Sunday, June 19, 2005

"Gay-vague," a NYT invention [UPDATED]

According to the Style section it's impossible to tell these days who's gay and who's straight. This report is, at the very least, premature. I went for a bike ride through Chelsea and the West Village, and nothing has changed, unless I am to believe that the men with "a bronzed, buffed, waxed gay ideal" body are in fact straight. That seems unlikely, especially since such men so often appear in pairs. And paired-off men are without a doubt the most gay-seeming of all, more than interior decorators, even.

I don't see why gaydar is supposed to matter. In any given case, a man's sexuality only needs to be determined by those who are interested in him in such a way that this would be an issue. But classifying for the sake of classifying strikes me as a waste of time.

UPDATE

Gerald DeCock, hairdresser, lives in the Chelsea Hotel, and was written up for the intriguing way he painted his own apartment... He and I have never met, but I'm sure he'd totally go for me.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Gay-vague," a NYT invention"

They're just looking for some way to recycle the metrosexual storyline.

Anonymous said...

"Gerald DeCock , hairdresser, lives in the Chelsea Hotel ... He and I have never met, but I'm sure he'd totally go for me."

Are you secretly male?

Anonymous said...

Show me a straight guy who'd think of gold-leafing a brick wall and I'll tell you I'm in love.

Anonymous said...

David Colman uses the term "gay-vague" many times in his article, and it appears to be his own invention.

"Gay-vague" is a term that was coined by a business journalist, Michael Wilke. The phrase appeared in his reporting for Advertising Age from 1994-98.

Shouldn't David Colman at least acknowledge this
source in his article? Without crediting the source,
is this plagiarism? "Gay-vague" is not a commonly used phrase in the New York Times. It appears that only one article from the New York Times archive used this phrase, back in 1996.

Information about journalist Michael Wilke's use of
the phrase "gay-vague" appears at the URL below:

http://www.medill.northwestern.edu
/inside/2002/wilke.html