The Renaissance of Men

It's pretty widely accepted that gays are always on the cusp of the latest trend. Somehow the gay man is the divining rod for the direction of hair and fashion. In the late nineties into the turn of the millenium what gays had been doing for eons the heteros were starting to notice. We were being watched. Somemehow heterosexual men caught on to the idea that if you have a nice haircut, great clothes, manicured nails, and maybe even wear a tiny bit of makeup you can get the hottest chicks. Basically they discovered that the ladies like the way the gays looked, felt, and smelled so they started to emulate them. Metrosexuality was born.

Soon every woman in America was demanding that her beau become more like a sissy by visiting the salon on a regular basis to get the same kind of maintenance she was accustomed to. Facial hair, body hair, non-designer label jeans, non DKNY euro trash t-shirts, and cross trainer sneakers were banished from the heterosexual closet. All of this was brought to full fruition by America's favorite eunuchs the Fab 5 of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Evidence is now mounting that the gays are in the midsts of another transition. Jim over at Texas Stream of Consciousness read in a recent edition of New York magazine that the somewhat fringe Bear culture seems to be making a foray into the gay mainstream. This has been corroborated by a New York blogger over at Meanwhile. Both the magazine and the blogger cite similar examples of the transition. Meanwhile states in a November 15 entry "Number of formerly screaming gay "twinks" at my gym who, in 2005, have become "bears:" Forty." I personally find it difficult to imagine the trendsetting Chelseaites would trade in their chiseled undernourished overmedicated plastique bodies for softer rounder models. But truth is stranger than fiction and we might see an emergence of reverse liposuction (lipoblowing?) in order to achieve the new look. What I do find more practical is that the hairlessness of the previous age is fading and giving way to the return of facial hair and body hair.

It would be nice if even gap jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts from Target became part of the gay wardrobe in addition to the facial and body hair but I think I'm hoping for too much. The only way that would happen in Dallas is if the great and powerful Oz, a hybrid of Nieman Marcus and D Magazine, told the heard to do so. I actually prefer that my partner and I are some of the few that are accidentally on the uber-progressive end of the spectrum.

Lately it has been near impossible to determine gays from straights or even men from women. I will find it highly amusing that if in the coming months gay men will be identified as having beards and wearing more casual attire. The straight men will precipitate out of the crowds due to thier overly coiffed nature and gays will once again be able to recognize their own in the public arena once again.