From the “Bear’s Prayers” file: The NY Times’ Men’s Fashions (Fall 2002) reports in “Bear Market” that fur is back in–on mens’ bodies–on designers’ runways, in photo layouts and ads. Where did this come from? “… [I] n the gay community, always the cutting edge for male grooming trends, waxed gym bunnies are having to make way for bears: those big ultramasculine men, whose beards and bellies make the local gay bar look like a Crosby, Stills and Nash convention.” The (gay) designer Tom Ford has chosen the model Samuel de Cubber for Yves Saint Laurent’s new fragrance MT who has, gushes the article–a “spectacularly hairy chest.”
Blue Latitudes by Tony Horowitz noted in the NY Times Book Review (9-22) sets out to re-create Captain James Cook’s 18th century Pacific Voyages. However, the relentlessly heterosexual Horowitz, while using a replica of the Endeavor, Cook’s ship, is partial to female crews, thereby destroying the re-creation’s authenticity: in the words of Winston Churchill–“nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.”
As reported in the Chicago Tribune (9-22) and many other papers, “The Dinner Party,” artist Judy Chicago’s feminist mistresspiece, has found a permanent home in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The triangular place settings for 39 of the world’s most famous women, such as Sappho, Elizabeth I, and Susan B. Anthony (but not, deliberately, the Virgin Mary) was denounced by many conservatives as pornographic lesbian trash. Elizabeth Sackler, a trustee of the Museum, bought it from Chicago for an undisclosed amount.
You may have heard of those theories that homophobes are really closeted gays and pooh-poohed it, right? The NY Times (9-24) reports a new study by Dr. Henry Adams of the U. of Georgia comparing self-described homophobic and nonhomophobic heterosexual men who were shown gay pornography while wearing penile circumference monitors. The results? Nonhomophobes = no erections. ‘Phobes = all erections (and all denied it.) The same article describes the possibly fatal behavior of gay men indulging in unprotected sex as a result of internalized homophobia where the perpetrator and the victim are the same person.
From Tel Aviv, the Chicago Tribune reports that an openly gay man, Uzi Even, has become the first “out” gay person to be in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Even, one of the first gay foster parents in Israel, was instrumental in helping eliminate discrimination against gays in the Israeli army and also in getting spousal benefits for gay partners. The large orthodox Jewish minority in the Knesset view homosexuality as an abomination.