Steven Menendez shares a new study in male beauty portfolio with The Queer Review shot in October, 2025 in New York City.
Steven Menendez: I created this series of images because I wanted to show the soft and tender side of male beauty. I was inspired to create this portfolio by American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker Margaret Mead’s (1901 – 1978) groundbreaking studies on gender.
Mead believed that gender is largely a cultural construct, shaped more by social expectation and upbringing than by biology. She argued that the wide variation in gender roles across different cultures showed that traits regarded as masculine and feminine are not inherent but molded by society. Through her research, she observed societies where men and women shared traits considered feminine or masculine in her own culture, concluding in her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa that “human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to cultural conditions.”
Model, Randall Kohn @r.ans Photographer @steven_menendez_official
Makeup by Christian Briceno @christianbricenomakeup represented by @thewallgroup. All makeup products by @aboutfacebeauty
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