The Gay Beards, popular on both Instagram and YouTube, talk to NBC OUT about the bety of iendship and why they've been "practilly separable" for nearly 20 years.
Contents:
- GAY HISTORY: WHEN DID WE TURN ON THE MOTACHE?
- GAY BEARD
- 'THE GAY BEARDS' DEMYSTIFY THEIR ENDURG FRIENDSHIP
- THE GAY BEARDS: GLTER MOTACH AND FLOWER BEARDS STRAIGHT OUT OF PORTLAND, OREGON
- DYNAMIC DUO: 20 QUTNS WH THE GAY BEARDS
GAY HISTORY: WHEN DID WE TURN ON THE MOTACHE?
* gay beard origin *
The Gay Mtache.
Gay men practilly owned the mtache the '70s, and now 's bee a symbol of men's health issu celebrated every year durg Movember. In honor of our hairy history, we prent the big gay mtach of our past.
GAY BEARD
Forster whheld publitn of his groundbreakg gay romance novel Mrice until after his ath. But he argu that Magnum also reprented a mastream, TV-iendly offshoot of a popular gay look of the era: “The so-lled ‘clone, ’ wh his obligatory mtache, bomber jacket, beefed-up shoulrs and mcular butt unr tight jeans.
'THE GAY BEARDS' DEMYSTIFY THEIR ENDURG FRIENDSHIP
This Freddie Mercury-que “clone” look had evolved turn, wr Peterk, om the subculture of “leathermen” the gay clubs of the 1970s, whose “sadomasochistic practis and role-playg flourished and beme a new homoerotic norm. ” and “Go Wt” featured both a leatherman and a mtached wboy, helpg to make Middle Ameri aware of the mtache’s proment stat gay culture.
Perhaps equally vastatg for the ’stache’s populary straight society was the nng joke the first four Police Amy movi — om 1984 to 1987 — which hapls male characters fd themselv trapped a fictnal gay club, the neon-l Blue Oyster Bar, where they’re forced to dance wh fuzzy-lipped leathermen.
It was an creasgly unfunny gag, which simultaneoly managed to entrench a daft homophobic stereotype and torpedo the mtache as a macho stat symbol for straight men. What really ma mtach utterly unwearable, though, wasn’t so much their associatn wh gay and S&M subcultur but that — as epomized by those Blue Oyster sks — they beme the subject of ridicule.
THE GAY BEARDS: GLTER MOTACH AND FLOWER BEARDS STRAIGHT OUT OF PORTLAND, OREGON
In the early days of queer culture, a “beard” was a wife, girliend or female pann who acted (wtgly or not) as social ver for a closeted gay man. In the days when virile movie stars dated betiful women to ver up their secret gay liftyl, the beard was an dispensable part of the social orr.
Today, at least the rarified culture bubbl which I float, beg gay isn’t the shame issue of yteryear, and few if any need to mata a sexual inty ver-up.
A beard, acrdg to our tsty iends at Urban Dictnary, is a person who is ed as a vep for another's homosexualy.
DYNAMIC DUO: 20 QUTNS WH THE GAY BEARDS
They ll themselv The Gay Beards, but behd all that quirkily groomed facial hair is nearly 20 years of iendship -- and so much Delrenti and Johnathan Dahl, better known as The Gay Beards, have been bt iends ever sce they met at the age of 8.