As a result, gay men in this generation are mostly indifferent to the faux tragedy and flamboyant exoticism of camp, and to old-time gay icons like Judy Garland. Perhaps the most theatrical demonstration of this resurgent masculinity is the ascendance of circuit parties - bacchic all-night revels rippling wall-to-wall with world-class physiques.Ĭoming out in the past ten to fifteen years has been considerably eased by the mainstream culture's speedy incorporation of gay life ( Will and Grace, Andrew Sullivan, Vermont). In the 1980s and early 1990s the AIDS epidemic again made vulnerability and other traditionally feminine traits more acceptable in gay culture but when the crisis abated, the testosterone flowed again. Many used pseudonyms, of which "Judy Garland" was among the most popular.)Īfter Stonewall, gay stereotypes got butch: out went the queens and in came the clones - hypermasculine, moustachioed men whose big muscles, Levis, and work boots became premium symbols of gay identity.
CHUBBY GAY MEN HAIRLESS LICENSE
As Charles Kaiser explains in, the bar had no liquor license it passed itself off as a bottle club, requiring all its so-called members to sign in at the door. (Garland did have a loyal following among patrons of the Stonewall Inn. It's a provocative coincidence, but most scholars deny any causal relationship between the events. Some observers of gay life in the sixties go so far as to argue that Garland's death sparked the modern gay-rights movement the Stonewall riots occurred in Manhattan's West Village just hours after her funeral, in New York in June of 1969. Judy Garland's status as a mascot for that generation of gay men is signaled early on in the dialogue of Crowley's play ("What's more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland imitation?" "A queen doing a Bette Davis imitation"), and the play's title is lifted from the dialogue of Garland's 1954 film They mark him with the effeminacy that in previous generations was integral to the popular image of gay men - witty, frowsy, fussy old queens who memorized every minute of All About Eve and poured their hearts into antiques and opera and, perhaps most damnably of all, Judy Garland.īlatant effeminacy last seems to have been widely acceptable in (white, urban, middle-class) gay culture in the late 1960s, a time memorialized in Mart Crowley's 1968 play which depicted the quip-lashed anguish and emotionally destructive conditions of life in the closet with unprecedented candor. Such sissifying slaps carry historical punch for a gay man today. No one had ever called me a big queen before, and to my surprise, I kind of liked it. “ Judy Garland?” She sniffed imperiously. ONE bright day last summer on Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Afrodite, a bald black drag queen with a silver stud in one nostril and big, muscular hairless legs, strode toward me, her eyes locked on the dust jacket of the book I was carrying: Judy Garland: The Secret Life of an American Legend (1992), by David Shipman.