Gay or Straight? Hard to Tell

[davidinalameda]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/fashion/sundaystyles/19GAYDAR.html?incamp=article_popular

and all this time, I thought it was me!

ARE you confused that the newly styled Backstreet Boys, hoping for a comeback, look an awful lot like the stars of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"? Are you curious why Brad Pitt, to promote his new film, dyed his crew cut so blond that even his hairdresser is scratching his head?

Confused? You are not alone. It is late June, when many cities across the country celebrate gay pride, and bare-chested he-men dressed in very little are out in the streets again. But look past them, and June is more confusing. As gay men grow more comfortable shrugging off gay-identified clothing and Schwarzeneggerian fitness standards, straight men are more at ease flaunting a degree of muscle tone seldom seen outside of a Men's Health cover shoot. And they are adopting looks - muscle shirts, fitted jeans, sandals and shoulder bags - that as recently as a year ago might have read as, well, gay.

The result is a new gray area that is rendering gaydar - that totally unscientific sixth sense that many people rely on to tell if a man is gay or straight - as outmoded as Windows 2000. It's not that straight men look more stereotypically gay per se, or that out-of-the-closet gay men look straight. What's happening is that many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues traditionally used to pigeonhole sexual orientation - hair, clothing, voice, body language - are more and more ambiguous. Make jokes about it. Call it what you will: "gay vague" will do. But the poles are melting fast.

[donco6]

1. Gaydar was never about what people wore.

That doesn't require Gaydar, anyway. Gaydar is what tells you someone is gay when there are no outward appearances that give it away.

[OneBlueSky]

2. well, apparently my gaydar's intact . . .

I picked all five correctly in yesterday's Times . . .

or maybe I'm just a lucky guesser . . . :shrug:

[beam me up scottie]

3. Aren't fashion savvy straight guys called

metrosexuals?

[w13rd0]

4. That's so 2004...

...get with it.

[beam me up scottie]

5. Gimme a break !

I shot my tv last year.
Where else am I supposed to learn this stuff in a red state?
It's not like they have classes...

[Snap]

7. Yup, or metros

they don't wear shorts though, metros depend on cool shoes.

[beam me up scottie]

8. Thanks!

:P

[lapfog_1]

6. My experience...

I went to visit relatives in "Red State America"(tm), and while
out at a bar with my niece (who is a pretty smart cookie), she
asked me if *I* was gay. I was a little shocked... this is the
same girl that grew up around me and my now ex-wife, watched me
live together with another woman for more than a year (in the
same town that she lives in).

Then I moved to "San Francisco" (actually San Jose), and I haven't
re-married (but she has met women that I've dated since then, when
I taken them to visit on Christmas or Thanksgiving).

So... all I can conclude is that being a liberal living NEAR
San Francisco is enough to make you "gay" to even reasonably smart
people warped by Red State propaganda.

[Stepup2]

9. Interesting observation

My partner and I refer to them as pseudos. We have had a few chuckles over the "confusion" in our gaydar in our conservative back water.