A few years ago, Katherine, an actress in her mid-20s who lives in Park Slope, was cast in a play by a theater director several years her senior. He wasn’t particularly attractive. In fact, he was almost effeminate. But he was intelligent and not too forward, and he was always surrounded by beautiful women—which, Katherine admits, she found intriguing.
“He seemed like the antithesis of all the jocky guys I went to high school with,” she said. (The women in this story agreed to discuss their romantic pasts only if identified by their middle names.) “He was sensitive, funny, supersmart, not athletic at all and not physically imposing. But there was something that was so charismatic—a gentleness and gracefulness and a confidence.”
Katherine and the director began a weeks-long courtship. There were late-night rehearsals in a dark theater that turned into surprisingly intimate later-night conversations. But then summer came. They both left New York for a while. And every time Katherine tried to reach him, he never returned her phone calls and ultimately disappeared altogether.
“People told me he was trouble, but I really thought he was too evolved and sensitive to hurt me the way he did,” Katherine said.
Katherine’s director was an Homme Fatale—a genre of man that New York women have come to know well. Often the creative type, he projects a deceptive vulnerability, while maintaining an appealing confidence. He’s usually not the best-looking guy in the room, but he is the smartest; he turns these traits to his advantage, playing up the contrast with the typical hot guy or womanizer (physical inferiority, emotional evolvement). His courtship begins with a rushed sense of intimacy and, yet, a disarming lack of forward physical advances; a first date might involve a game of Scrabble or perhaps a cup of tea; his target usually leaves wondering if in fact it was a date at all. And yet the story always has the same ending—he grows distant, stops calling and eventually disappears with little explanation, if any.
There's so much here, I don't know where to begin-- but a good place is this idea of "deceptive vulnerability" and being "too evolved to hurt me."
You find yourself dating the sensitive "perfect man," the kind that romantic comedies assure us are hiding under every rock but, lo and behold, he does the unthinkable: he grows quiet. He grows distant. He leaves you.
And that leaving hurts.
Has this happened to you? Congatulations, you've just gone through a break-up. It happens. But why is this, a normal occurance, somehow sinister under the "Homme Fatale?" The author never says he did anything except for not call. Katherine's sense of betrayal comes from herself and the reason is simple: she expected, because this man was "sensitive" and "evolved," that he was just another nester stereotype. That all sensitive men are the boyfriend type-- this sensitivity of theirs assures her some measure of control and security.
Surprise! It doesn't. Katherine's betrayal came from buying into a stereotype and centering her expectations around it. It's painful, yes, but where exactly is the Fatale to these Hommes?
Dangerous femme fatale heroines, as portrayed by Rita Hayworth in Gilda or Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, are nearly extinct or have been reduced to tragic cougars while their male counterparts have only proliferated; now they can be found roaming the halls of magazines, publishing houses and the better English literature Ph.D. programs by day, and frequenting ironic dance parties in cramped Boerum Hill apartments by night. And unlike the typical womanizer, whose game is laughably easy to detect, the Homme Fatale’s modus operandi is more emotional and controlling than it is physical, leaving a wreckage that is, in the end, more disastrous.
(We pause here to note that the Homme Fatale, while related, is not the same as the oft-bemoaned indie rock or emo boy. While he may exhibit similarly sensitive qualities, an Homme’s emotional side is a learned part of his manipulation, not an authentic sentimentality.)
The Noir-era Femme Fatale character had particular traits, besides being beautiful and manipulative: they wanted something. They wanted a husband killed. They wanted some material object, some great and terrible favor. The love they elicited from men was of the obsessive kind, the kind that only a noir film could create: nihilistic, cynical, empty.
Often, those who wrapped themselves up with a Femme Fatale... actually died (if not that, went to jail or had some other terrible end).
The deadliness, in that era, was where their power came from: the allure was in the fact that these women were independent, blatantly sexual and always angling for themselves. That is what is fatal about the Femme Fatale.
And L'Homme Fatale, the so-called counterpart is... being sensitive as a trick? Well, what's this rotten bastard angling after, anyway? Sex?
The Homme Fatale has also slyly insinuated (as is to be expected) his way into popular culture. Take, for instance, the Aaron Rose character played by John Patrick Amedori on the teen drama Gossip Girl, the young downtown artist and RISD grad with the unfortunate goatee. In the six episodes in which his relationship with the glamorous, blond Upper East Sider Serena van der Woodsen has progressed in fits and starts, he has yet to actually have sex with her.
Okay... he's not trying to get laid? What makes him so terribly suspicious, then?
And for a somewhat nebbishy, shy person, he seems to have a suspicious number of beautiful female friends hanging around at all times. When Serena is justifiably confused by the other “muses” in his life, he simply says, “I could explain who Tamara is and why she was at my apartment last night, but the fact is, you feel something or you don’t. If you’re looking for an excuse to keep us apart, that’s fine.” It’s a classic Homme Fatale move: come on strong, then, when confronted with evidence that points to a lack of commitment or deception, turn it around so the woman feels like it’s her issue.
Again, we return to the problem of expectations. He's sensitive, he's shy but... he's surrounded by beautiful women? How dare he! That's Frat-boy behavior!
It's as if to say, if the guy doesn't walk like a Jock, quack like a Jock and fuck around like a Jock (and the funny part it, he doesn't seem to be fucking like a Jock at all), he's deeply betrayed someone by associating with a lot of women.
Let's just recap here a moment, shall we?
Femme Fatale:
:L'Homme Fatale.
The article later goes into a complete misreading of the Pick-up Artist stuff (I'll be writing about that at some point, I assure), making our "Homme Fatale" more sinister through association, despite the fact that the tactics of the two (PUA and HF) are clearly opposite. The manipulation meme is strong here-- how on earth could a man be sensitive and not be using that vulnerability as a way to emotionally manipulate women? Especially if-- gasp-- he leaves?
The article itself can't even answer that question as, in the end, it starts to contradict itself about how manipulative these Fatale Hommes are:
In my opinion, being an Homme Fatale is more of an affliction than a conscious course of action. I think you’re in love with the feeling as much as you are with each of those people. The Homme Fatale is not a slut, but the interest is both in the person, and even more so, in the feeling it gives you.”
Worse than a monster, then. A Romantic.
The Homme Fatale is neither a womanizer nor a sociopath—though these categories might overlap a bit.
“The Homme Fatale is a different, possibly more modern condition than a sociopath— he is not as aware of his actions. My understanding is that sociopaths are more clever and conniving. Maybe this is my personal bias, but I think the Homme Fatale is a slightly more sympathetic character,” said James. “The empathy is there, but people who do the most harm are people who don’t know what they want, and Hommes Fatales don’t know what they want.”
Gasp! Worse than a Romantic! He's the stereotype of a woman.
That's wrong of me, perhaps, but to this day I'll still hear that it's the right of every woman not to know what she wants.
So, too, is it the right of every man.
This article is emblematic of the Male Definition Problem: women have a expectations of behavior and feel betrayed when they are not met. And instead of blaming the female expectations, the males are blamed for exhibiting the exact same traits a female would bristle at being criticized over. All because no one knows what to expect of a "Man" anymore anyway-- emotion is encouraged yet, when displayed and someone is left hurt, it is then manipulative emotion, not true sensitivity. These expectations are tied into traditional gender roles: the more a male acts like a "female" (the article itself calls these hommes "almost effeminate"), the more he is expected to indulge in female-expectatant behaviors. And when he has "male-expectatant" behaviors, like emotional distance or haremizing? He's Evil and Wrong and Must Be Stopped.
No woman has the right to feel betrayed by a sensitive man who promises nothing, just as no man has the right to feel betrayed by a woman who doesn't give to him sexually. It's her right to choice to say no; it's his right to not know what he wants.
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