Glamour? — The Larousse dictionary defines it as “a type of sophisticated sex appeal,” and mentions certain Hollywood stars. Makeup, injections, and now, on social media, filters like Bold Glamour. The face, theater of the soul, becomes the stage of fantasy. Behind the doll-like mask, it is either a man’s plaything or a venomous flower — a role-playing, schizophrenic mimicry, like a love song sung for others or for oneself. Is it a lie, or an illumination of raw intimacy? Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet partially lift the curtain on what happens backstage. Yet glamour also takes us back to our origins, akin to the courtship displays of birds. It is intrinsic to life — flowers, birds, fish, humans — and remains one of the levers of our survival. Sometimes a mask, sometimes a confession, it both veils and unveils us, in the manner of Mishima: “What people perceived as an attitude on my part was actually the expression of my need to affirm my true nature, and it was precisely what people considered my true self that was a disguise.”
Glamour is a call from the eye to see in the darkness. Subtle deceits that knock down dogmas and unlock censorships.