Gay Men and Queer Women and the Cultural History of the Mtache

Contents:

• GAY HISTORY: WHEN DID WE TURN ON THE MOTACHE?
• #TBT: THE GAY MTACHE
• GAY MTACHE VECTORS
• GAY MEN, QUEER WOMEN, AND THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE MTACHE

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.

#TBT: THE GAY MTACHE

Forster whheld publitn of his groundbreakg gay romance novel Mrice until after his ath. Meet the facial-hair style takg over every gay bar the cy. The skny ’stache n be seen at gay bars across the cy — om more normative bars playg Drag Race on Thursday nights to famo queer clubs Bhwick and sticky sex bars the Village.

We all have the mtache right now, ” said Jt about his new facial hair outsi an East Village gay bar. From a queer perspective, the mtache’s associatn wh sexual viancy also pots to the “Castro clon” of the ’80s: mascule gay men who drsed alike, slept together, and were eventually undone and vilified by society durg the AIDS crisis. If this mtache had s own mood board, might clu Freddie Mercury, a few shots of the Castro s heyday, and a vtage gay-porn image.

“It really do somethg for people that fs to the bill of our ’80s gay male porn fantasy.

GAY MTACHE VECTORS

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.

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.

GAY MEN, QUEER WOMEN, AND THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE MTACHE

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. As gay inty and polics began to perate pop culture, we saw the emergence of the Castro Clone, often wearg a heavy mtache: a reference to the workg Joe.