The New York Times is excited. According to this story, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish queers from straights. Excerpts:
As gay men grow more comfortable shrugging off gay-identified clothing and Schwarzeneggerian fitness standards, straight men are more at ease flaunting a degree of muscle tone seldom seen outside of a Men's Health cover shoot. And they are adopting looks - muscle shirts, fitted jeans, sandals and shoulder bags - that as recently as a year ago might have read as, well, gay.
The result is a new gray area that is rendering gaydar - that totally unscientific sixth sense that many people rely on to tell if a man is gay or straight - as outmoded as Windows 2000. It's not that straight men look more stereotypically gay per se, or that out-of-the-closet gay men look straight. What's happening is that many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues traditionally used to pigeonhole sexual orientation - hair, clothing, voice, body language - are more and more ambiguous. Make jokes about it. Call it what you will: "gay vague" will do. But the poles are melting fast. . .
"We have left the era when the defining line for men is one of sexual preference," he said. "Now, it's either 'I want to be stylish' or 'I don't.' " . . .
Well, this at least gives Eric Scheske a reason not to be stylish, besides being cheap.
Note: Unscientific or not, Eric still claims his gaydar can spot a homosexual at a hundred yards.
