The Gay Beards, popular on both Instagram and YouTube, talk to NBC OUT about the bety of iendship and why they've been "practilly separable" for nearly 20 years.
Contents:
- GAY HISTORY: WHEN DID WE TURN ON THE MOTACHE?
- 'THE GAY BEARDS' DEMYSTIFY THEIR ENDURG FRIENDSHIP
- JAM BEARD: THE CLOSETED GAY LIFE OF THE MAN BEHD THE AWARD
GAY HISTORY: WHEN DID WE TURN ON THE MOTACHE?
A woman who dat a closeted gay man to help craft a hetero image is lled a beard. See: evangelil pastor Rick Warren’s goatee; the Duck Dynasty clan’s pairg of wild beards and entrenched homophobia; and Speaker of the Hoe Pl Ryan, who has attributed his growg beard to a pact unrtaken by his bow-huntg club.
'THE GAY BEARDS' DEMYSTIFY THEIR ENDURG FRIENDSHIP
In the early 20th century, as the beard cled Europe and the rporate shave ascend, a sophomoric svenger hunt swept Bra: Whenever a beard man was spotted, players peted to be the first to yell “beaver!, ” rackg up pots for every scff they claimed. 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.
JAM BEARD: THE CLOSETED GAY LIFE OF THE MAN BEHD THE AWARD
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. 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.