Maybe I'm missing something here...
I would like to extend a question out to my gay friends here and ask a question.
I have a lot of gay friends, so I'm not bashing. But I'm going to ask a question that all straight people want to know.-Why do some gay men and women dress to announce the fact beyond all question that they are indeed, gay?
I was playing hockey on Friday night, and the arena we play in has a large women's hockey league. There is a general stereotype that most women hockey players are gay, but these women are removing any doubt about that. They dress like they are 14 year old boys. -Wearing baseball hats, hoodies, baggy jeans, have short hair, walking butchy; these are all observations that you could use to describe them. It's almost like it's a crime for a gay woman to have long hair for some reason...
"Do you think they are gay?" Asked one of my teammates.
Eyes rolled, laughter ensued and everyone pretty much got the idea that it was a rhetorical question.
But my question is, if you are gay, why do you have to announce to to everyone as if to remove any doubt?
Another beef I have is men that wear make-up.
Unless you are the lead singer for Twisted Sister, a band member of KISS, or had a stint in a heavy metal hair band in the 1980's, make-up is NOT for you.
I will even go as far as allowing Boy George to cross-dress in the naive impression that he was just doing it for shock value, and to sell albums when singing Karma Chameleon. Even Michael Jackson with his Vitiligo is really pushing the envelope. When you start to look like your sister, and Oprah is telling you that you are wearing too much make-up, you know that you have issues.
This guy Miss Jay, from Tyra Banks America's Next Top Model (ANTM for all you fans out there) just makes me cringe. The make-up, massive padded shoulders in his jacket and his outrageous outfits are something that only Prince (or the artist formally known as Prince) could get away with. And we only let Prince get away with it because he's 5'3 and we all understand that he's a little out there.
I just don't understand why these people feel the need to be so over-the-top about being gay. If you're out, great. I'm truly glad for you. I would like every person to be happy with their sexuality and feel good about it. So good for you for listening to your heart and being gay, despite all the shit you face from family, friends, and society about it.
But why make it harder by being flamboyant to showcase that you are going to "Be who you IS?"
Just be gay, and stop trying to be the opposite sex.
Maybe it is a gay subculture thing that I don't know about. Maybe it's one of those things like if you carry a red bandanna in your back right pocket, it lets the other members in your "club" know if you are a catcher or pitcher. Or something like that.
Anyway, this rant is targeted towards those who go out of their way to tell the world that they are gay. -AS IF WE CARE.
It's your choice, but if I were gay living my life, I wouldn't want somebody like this representing my club. Same as I don't want a white trash trailer park person representing my club. (Mental note, send a strongly worded letter to Eminem telling him to stop representing the White Boy Club as such)
So, feel free to help me out. Obviously, I am either in need of understanding and education in this area, or I am just a bitter man waiting for my mid-life crisis.
So enlighten me...
Hey Chuck. I'm with you on this one ... and I AM a gay man. I've never really understood this affectation totally however I have given it some thought and here is my take on it.
ReplyDeleteMy experience has shown me that people are gay for a variety of reasons. Either:
1 ... because they were born with a hormone imbalance, providing physiological indications of some discrepancy between the sociological expectations of how either sex should appear and what is perceived or
2 ... because they were psychologically damaged by abuse of some kind and, because of the socially unacceptable nature of this, the only way they can deal with it is to identify with the source or
3 ... because they simply choose to be this way for a variety of reasons, perhaps because they just found the opposite sex to be too much trouble to deal with (due to the differential in male/female communication).
Whatever the reason, identification with being "gay" in modern society cannot always be seen as being simply homosexual (as in attracted to the same sex) and therefore the variety within this community is quite vast. This is why the term "metrosexual" was adopted for straight men who displayed visible characteristics that could be construed as "gay".
As far as representation of any societal "class" is concerned, I believe that it is our perception of this and our pre-programmed prejudices that define what is represented. As you know me, I am not one to display a lot of flamboyance (unless it has related to some performance role) and, personally, I find this behaviour to be somewhat distasteful and unattractive. Even when I am circulating in the "gay" community, I have no qualms about advertising that this is not something I am attracted to. I find much of the behaviour displayed at events such as Pride to mis-represent my own conception of what being "gay" is and, in the past, have taken great offense to this.
With that said, I also believe that we have to "live and let live" and if I truly act on that belief, I must accept that there will be those who will push the boundaries or social norms in order to assert a place for themselves in society, regardless of whether I find it offensive or not.
Many of these individuals, to me, seem quite insecure by their extroverted personality assertions but this is just an opinion. I would prefer if they didn't place it up front and centre in the public forum however religion has been doing that for centuries and I certainly take more offense to THAT than the sexual thing.
In the end, we just need to get along with one another so, if I were you, I'd just give a little giggle whenever I see someone like this "Jay" character and not let it get my ire up.
Yours Gay-ly (LOL)
franc
Well Said Franc, I especially liked your point on the metrosexual definition.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insight, that was exactly what I was looking for. You might want to copyright this response before someone takes it as an exerpt and uses it for a book.-It really is just that good...
I can appreciate Chucks question and observation and the response from the Gay Man but I do not think that it is as simple as you guys may present it. You are referring to sub cultures. Focus on the word sub and the "s" at the end of cultures. There are modes of dress and music that one associates with various gay sub cultures. These iconographical tags associated with the fashions, walk, mannerisms of the gay sub cultures seem to grate on you bc you are aware of it and to a certain extent know what it means. And as you seem to indicate you don't get why some people would draw attention to themselves to ID themselves as gay. Ok I get it. but in the so called straight community we have the same thing: mods,preps, rockers, punks, neo-punks, hip-hop, b-boy, gino, Hong Kong, style, new country look, whatever group wears the spiky hair fo-hawks, skaters, the sluttly dressed girls the the impossibly short skirts, suicide girls, etc., and whatever you call what the Mediterranean or mid eastern young people wear. Then you have hairstyle, walk, mannerism and music that goes with each of these groups. People want to fit in.
ReplyDeletesome groups we celebrate and envy like the preps, and the HK kids, whiel other groups leach us scratching our heads - the emo kids, and the kids with the low riding pants.
By the way the tshirt wearing short haired lebians is a sub culture eh, there are lesbians who have long hear dress amazing and are stunning, you would never guess they were gay. There is even a sub group that wear mullets if you can believe it.
The really gay and colourfully dressed guys like Jay and Mrs. Whatever her name is beside him make me smile and sometimes leave me feeling quite jealous. I wish I could pull off some of those outfits.
As you might recall chuck I had some rather interesting suits and combo's when I was young. In my early 20's I bumped into a few people I knew growing up in the WCCG and would you believe they thought that I was gay. They were quite surprised to know that I am not gay.
It seems that when I was younger I felt free to dress as I pleased. Now-a-days I don't.
Ramble ramble ramble, uhm, anyways, we should just respect each other.
So if you see me strolling down the street wearing a skirt , not likely to happen unless its fetish night somewhere, laugh and point but don't throw anything. :-p