quentin Belt.

Photographed by Quentin Belt.

Photographed by Quentin Belt.

I was able to croak out a few questions in the courtyard. An artist who lives in Kingston, NY, said that jockstraps reminded her of chairs in that they support. A New York City PR professional ventured that they’re “less of a sex thing now and more of an aesthetic booster—you wear them with jeans to give yourself a lift, like a pushup bra.” In a Steven Klein-shot bulletin (called Neude. Paper) produced for the launch and scattered around the club, the flexing models do look lifted, supported, as well as awkward and fascinatingly sexless, in the manner of the Speedo-d men deputized to play the “pit crew” on Rupaul’s Drag Race.

Other questions I managed: Do I like the jockstrap—not Neude’s specifically, which were selling for around $60-65 at the Miami Beach Webster, but generally? (Context-dependent.) Am I, like the jockstrap, presumptuous, vaguely functional, fundamentally lacking, and intent on broadcasting my supposed openness to experience, which is in fact mostly a posture? And what of barbarism? What of civilization? Is the material substrate these concepts apply to not the jock but my mind, which, having absorbed them, now sees the totality of the social contract reflected and refracted in, or stained off-white and otherwise upon, a puny length of guiltless fabric? And what happened to my friends’ phones? Faced with such questions I find that I have once again lost my voice.

Photographed by Ruvan.