How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [5]
You’d think that it would get easier with more recent history, but that’s not the case. Many famous arbiters of taste and style, and indeed many of the artists we now call gay, would not have labeled themselves as such and would not appreciate being outed, even after death. Many of these men married and had children. Consider, for example, Leonard Bernstein, Malcolm Forbes, or Danny Kaye.
“How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation,” a course taught by Professor David M. Halperin in the English department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, caused a ruckus in the conservative press in 2003. The course description neatly touches on aspects of the gay aesthetic: “This course will examine the general topic of the role that initiation plays in the formation of gay male identity. . . . In particular, we will examine a number of cultural artifacts and activities that seem to play a prominent role in learning how to be gay: (including) camp, diva-worship, drag, muscle culture, taste, style and political activism.”
A gay sensibility “tends to be clever, scornful of laws, introspective, energetic and sexy,” says Rick Whitaker, author of The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara: Reading Gay American Writers. I would add that the gay aesthetic also arises from an extreme sense of alienation, with a bit of narcissism thrown in for good measure. When one is alienated from the mainstream life and must create a protective niche and a common means of recognizing those who are similarly alienated, a full other set of customs, language, and art can arise. The culture of closeted gay men before the 1970s was underground but thriving; once the events of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969 forced Americans to an awareness of homosexuality itself, it also made us more aware of the gay sensibility, the gay sense of humor, and the gay insistence on camp and irony. Of course, as everyone eventually discovers about the best things in life, the gay sensibility had been there all along.
Straight People Who Think Gay
Can you be straight and have a gay sensibility? I would argue yes. As gay attitudes spill over into straight culture, the gay aesthetic pops up in entertainment phenomena and other places. Boy bands such as ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, for example, have a whiff of the gay about them, as teen idols of other eras have had, too. (The straight 1950s teen idols Frankie Avalon and Fabian were both discovered by a gay manager.)
The beleaguered Martha Stewart, a straight woman, has done almost as much as anyone to promulgate the gay design aesthetic for heterosexual Middle America. Both straight and gay people will say, “That’s sooooo Martha!” A friend of mine calls Martha Stewart “the gayest man I know.” Thousands of gay men watch Martha’s broadcasts and keep every issue of her magazine, yet she has also introduced a new taste in flowers (no more dreadful heterosexual carnations!) and in home décor to housewives and working women all across the country. This melding of gay aesthetic and heterosexual domestic longings has been going on for a long time.
Even in casual conversation outside of gay environments, people will rate how “gay” something is. One night Conan O’Brien and actor Jason Schwartzman discussed the various hair products they use to tame their locks. “How gay is this conversation, anyway?” O’Brien remarked to his straight guest. It was more a comment about aesthetics than sexuality. In this age of Global Queering, many of our cultural obsessions with celebrity, body image, hair, and fashion stem from homosexual attitudes as surely as Venus rose from the half shell in Botticelli’s famous painting.
Three Things About Gay/Straight Culture