Terminus 

Signorile traces the evolution of an increasingly-restrictive gay image, which leaves little room for deviance: “The commercial gay sexual culture of the 1970s zeroed in on gay menÂ’s anxieties about masculinity, anxieties that had over the decades narrowed the idea of what it meant to look like, act like, and be a man. The commercial gay sexual culture, which has expanded dramatically since the 1970s, promoted and continued to narrow that masculine ideal” (38). Signorile describes the “Castro Street Clone” look that first became popular in the seventies and prefigured what has in effect become the predominant gay look and style of self-presentation:  “Indeed, this was the look that hundreds of thousands of men in the rapidly growing gay ghettos of AmericaÂ’s urban centers were copying. Whether it was San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, or Los Angeles, many gay men were conforming to the same rigid ideal: the image of the rugged, muscled, working-class straight man. The dominant gender style for sexual object-choice had thus narrowed dramatically” (53). “The image of the new, out gay man portrayed throughout the gay media and promoted by its commercial establishments was perhaps best epitomized by the Village People song of the time, ‘Macho Man.Â’ There may have been differences in the image—the motorcycle dude, the cop, the leather daddy, the obedient son, the boyish youth, the bodybuilder—but they were all variations on one theme, one gender style” (56).

Signorile points out the double-edged nature of idealizing a particular standard of masculine realness for gay men: “On everything from advertisements for poppers to bathhouses, the hypermasculine ideal appeared,
beckoning gay men to have him and to be him. Indeed, he was the man gay men were to desire. But the only way to have him, gay men were being told, was to look just like him” (56).

Part of the proliferation of men’s magazines in the 1990s has been the—perhaps unintentional—presentation of the gay body aesthetic as the ideal to which mainstream heterosexual men should aspire. Overtly-heterosexual-oriented magazines such as Men’s Health (which focus on what might be called aspects of studliness rather than aspects of physical health) feature shirtless, muscular, tanned, hairless models on their covers and throughout their pages, and often contain articles on how to look like the model on the cover—sometimes interviewing the model and explaining his diet and workout regimen. Thus, the gay macho body aesthetic Signorile explains is itself increasingly passing as straight, crossing back into heterosexual culture.
 
 

TheoryCrossing

Engines

Literary Destinations