So one of the things I've been mulling over a lot is why exactly I find the wet t-shirt montage so disturbing when it comes to the implications for Shane and Yuna's relationship.
Before I get into this, I want to emphasize that I love Yuna as a character. I think she's complicated and interesting. I have no doubt that she loves her son and everything she does is meant to provide for and protect him. I also think she (and David!) have fucked him up royally. These are not mutually exclusive ideas.
But anyway, I've blogged about the blurred role mess that is Yuna being a manager and Yuna being a mom before. Ultimately, I guess, I just think they're fundamentally opposed positions. A mom, ideally, is supposed to be a source of unconditional comfort and support. A manager, ideally, is focused on the career of their client. When these two roles clash, we can end up with a problem. (I've blogged my take on the Wimbledon scene, and I feel like that's a good example of where "mom" comes second to "manager".)
The wet t-shirt montage scene is a little different though. Where the Wimbledon scene was notable because we see Yuna prioritizing "manager" over "mom", I think the wet t-shirt commercial shows a different side of the problem.
From the perspective of Yuna being Shane's manager, the fact that she (apparently) books him sexualized ads is perfectly fine. Sex sells. Shane's a grown man. He's physically attractive. And we've seen two of the finished commercials - so we can see that he ends up looking more distant and aloof than uncomfortable in the final product. And that clearly works for him.
The part that makes it kind of weird though is that she's also his mom. And there's always going to be something really awkward and uncomfortable about the idea of a mother being the one to push her child into sexualized opportunities.
And that aspect suddenly gets highlighted when we see her going over to fix his shirt. That's not something a manager would do. A manager might set up a photo shoot or a filmed commercial, but she wouldn't be going over to fix the final product. That's something a mom would do.
BUT, ideally when a mom is "fixing" the final product it'd be, for example, trying to alleviate obvious discomfort. It generally would NOT be to make it sexier. That's where we start getting pageant mom vibes.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do not believe Yuna would have signed Shane up for ads like these when he was a child. She's not that much of a pageant mom, thank you. I think she started when he was an adult. But sometimes that line is more blurry than one likes. And maybe we see that a bit when she's reading off the Rolex response to her 19-year old son and agreeing with them about how handsome he is. She's being a mom there ("of course, my son is handsome") but she's also agreeing to a marketing assessment of her son's looks.
The thing that makes this uncomfortable isn't necessarily the scene itself, but that the scene doesn't exist in a vacuum. As I said, I don't believe Yuna would have set up sexualized ads until Shane was an adult. I do think though that Shane spent a long time before that already learning to see his body as a commodity. For hockey. For brands. As a visible symbol for other kids like him.
I think that Shane's already learned from her, and from his life, that discomfort will never be a boundary. It's always going to be something to be ignored. He's learned from Yuna to smile and nod through racial microaggressions. That is, unfortunately, a very necessary lesson. Sometimes people in power are racist (or bigoted in some other way) and you can't say what you want to. He learns from David to sit quietly and stay uninvolved until you can add what support you can. That's also a good lesson.
And we see Shane apply these lessons carefully: when Yuna makes a homophobic "fuck him up the butt" comment about his rival. When JJ calls Ilya a cocksucker. When Hayden pushes him to follow some girl on instagram. When random strangers want a picture and suggest he hand "his" baby to someone they don't know he knows. When a bartender who HAS ginger ale gives him a judgmental look for ordering it.
To be fair to Yuna, I don't think this was the lesson she MEANT to teach Shane. I think that Yuna's position regarding discomfort was that it's something you put up with to a point, when it's professionally necessary, but there is a point where you draw a line. And I'm sure she assumes that Shane also has a point where he will draw a line, and he'll say something if it's too much.
But will he? When your baseline level is already pretty uncomfortable, when do you put the brakes on? What level of discomfort is too much?
And that's where the wet t-shirt commercial comes in. Because Shane is clearly visibly uncomfortable. That rictus smile as he holds the can pretty much says he really doesn't want to be here. He's putting up with it because it's his job: for money, visibility, whatever. And that's fine. Adults do that all the time.
Yuna being there should be a good thing. She can step in and assert boundaries where Shane can't. Assuming that she recognizes the need for it. And while I don't really think he needs that in this particular commercial, the fact that we see her playing an active role in the experience (adjusting his clothes to be sexier) - without any indicator of reassurance or comfort for the obvious discomfort that we're witnessing, without even an indication that she even sees it...
That raises a lot of questions about how well Yuna CAN protect her son. Especially since we've seen her steamroll over his expressed wishes in the very same episode.
If Yuna can't recognize Shane's discomfort, then how can Shane? If Shane can't recognize his own discomfort, how can he enforce boundaries?
I mean, not to get darker than this is already, but I'm suddenly glad that Ilya's as attentive and checked-in when it comes to consent as he is, because I'm not really sure that I think Shane would speak up if the experience started to go wrong for him. I think there's a good chance he'd try to power through it.
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