'The Gay Beards' Demystify Their Endurg Friendship

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?

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.

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.

GAY BEARD

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.

'THE GAY BEARDS' DEMYSTIFY THEIR ENDURG FRIENDSHIP

” 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.

THE GAY BEARDS: GLTER MOTACH AND FLOWER BEARDS STRAIGHT OUT OF PORTLAND, OREGON

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. 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. 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. The quali have led to bee the goofy beard men we are today, ” Delrenti openly gay duo certaly don’t take their iendship for granted and regnize each other’s support was ccial their self-realizatns.

DYNAMIC DUO: 20 QUTNS WH THE GAY BEARDS

"Delrenti and Dahl nsir themselv brothers, a closens that sh through The Gay Beards acunt.

It’s a proven fact that sportg a beard n have a signifint effect on the oppose sex, or the same sex if you’re gay, often exudg oodl of sex appeal. Gay men appear to be attracted by thicker, hairier man possibly bee they exu a more mascule image, but those wh full beards, along wh the clean-shaven, give out ls sexual attractn to the short term partner. Photo © The Gay Beards.

The Gay Beards: Glter Motach and Flower Beards Straight out of Portland, Oregon. When Brian Delrenti and Johnathan Dahl, aka The Gay Beards, first posted a photo of themselv wh both of their beards rated wh flowers, they had no ia that they were actually on the brk of a wildly succsful creative enavour. “The ia behd The Gay Beards formed naturally, ” they said.