The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men

In these smart and probing essays, film critic Betancourt (Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall) reflects on his relationship with masculinity through the lens of the heartthrobs of his youth. He recounts grappling with his sexuality as an awkward boy growing up in Colombia in the 1990s and shares how his attraction to the outlandishly masculine Disney characters Gaston and Hercules made him envious of the former’s swagger and the latter’s “pecs,” while at the same time they provided “guidance on what kind of man I wanted to become.” In “Walk Like a Loaded Man,” the author contends that Ricky Martin’s evolution from the smoldering, straight-performing pop star behind “Livin’ la Vida Loca” to the purveyor of Instagram “thirst traps” featuring his husband represents an overdue expansion of the “Latin lover” persona. Betancourt’s verve and wit elevate the prose, and the more personal entries are intimate and affecting, such as “Of Capes and Men,” in which Betancourt considers the showy garb of Puerto Rican TV astrologer Walter Mercado in light of Betancourt’s own efforts as a teenager to suppress mannerisms he feared would expose him as queer. Readers won’t want to put this one down. (May)