New York Times makes stunning discovery that gay men, wait for it, like muscles
The New York Times recently published a long essay about how gay men are into muscles. They also, apparently, like other men.
Stay tuned! Of course, that summation is intentionally dismissive. There is much more to the 4,309-word disorientation, “Gay Men Have Long Been Obsessed With Their Muscles.
Now Everyone Is.” The author, Mark Harris, who’s married to legendary playwright Tony Kushner, explores the modern Western history of gay eroticism and physical attraction, from surreptitious “physique magazines” in the 1950s to Troye Sivan‘s music video for “Rush.” Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.He writes how gay men, through their desire to appropriate straight masculinity, wound up reclaiming ripped torso and bulging pecks (that’s soooo gay of us, by the way).“Turning yourself into a simulacrum of a straight man was a survival tactic.
But going one step further became a way of taking ownership. Turning your appearance into a calculatedly self-aware physical performance of straight masculinity, with a flourish or two of ironic detailing, gave gay men some autonomy and subverted straight culture by reinventing it as something gay, a look one could wear as a costume that might be visible only to the like-minded.”Harris points to the rise of Burt Reynolds, a straight man, and his brand of rugged, jocular masculinity, as a turning point. “The culture — more specifically, the white gay men who then dominated the realms of public tastemaking — had dictated that he was the standard,” he writes.
