Why is Brney Spears so appealg to gay fans? | Nancy Goldste | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHY ARE GAY MEN DRAWN TO DIVAS LIKE CHER, LIZA, BETTE, BARBRA, DIANA AND OTHERS?
• CHER HAS HAD A POWERFUL AFFY WH GAY MEN SCE SHE WAS NE-YEARS-OLD. HERE’S WHY
• WHY ARE GAY MEN OBSSED WH POWERFUL WOMEN?
• CHER EXPLAS WHY SHE HAS LOVED GAY PEOPLE SCE SHE WAS 9-YEARS-OLD
• WHY IS BRNEY SPEARS SO APPEALG TO GAY FANS?
• GAY MEN’S FEARS OF LONG-TERM ROMANCE
• CHER RELLS THE HER FIRST INTERACTN WH GAY PEOPLE NEW INTERVIEW

WHY ARE GAY MEN DRAWN TO DIVAS LIKE CHER, LIZA, BETTE, BARBRA, DIANA AND OTHERS?

Gay men were tradnally very margalized and opprsed – generally by straight men and the stutns they ntrolled. There were very, very few out gay men to intify wh entertament, and we were reluctant to openly intify wh our opprsors, so we were drawn to another group of outsirs: women. Through their choic of songs and rol, the divas uld munite one thg to their gay dienc, while still beg nventnal enough to fd “mastream” succs.

Cher revealed that she relat to gay people “bee gay people don’t feel like they f and I never felt like I f ”, an terview wh CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour.

In the terview, she relled her troductn to the “gay world” when she was ne-years-old.

CHER HAS HAD A POWERFUL AFFY WH GAY MEN SCE SHE WAS NE-YEARS-OLD. HERE’S WHY

Cher has long been a gay in. Cher told CNN: “It was very unlike me to the begng have a problem wh Chaz beg gay and disappeared like that. Once I moved to New York and met more queer people, I quickly realized that my experience wasn’t unique; most of my gay iends had also grown up worshippg famo women.

A viral tweet by edian Caleb Hearon said bt: “when gay boys turn 13 years old the universe assigns them one woman workg entertament. If there is one characteristic shared by the powerful women that gay men love, ’s that they all rporate bold — borrle theatril — cloth and performanc to their personas.

WHY ARE GAY MEN OBSSED WH POWERFUL WOMEN?

“I spect that celebry culture has bee so important to many queer folx bee theater has long been a home for the ‘others’ our culture, ’” Ashera DeRosa, a licensed marriage and fay therapist who works wh LGBTQ+ clients, tells many gay men, that otherns is often tied to our exprsns of femy, a tra that’s equently punished by our peers and fay whenever we dare to exprs . “In hip-hop, men always ma women an accsory, but [the artists] me and turned that around, ” Jonathan gay men are faiar wh the feelg of beg the butt of everyone’s joke and the feelg that we have to work twice as hard to be taken serly — and most of cred a powerful woman entertament wh givg the urage to bt out of the closet.

For many gay men my generatn, that person was Lady Gaga.

CHER EXPLAS WHY SHE HAS LOVED GAY PEOPLE SCE SHE WAS 9-YEARS-OLD

’”When gay men uldn’t exprs ourselv the way we wanted, we sent the women out as our stand-s, and they, turn, paid homage to queer people who didn’t have the privilege of such ’s easy to fet that many gay men were volved curatg those celebri’ athetics, too; ’s a symbtic relatnship.

WHY IS BRNEY SPEARS SO APPEALG TO GAY FANS?

Durg tim when gay men uldn’t exprs ourselv the way we wanted, we sent the women out as our stand-s, and they, turn, paid homage to queer people who didn’t have the privilege of such my md, no one exemplifi this obssn more tensely than my iend Ashton Brooks, a 32-year-old producer who liv Denver. ”Whether ’s bee of their bold embrace of femy, their support for the queer muny, or the memori they evoke, powerful women entertament will always be the backbone of the gay muny. Cher explaed why she felt such a tie wh gay people sce she was ne-years-old an terview wh CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Amanpour asked Cher if havg a transgenr son – Chaz Bono – ma her “sympathetic to the LGBT muny, ” and Cher said that she liked gay people gog all the way back to when she was ne-years-old. “That was my begng to the gay world, ” she said, “and we were always like this bee gay people don’t feel like they f , and I never felt like I f .

When I found out Chaz was gay, I didn’t go through that easily; when I found out Chaz was [transng]… except we talked about a lot, actually. [Discsn] Why do The Gays love pop so much? As one of The Gays, no matter how self hatg I was growg up, how much I tried to be masc4masc etc.

GAY MEN’S FEARS OF LONG-TERM ROMANCE

Vapid pop mic always stck a chord my gay ltle heart. Blah blah stereotyp are bad blah, but you n't really ny there is an separable bond between the gay muny and pop divas. We have stans for huge stars like gaga, beyonce, rihanna etcs but I feel like gay people are one of the biggt drivg forc behd "die" pop acts like lana, mara, rly etc.

I feel like the "die" girls have particularly relate table lyrics, but even extremely vapid basic ass songs have some sort of gay hong mechanism wh their sound. Also, has a tally been taken on how much of r/popheads is The Gays?

"So what's wh gays and Brney? " my iend asked, no doubt prompted by all the prs surroundg the release of Spears' 8th album, Brney Jean, last urse, the first problem wh answerg my iend's query is that "gays" don't all have a thg for Brney any more than Jews all have a thg for Miami.

CHER RELLS THE HER FIRST INTERACTN WH GAY PEOPLE NEW INTERVIEW

"Do gays love Brney? My stant rponse is to ask if this alleged love of Brney Spears is uniform across gay muni or if breaks down by race, class, and genr, among other thgs.

Except to prove that Brney is wallpaper to 98% of my lady iends, gay or otherwise. The well-documented phenomenon of diva worship amongst "gays" is primarily a gay male prerogative. Part of the bad old days when beg gay meant endls heartache and persecutn and the nstant risk of arrt (as still do for the LGBT cizens of over 60 untri cludg Rsia and India, where the supreme urt jt restated a lonial-era ban on gay sex earlier this week) else, other than this shared experience of hardship, pl a taste for melodrama and mp, to expla the fondns that some gay men have for a first-class tra wreck of a woman, someone tly over the top, whether at the opera, on the classic movie channel, or on the dance floor and YouTube?

Women wh substance abe problems and crap taste who lose ntrol of their liv, as Spears officially did 2008, when her father was award "nservatorship" of her – that is, ntrol of her reer, personal life and fanc – at the height of a very public meltdown her then there's the flip si of gay male diva worship: the love of women who e back om the pths. Pozner pots out this different gay affy:"[For] Liza and Barbara and Bette and Cher the mil sphere – and Kathy Griff and Margaret Cho edy. Then, as now, a "money-makg mache", as some outlets refer to, Spears enjoys a place the gay male imagatn.