thinking about a young, stereotypically pretty-boy (for masculinity in the 70’s) Gordon starting on the force
and the idea that some of his key personal traits and habits and appearance - the big glasses, thick mustache, perpetual 5 o’clock shadow, close shorn hair, disheveled style, big coat, open “disdain” for the more “ridiculously elaborate” svelte dress and personal care habits of his affluent peers like the Waynes and other key Gotham political and financial figures - all stemmed from trying to hide that
just… one too many uncomfortable looks from his superior officers… one too many snide comments from his other brothers compatriots allies coworkers competitors rivals enemies on the force around him…
and that strategizing brain tick-tick-ticks ahead calculation the risks and the dangers and the suitable solutions and the next pair of glasses he buys are chunky enough to hide his bright eyes still soft and not crinkling around the edges or baggy beneath yet, and a scraggly mustache slowly starts to overtake his pretty, pouting upper lip, and the classic seventies ginger waves curling just below his ears get buzzed in tight to match the butch, military look of the rest of his department and he slams that closet door tighter and tighter shut
and STILL he feels like a sore thumb of a target for the first few years, sticking out swollen and unnatural and all the more obviously an interloper. like trying and failing to emulate masculinity makes it even plainer that he wasn’t built for it.
until one day he puts his glasses on and notices his mustache has really properly come in nice and full and he’s become accustomed to how his short hair has settled around his brow and he’s even packed on a few strong pounds around his shoulders and midsection, soft but sturdy
and it’s not the same kind of comfort he used to feel when he looked at himself and would fantasize having the freedom of the long-haired hippie boys in their lanky bodies and lively flowers and flowing clothes and wandering hands and open thighs
but seeing a new prescience, that of the powerful men in those Other magazines, with their thick facial and body hair and dirty greasy jeans and white tank tops pulled tight around large chests and bellies and powerful hips and big wide palms and eyes honed sharp and piercing by the experience of the world… the sort of eroticized masculinity pouring out from the centerfolds of the magazines he hid under his bed until his marriage…
it’s not like he hadn’t been settled with himself before. it’s not like he didn’t feel like a man, or thought men couldn’t or shouldn’t BE pretty… but as much as he hates to credit the fear and the pressure of trying to survive amongst those wolves with ANYTHING, he hadn’t exactly been HAPPY either. Had never sought out his own manhood, didn’t think anything of it all really.
Not like he does now, decades later, no longer playing a character with it but embodying it fully. in fact, so much so he’s having to temper it in a different way - fear of enjoying it too much, knowing that to keep flying below the radar he has to walk a fine, fine line.
Juuuust masculine enough, juuuuuust All American Man enough, knowing that if he enjoys it a little Too Much and pushes it a little Too Far someone will spot the caricature of it all and see him for what he is. But he’s had practice. Between the Chicago and Gotham police forces he’s come up in the toughest, most judgmental, most back-biting pit of hissing vipers looking for any weakness to exploit. He knows how to straddle the line between Performance and Genuine to keep those baying hounds off track - tossing them just a bit of scent they expect so they never sniff around any closer. So they presume they’ve found all there is and skulk off in search of a different target.
Yeah, he knows how to make sure the self-centered power-hungry ambition-blind cops and politicians and criminals and even his wife only see what they expect to see. What they WANT to see. After twenty years, he’s finally confident in that.
So he’s utterly unprepared when this fucking nutcase in kevlar armor shows up all genuine and honest and moral as fuck despite the violence he enacts, who’s eyes and words cut sharp as the curved blades he throws straight through Jim’s mask just as clearly as the Gordon can’t make heads or tails of the caped stranger’s own.