Guys, keep your shirt on!
By Lukas Arndt
Some things have a bit of a bad reputation these days.
Take, for example, the moon in contemporary German poetry. After centuries of being overused as a symbol – for unrequited love, for instance – poets nowadays are forced to carefully decide whether they can bear the weight of meaning (and cliché) that comes with using this image.
Another example would be romantic comedies about heterosexual couples featuring conventionally attractive white actors and actresses. Such rom-coms, too, must ask themselves whether there is still a need for further over-representation of such relationship concepts. Whilst I would personally encourage everyone to look for creative ways to avoid the risk of kitsch in poetry when it comes to the moon, I am more sceptical about rom-coms. Here, too, there may well be ways and means to counteract mere reproduction and to reinvent the genre in a self-critical way. Yet this happens far too rarely.
What does this have to do with bros and T-shirts?
In contemporary circus (and in dance and theatre and public spaces and everywhere…) there is one thing that still has way too good of a reputation: men taking their T-shirts off on stage and in public. Let me make this clear, even if it’s long been obvious to many: As long as it isn’t a given that Flinta* people can do the same in public, dear Bros, that’s not okay. Not even in a circus piece, not even as a performative act, not even for a fraction of a second, not even if someone else takes off their T-shirt, not even if you quickly put it back on afterwards. Not at all.
I can already hear a few imaginary Bros whispering that this shows male vulnerability, and a few others that the problem can perhaps only be addressed through the gesture itself. I don’t believe that. There may be good ways to do it. Perhaps. I just don’t really see them very much.