Daniel Lombroso’s documentary Masculinity examines men seeking penis-enhancement procedures and the deeper struggles with self-worth, loneliness and modern masculinity that drive them. The film follows Bill Moore, a Dallas-based televangelist-like advocate for penis enlargement, and several men who visit his clinic, Advanced You, for PhalloFill, a procedure that uses dermal filler to increase penile girth but not length.
A clinic built around “biohacking and wellness”
Moore runs Advanced You, an anti-aging aesthetic clinic in a Dallas strip mall that specializes in “biohacking and wellness treatments.” Through PhalloFill, the clinic offers men a penis-enlargement procedure involving the injection of cyanide dermal filler to increase girth. The treatment does not add several inches of length.
Moore describes himself as a cosmetics revolutionary. He was among the first health professionals in Dallas to use platelet-rich plasma for hair replacement. In Masculinity, his goal remains unchanged: to make his patented penis-enlargement technology as common as Botox.
Why Lombroso made Masculinity
Lombroso, a former editorial producer at The Atlantic and The New Yorker, became interested in the men seeking penis enhancement after hearing growing discussion about male loneliness. A few years ago, when headlines about the prevalence of male loneliness were appearing frequently, he felt the coverage was “kind of flimsy and maybe in-your-face.” He wanted instead to tell more “propulsive stories” about what was happening to men in America.
As he learned more about penis enhancement, Lombroso began speaking with practitioners and the men who underwent the procedures. That reporting eventually led him to Moore, who invited him to Texas. Masculinity, which opens in theaters this week, follows men pursuing sexual confidence while confronting a broader crisis of self-worth and masculinity.
Lombroso previously spent three years documenting white supremacist groups for his first documentary, White Noise, from President Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 through the end of his first term. With Masculinity, he turned his attention to another subculture and the motivations that bring men to the operating table.
The men at the center of the film
During visits to Moore’s clinic, Lombroso met men with widely different backgrounds, including a border patrol agent and a man living with a brain tumor. The film also follows David, a 24-year-old gay man who is rejected by his religious mother and visits Advanced You after a botched procedure, and Reuben, an unemployed father of five who works part-time as a stand-up comedian and listens to the Joe Rogan podcast.
Moore appears alongside these men as one of the documentary’s central figures. “I thought it was really crazy that they were so eager to tell Bill what was going on in their lives and so eager to tell me,” Lombroso says.
An estimated 75 percent of the men who underwent the procedure were heterosexual. “People somehow assume that they won’t fall into that category, but it’s mostly straight men,” Lombroso says, adding that they “tend to be conservative.”
Source: www.wired.com