Why Is Iced Coffee So Gay? | GQ

Contents:

• SARAH Z TEA IS GAY TEA-SHIRT
• THE KEY TO A HAPPY RELATNSHIP? BE GAY. OR CHILDLS. OR MAKE TEA
• WHY IS ICED COFFEE SO GAY?
• THE 'GAY DIET'
• TOO GAY AN OREO!: THE CULTURAL CONNOTATNS OF QUEER(G) FOOD
• HOW DIET COKE HELPED ME EMBRACE MY GAY INTY
• STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR

SARAH Z TEA IS GAY TEA-SHIRT

No flourish of sce mak a dish bisexual, nor do flambe make your duck or ice cream “homosexual”: the are terms applied to people, and on that don’t transfer to food, even if an LGBTQ someone igned that dish.

THE KEY TO A HAPPY RELATNSHIP? BE GAY. OR CHILDLS. OR MAKE TEA

Jt as the gay bar is only the tip of the queer-nightlife iceberg, the explicly queer food bs is only the most visible aspect of a much larger, often unseen universe of queer food, one that’s been evolvg and shapg Amerin culture for s.

I found when out queer woman Angela Dimayuga ran the kchen at New York’s Missn Che, wa staff along the genr spectm slippg my boyiend and me lorful, spicy dish wh a si of flirtatn, a playful nod we associated wh gay bars a few drks , not trendy rtrants.

Durg sprawlg dners at my own apartment, my clique I ll the “gay bros” ll me the “Barelegged Contsa, ” thanks to my fondns for the Food Network star’s recip, served at a table becked wh seasonal r like dick-o’-lanterns while I waltz through the kchen short shorts. The are all moments where the culary queer manifts as s own type of rabow: It wasn’t jt this or jt that which ma the meal a b gay; was a ltle of everythg, the magic of polil liv lived wh joy. As rtrants across the untry toss some rabow food lorg to palize on Pri, queer-owned bs make much more meangful donatns — and that activism is part of what mak their rabow cupk gay, and not jt gay for pay, as Eater’s Adam Mosa wr.

WHY IS ICED COFFEE SO GAY?

The rtrant grew to an unlikely cha, born an era when gay bars were vert, closed to outsirs, and absolutely not statns for bachelorette parti. Also, lerally leggy cktail glass, burgers as large as the pecs of the hunky servers that liver them, and a “No Hate” chicken sandwich parodyg a certa homophobic Southern cha: All are a part of Hamburger Mary’s long, hard participatn the queer cultural athetic tradn of mp.

” To Sontag, the gay embrace of mp is an assiatnist tactic: Camp’s emphasis on playfulns thwarted the moral strictur of 1964, and allowed a gay sensibily to crique and permeate mass culture at a time when livg an outwardly gay life was taboo. Stephen Vir, visg assistant profsor of history and mm studi at Bryn Mawr College and thor of the upg Queer Belonggs, has studied this phenomena as relat to The Gay Cookbook, a 1965 volume by Lou Rand Hogan published amidst mastream tert gay subjects sparked by Sontag’s say and an opportuny to ame gay male life as domtic stead of based, though this domticy clud jok about workg wh “a tough piece of meat” and recip for “sorory-sized ssag. Hogan’s book broke through by subvertg social stereotyp wh humor, which would appeal both to gay home oks and heterosexuals who wanted on the joke.

THE 'GAY DIET'

A 1983 effort, The Gay Of Cookg by “The Kchen Fairy, ” scribed creamg butter as “no different om most Saturday nights”; 1983’s LA Gay Gourmet by Carl Mueller is dited “To all our iends wh oral fixatns. Image men tweed slacks and smart sweaters mixg somethg lled a “Margara” while dancg to the latt Joe Tex bop: that was the behd-closed-doors gay urban pneerg that Birdsall speaks of.

For black gay men, “tea” n take many forms — a slang term for gossip or a suggtn of social (and sexual) get togethers — but, unlike mp food styl, vokg tea isn’t strictly about parody. Stay ahead of the trend fashn and beyond wh our ee weekly Liftyle Ed newsletterStay ahead of the trend fashn and beyond wh our ee weekly Liftyle Ed newsletter Gay upl are likely to be happier and more posive about their relatnships than heterosexuals, acrdg to a major study by the Open Universy published today. “LGBQ participants (lbian, gay, bisexual and queer) are more generally posive about and happier wh the qualy of their relatnship and the relatnship which they have wh their partner” the rearch nclus.

But none of that matters, after all; what was clear to the rner of the Inter known as Gay Twter, and to the se Gay Star News, was that this man was jt exercisg his rights—nay, his duty—as a gay man to drk iced ffee. Note: n nfirm] a piece published last October on the LGBTQ webse New Now Next, was noted that for the past two years on social media there’s been a steady flow of jok and mem about the gay muny’s affy for iced ffee. Acrdg to NNN, iced ffee is gay bee: portabily (cute cups), easy nsumptn (’s ld) and ctomizatn (you n pump full of sugar, or sugar-ee syp that is fely not givg you diabet).

TOO GAY AN OREO!: THE CULTURAL CONNOTATNS OF QUEER(G) FOOD

While ’s hard the days to tly unrstand why anythg be a meme (this is wavg at the Babadook), there are a lot of portable, easily ctomizable thgs that e cute packagg that aren’t so closely aligned wh the gay muny. Hijks, while havg a csh has certaly lead to gay people dog ridiculo thgs the past, the episo don’t que properly draw the le between iced ffee and gay culture at large. Ined, acrdg to former BuzzFeed wrer Sam Stryker, who once wrote a post for the se tled “This Post Will Only Make Sense If You're Gay And Love Iced Coffee, ” there’s a untercultural element to iced ffee’s populary wh the gays.

Essentially, iced ffee has bee a queer avatar, and a way for gay people to signpost themselv agast the uniformy of you’re straight, that might sound ridiculo, pecially an age which—while thgs are far om universally perfect—gay people n live their liv wh a fair amount of tonomy. And rather than necsarily beg a sign of sexual difference, acrdg to Bengry, ’s “about challengg the opprsivens of genr norms and genr prentatn”’s not to say that any sort of gay dg no longer happens, jt that an aspect of —shieldg onelf om persecutn at a time where beg homosexual was illegal—is no longer as heavy a necsy untri like the Uned Stat.

Perhaps then, as Stryker suggted, part of the gay muny -optg iced ffee stems om another kd of signpostg, one where s are a form of playful rebell fact, take a look back at the Gay Liberatn Front and you see a long tradn of playfulns as prott. “The Gay Liberatn Front would wear buttons that would explic say, 'I'm gay, ' or they would have language that explicly said that they were gay and intifyg as such, ” Bengry says.

HOW DIET COKE HELPED ME EMBRACE MY GAY INTY

K., gay people no longer need to exist the shadows; and wh the fight for gay marriage and the modifitn of queer culture, LGBTQ people are gog there’s still an element of vert behavr that occurs the queer muny, be sexual or, the se of social media, through the velopment of digal languag like mem and morn slang.

Cg the book Changg Gay Male Inti, Stapl wrote that gay men have a tenncy to align themselv wh products and brands when formg their inti, wh a 2017 study by Campaign suggtg that more than a third of gays and lbians claim to be more loyal to brands that are nsired “gay iendly. This shared sense of inty—be through products or pop songs—creat harmony and solidary the queer really, the reason iced ffee is gay is actually que simple.

STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR

One er suggted that the straw meant that you uld “mata eye ntact on your phone, some cute boys, [and] homophob wantg to attack u [sic], ” while one bi woman said that there was an athetic aspect to drkg wh the straw, argug that “ a dly pretent way iced ffee mak feel bougie and further cements our image of ‘gog agast the gra’, pecially when we orr wter and ’s -5 outsi. ”However, there were a lot of people that said that there was an oral fixatn surroundg the straw, wh one person even sayg that was “the slurpg noise” that ma gay.