The hero and the heroin: Inscriptions of AIDS on the male body

Abstract

Contrary to popular belief, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has not only impacted on the languages of fashion and clothing in matters of communication and corporate social responsibility, but also on the very creation of the fashioned bodies. Two very different examples of the metaphorization and inscription of AIDS on the male body are the heroic, muscular and healthy figures of the Versace and Calvin Klein models, inherited from the white Yuppie culture, and the popularization of the heroin chic aesthetics of Marc Jacobs and, later, Hedi Slimane’s Dior Homme. Much more than simple body types, the hero and the heroin might be considered as different answers to the same epistemic crisis that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has caused in terms of body, sexuality, otherness, health and illness, from the late 1980s to the 1990s. The aim of this article is to read and deconstruct western high fashion of that period through a critical discourse analysis involving masculinity studies and queer theory concerning AIDS, to understand the narratives that the pandemic has created on the male fashioned bodies.