Oh Fabio
Sorry for the delay! Here is my poem, and my description:
I wanted to look at Fabio for this project because I always saw him has a kind of sexual conflict, even before this class – he is hailed as the paragon of masculinity, for his muscular physique and large jaw, but he is also a joke, a parody of himself. As I thought about it further I realized Fabio wasn’t nearly as good an example of sexual objectification from an emotional standpoint as he was from a capitalistic standpoint. All of the attention he receives is for his looks, but in most cases its not driven just by physical lust for his body but emotional lust for what his body represents- the chin is strength, the hair is old fashioned romance, and the exposed, rippling muscles are safety, protection, and being easily swept up over the threshold of a pirate ship’s lovemaking cabin. In other words he has come to be more than a person, embodied by the fact that he only requires one name. How did the Fabio Lanzoni, mainly anonymous male model, become FABIO? He was discovered at 14 in Italy, and became a model for photographers there. But I think the crux of his transition was in his travels to America. There he was a pleasant anachronism – the Italian Stallion, his long hair recalling fairytales with knights on white horses. His exaggerated masculine image became the perfect advertisement for romance (see: all the romance novel covers he’s done) and for attractiveness (see all the food and health products he’s endorsed). His life has been run on biopower since then – his livelihood fueled by his looks and therefore his trips to the gym and to the salon. And the other facet to his transition in to FABIO is that he figured out how to sell himself – he wrote his own romance novels, starred in a crappy but innuendo laden fitness video, and he even had a phone line where, for $1.99 a minute, you could listen to wise romance-isms from Fabio himself: “A man should protect hees woman”. Yea. He’s been selling sex his whole life, while touting it as something more tender.
Ode to Fabio
Oh Fabio
When your looks have overtaken your soul
And your face has become a brand
No one will give you a serious role
*
I wondered if it was your fault
Or if some faceless corporate suit saw
one perfect pec daring to bare
in the quaint Italian countryside air
and said hey America needs some of that right there
and took you in his capitalist maw.
*
They say you were an Italian film star
but Hollywood has a gluttonous draw.
They said you would go far,
the handsomest handsome they ever saw.
*
Then they swept you off
to commercial after commercial
made you feel used, not special
When you asked them for a single penetrating line
They said Fabio! You’re doing fine.
Now inch a little into the light
so that it hits your hair just right
and turn a little towards the fan
so that it blows away not at you,
and stand very still, remember you’re
a statue.
*
Bio-powered vehicle, economically useful
fitted out like a machine
Infiltrating women’s homes
On the covers of romance novels
you made the sad, the chubby, the lonely women grovel
all while holding goddesses, giant breasted and lean.
You quickly figured out
with muscles bared and brash,
it was easy to to trade the beef for the cash
*
You called your self a simple man
A bard, a poet with a global message of ROMANCE
but with no thought,
only an empty and seductive dance.
*
And now you speak in innuendo and small talk
Thoughtless thoughts inching out
The corner of your mouth
Spewing romantic clichés and hackneyed phrases that you were taught.
You say men only care about visuals
Then you say you need something more intellectual, more profoundly beautiful
But you never go out with less than three buttons down.
*
And today you feel old
Owning 222 barely used motorcycles has taken its toll
And all your neighbors say, “Of all the people! Heavens above!
Fabio has a Lamborghini but he doesn’t have love.”
Tags: biopower, Capitalism, Fabio, Romance, sex
May 25th, 2013 at 5:36 pm
Rachel,
It’s always fascinating to learn more about a cultural icon, and in this case, the story of how Fabio was “discovered” at such an early age and became the thing created is a good instance of how objectification operates on bodies and minds. Your poem gets at that quite effectively and, importantly, addresses him as a person. As you show, the extremism of his masculinity actually puts it into a parodic light and thus reveals the faultlines of hyper masculinity.