KiNdAfaBuLous
GPOY: “Peacockin.”
Last night, I was watching Californication, and this rapper dude dropped the illest verbal-“peacockin’.” I thought about it for a second, and I was like, “YES! TRUE! ABSOLUTELY!” Boys are constantly peacockin’, and it’s the most appropriately animalistic, biological way to describe the way that boys overly accentuate their hyped-up, physically constructed masculinity.
At the gym earlier that night, I couldn’t help but notice all the dudes peacockin’ around the weights area. It’s one of my biggest annoyances (but biggest delights) of going to a predominantly gay gym (one would be sure to find this at a predominantly heterosexual gym as well-but to a lesser degree I imagine since girls would be rolling their eyes more).
Boys (I’ll explicitly refer to them as such because they’re aren’t that many “men” there in the traditional emotional use of the word) walk around-flexing their muscles, making serious (in the I can’t believe he’s serious) pout faces in the mirror, and just feign this hyper-masculinized version of themselves-all for the benefit of asserting their hegemonic masculinity (and for vanity purposes I imagine).
Playing football for as long as I did, I also witnessed this type of peacockization, and it always made me laugh. However, nothing made me laugh as hard as when I actually participated in this type of behavior as well. From flexing to checking myself out to lifting as much as I could-I felt the subtle pangs of competition from within; and my inner-peacock wanted to assert and showoff his feathers to all the other male peacocks around me to say, “don’t fuck with me I’m fucking fabulous and colorful and strong and I will participate in this forum of display because all of you do too.”
Now-is peacockin’ ridiculous and contrived and just a tiny bit tragic and laughable? Absolutely. I just smirk and side-eye dudes who go too far with the flexing and displaying of their feathers. At the same time, I can’t help but take notice of the brilliance and beauty of the male form, although one would hope that the abundant narcissism would be checked to a minimal level. Still-I can’t help but feel this paradoxical, simultaneous abhorrence and whimsical regard for the peacocking nature of so many men.
