The group's single "Honest Mistake" seems to be about getting your best friend's sexuality wrong but then again it may not be. Just as there are gay-vague television characters, there are gay-vague bands like the Bravery (which was photographed by Steven Klein for L'Uomo Vogue looking like 1970's gay hustlers).
She pointed out that Seth, the sensitive, moody character played by Adam Brody on "The O.C.," who is constantly razzed by the straight jocks on the show for seeming gay, has become the surprise heartthrob among viewers. "If you don't care less, it just adds to your appeal now," said Kate White, the editor of Cosmopolitan. Do I give a damn? No." He added, though, that it does not happen as much lately, as he sees less difference between gay and straight men in terms of how they express masculinity outside the bedroom. "Have I been called gay a gazillion times?" said Robert Vonderheide, a straight man who is a sales representative for a several clothing lines in New York. He added that it is his gay customers who need the most convincing that he's straight. "Some of the straight guys who come in, I never would have thought were straight, and some of the gay men, I never would have guessed either."Ĭonfused as he is, Mr. "I don't have a clue anymore," said Brad Habansky, whose four-month-old men's store and salon, Guise, in the tony Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, specializes in fashionable men's wear. It notably includes an attitude of indifference to having one's sexual orientation misread hence the breakdown of many people's formerly reliable gaydar. It involves more than grooming and clothes. Gay vagueness affects both straight and gay men. The new convergence of gay-vague style is not to be confused with metrosexuality, which steered straight men to a handful of feminine perks like pedicures, scented candles and prettily striped dress shirts. Call it what you will: "gay vague" will do.
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. It's not that straight men look more stereotypically gay per se, or that out-of-the-closet gay men look straight.
#TIGHT CHEST MUSCLE GAY MEN WINDOWS#
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. 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. 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. But look past them, and June is more confusing. 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. Or those two 40-something guys walking in the park in pastel oxford-cloth shirts and khakis, collars turned up and cuffs rolled, one of them pushing a stroller? Is that baby his - or theirs?Ĭonfused? You are not alone.
Does he wear that wedding ring because he was married in New York - or in Massachusetts? Well, how about that guy you see in the locker room, changing out of his Prada lace-ups, Hugo Boss flat-front pants and Paul Smith dress shirt and cuff links into a muscle T-shirt and Adidas soccer shorts. 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?