In the Loge is likely the third theater-set painting of Mary Cassatt’s that you’ll see if you step into her special exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It isn’t given quite the same spotlight as the first two, which you pretty much have to walk by to see the rest of the exhibit, and it’s not featured as part of the (excellent, Kelsey McKinney–led) audio tour. But maybe it’s appropriate that you don’t notice it at first. A woman is intently watching … well, something … from a box seat in a theater—presumably but not definitively a performance.
It’s of a piece with Cassatt’s other women-in-the-theater works, in that the subject’s attention is occupied by something other than the viewer. The detail of the opera glasses in particular adds an extra layer between subject and observer. But there’s an intense, borderline uncomfortable intimacy in looking at In The Loge, because she definitely doesn’t know the viewer is there. The tension between public and private kept me staring, wondering where the boundaries of personal privacy begin, and where they’re supposed to.
It’s not entirely narcissism that I saw myself in this painting. A friend did tell me that this image reflected my own. Ever since I moved from the Midwest and, not too long after, started earning enough money to support the habit, I’ve become the most avid New York theatergoer I know. It’s where much of my discretionary spending goes, and because I’m more ardent than my pals, I often take in shows by myself.
I’m not self-conscious about this. When I was 20 I covered concerts for the local alt-weekly, so I got used to being alone with my thoughts in public venues. Frankly, when I go to the theater, I’m not there for the person next to me. With the rare exception of the times I get squirmy in an uncomfortable seat, I like to think I have impeccable manners at these things—focused, silent, contemplating, laughing only at actual jokes, never checking the time on my phone. My friend who recognized me in In The Loge used the word “aloof,” which, if that’s what not turning and whispering is, I guess I’ll have to wear it.
I like it because in darkened rooms I disappear. Where everyone’s attention is directed elsewhere, it can be just me and the art. Nothing matters but the work, not even my own body, which I had tried so hard to “fix” through all manner of ways, some of them harmful. That’s the feeling I project onto the woman in Cassatt’s painting, even without knowing where she’s looking. There’s a viable interpretation that she’s scoping out a cute guy or something, but I don’t believe that. I think she’s disappeared.
Look behind her in the painting, however, and the interpretation becomes thornier. In the background is a man with his opera glasses trained on her. The thing about being outside your home is that nobody’s ever truly invisible. By sticking our bodies in a place, we’re necessarily submitting it to the eyes of others. I had a nice reminder of this fact leaving Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, when two women stopped me to compliment my dress, mentioning also that they’d noticed it earlier across the street when I was entering the building. But this summer in particular, as I’ve outrun a lot of gender dysphoria and felt more confident and comfortable in my body, I keep noticing the double-edged sword of perception in tandem with an increase in random male attention. The good version of this is when a guy across from me on the train asks about my book and calls me pretty, making me feel like I’m fulfilling a very specific New York archetype. The bad version of this is when I’m absorbed in the rain against the window at the LIRR station in Jamaica, and a guy interrupts my non-thoughts by waving a hand in front of my face and asks where I’m headed. The worst is when I’m walking home alone at night and a guy tries to tag me with the dropped bag/broken glass scam—that gag’s collecting Social Security!—and while I shed him pretty easily I’m left with the knowledge that he noticed me from afar and considered me vulnerable.
I’m not a stranger to male scrutiny—I kissed my first boy 13 years ago—but queer connections happen differently. There’s a tacit permission, asked for and given, that confirms it’s safe to make an advance. Many straight men don’t ask; they assume. When everything about me felt in flux, I used to laugh at the occasional man who’d aim a cloddish catcall my way—it reminded me of the Peanuts running gag where Peppermint Patty doesn’t realize Snoopy’s a dog. But this year is different. I can name so many more things about myself that I like—my legs, my curves, my hair when it’s not too humid—and it’s harder than ever to deny that there’s a hetero-masculine attraction out there that goes beyond “I’m really curious about how that weird body of yours works” Their eyes bring me out of myself and into the world, with all its attached baggage. That’s exactly what I go to the theater to elude.
Looking at In The Loge on my second, third, fourth loops around the room (one of the security guards said goodbye multiple times), I remained attracted on a primal level to its immediate beauty. A woman looking that intensely at something tends to make me a little breathless, makes me selfishly want to bask in it myself for at least a few moments. I had the desire to be in the box with her, to discover the painting’s secret, to savor some connection I assumed we’d share. But then my gaze would flip to the vaguely painted man in the background, directly in my line of sight but outside her periphery, seeming to spy on her with those very same glasses, and I felt almost shamed. The way the painting is constructed, your action as a viewer mirrors his. If he’s an unwanted voyeur, so are you. As someone growing increasingly familiar with the intrusiveness he represents, I had the impulse to leave this woman alone.
