This photograph was probably taken in Arbus’s subject’s bedroom, but the curtains framing the shot make it appear like a theatre set and the man stands centre stage as he were ready to begin his performance. As he is a ‘naked man being a woman’, he is indeed playing a role. He stands self-consciously yet provocatively, his hip pushed forward in a showgirl’s pose, the lines of his body highlighted by Arbus’s flash. Some writers have noticed that his feet are placed like Venus in Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus (about 1482–86) in which the goddess emerges from the sea as a woman, covering her nakedness with her long hair. Standing in front of Arbus’s camera, his face caked in make-up and his expression distant, the man here is also emerging as a woman, but he makes no attempt to hide his naked body from scrutiny.