Gay men of the '70s are remembered for hirsute fac and sktight jeans; their brothers of the '90s were partial to bangs and stubble. How will the gay "look" of the 2010s be remembered?
Contents:
- HOW THE GAY COMMUNY HELPED POPULARIZE WORKWEAR
- OP-ED: THE GAY CLON EVERYONE KNOWS
- GAY HISTORY: REMAKG THE CASTRO CLONE
HOW THE GAY COMMUNY HELPED POPULARIZE WORKWEAR
Workwear's roots may have started on railroads and nstctn s, but s boom populary more recent history ow much to the gay mun * gay clone style *
But when one particular look cropped up the post-Stonewall gay scene of the 1970s, was so popular—and so distct—that the guys who sported were dismissed as “clon.
)And while the nickname was ially pejorative, the clone perd marked perhaps the first time that gay men prented themselv wh a queer-signalg uniform that was a direct rponse to societal stereotyp.
“The clone was a reactn to thgs you would see movi of gay men beg flty and nelly, ” says John Calendo, a wrer who lived LA and New York Cy throughout the 70s and 80s, and worked as an edor at the clone-cubatg sk mags Blueboy and In Touch for Men. He pots to the gay mstrel stereotyp the 1967 film The Producers, along wh the timid-lookg guys on the illtrated vers of gay pulp books wh nam like All the Sad Young Men.
OP-ED: THE GAY CLON EVERYONE KNOWS
* gay clone style *
(Not to mentn the 1964 article Life magaze lled “Homosexualy Ameri, ” which scribed a “sad and often sordid world. ”) “That’s the kd of imagery”—backwards stereotyp that basilly villaized queer people—“that a lot of my generatn who beme the clone people grew up wh the ccible of the 60s, ” Calendo ntu, when the civil rights and gay liberatn movements were expandg ias of equaly and eedom. Drsg like a clone, he says, was a rejectn of those olr gay ’s not so easy to ppot precisely who origated the clone ial, guys who were alive at the time ually brg up Al Parker, an adult film star turned producer and director who worked om the 70s to the early 90s.
(Parker would eventually bee an advote for gay rights and safe sex, producg only safe-sex films before he passed away om plitns due to AIDS 1992. It was like, Oh that’s somethg wh a ltle work I uld atta, and I thk that’s why beme so quickly absorbed to the gay muny.
“When I thk back on havg lived through the time, was like gay guys were pg om this stereotype that was jt culted to the culture of sissi and faggots, ” says Woodff. “The clone look was certaly about a whe gay man’s rponse and engagement wh those archetyp, ” says Ben Barry, the an of the school of fashn at the New School’s Parsons School of Dign, whose rearch foc on fashn’s relatnship to masculy, sexualy, and the body.
GAY HISTORY: REMAKG THE CASTRO CLONE
”)Prentg as mascule public was physilly safer for gay guys, but the clone stume pulled double duty, Barry says, tweakg tradnal masculy while also signalg to other queer folks. “There’s this munal thg happeng right now where people are more open that they’re trans and non-bary or bisexual and not jt on the spectm of beg straight, gay, male, female. ) And while the nickname was ially pejorative, the clone perd marked perhaps the first time that gay men prented themselv wh a queer-signalg uniform that was a direct rponse to societal stereotyp.
What you might not realize is that much of the fashn that has seeped to popular menswear today has been propagated and popularized by the gay muny. But as the fight for gay rights progrsed, gay people found novel ways of drsg to signal their affiliatn to others -the-know. The Village People, the chart-toppg mil group which ma mic for the predomantly gay dis scene, was famo not only for s tchy dance mic, but s st of mascule characters.
Though the band chews the gay mil group label and even ni the alleged subtexts and double entendr of s lyrics, the group and s mic ught on the gay scene where songs like ‘Y. Around the same time as the dis craze (but lastg much longer), there were the so-lled “Castro Clon, ” a group that was first mentned the 1970s on the “Red Queen Broadsi” posters wheatpasted around San Francis by gay activist Arthur Evans. In an article by wrten by Pl Flynn for The Guardian, Le Howard of the queer DJ llective Horse Meat Dis talks about some of the thought behd drsg typil work cloth: “Boys that grow up to bee gay men have often personally experienced or at least wnsed anti-gay bullyg, which perhaps then be eher externalized — I’ll be as flamboyant as I want my attire and to hell wh you all — or ternalized: I’ll be more mascule-lookg than the most heterosexual men.