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On Gay Male Identity as an Increasingly Commercial Experience
Here are some really rather scattered thoughts by yours truly, on the occasion of gay pride week, regarding being gay and being a consumer. Warning: uses the word "faggots" quite a lot.
"But there is now so little left in our country that is made painstakingly or by hand…"
The gays don't know about etsy.com?
My entire sexual history is handmade.
Sadly, my future seems to be heading that way.
More like Regretsy, amiright?
Once, people like me were essentially the property of landowners
"But enough about my time at Gawker."
And mine's mostly paintstaking, though I can get into paingiving under the right circumstances.
"There's nothing actually to do at all on this planet but eat and screw and enjoy beautiful things and to spend our time in communities of people"
Not to sound overly idealist and naïve and twee, but there is also helping people?
I could only assume that "spend our time in communities of people" encompasses helping others, if only at the very least by some freak accident.
This was my favorite line! Very Vonnegut. I assume the same as keisertroll, that spending time in communities of people implies some kind of personal investment in them.
I dunno. The Castro is one of the most boring neighborhoods in San Francisco. Boring, but pretty. If it weren't for the theater, it'd really be almost a complete nowhere. And I am allowing for the eye candy factor!
Wait, did the Gay Woolworths store shut down?
A friend of mine always liked the fact that an art gallery there (I think the last one!) turned into a mirror store.
He is a gay shrink, so that fits into his world view nicely.
I think of Cliff's Variety as a gay hardware store, but yes, it's still there.
My town only had a Gay Bradlees.
…lead the way in renouncing corporate citizenships–instead of, as they so often are these days, mocking those who stand out while huddling for safety in a soft blanket of branded comfort.
I embrace this essay.
I am pressing the like button.
yes!
Is that a Frank Gehry, or is that house just falling apart?
I like that house. It looks jumbly.
It's a Gordon Matta Clark masterpiece, unfurling slowly.
House by Jenga.
So I'm a Hollister sale away from being accepted by my LGBT peers? Sigh.
It is of course a gorgeous swooping thing. Sometime after the original house was built, someone crammed a second floor atop the building, and now it looks like some giant asshole took an enormous wooden dump on it. Each turd is in the shape of squared-off Burger King paper crowns.
Choire, that was one of the finer snips of architectural criticism I've read in a long while. Brink Jackson (who was a family friend and one of the funniest old Queens I ever met,) were he still alive, would want to hug you for that.
Being a big faggot used to be so much more of an aesthetic experience, than a commercial experience, I agree.
I think it's partly the hags' fault.
I just looked around my apartment and besides my appliances didn't see a single brand logo or piece of furniture (besides my Ikea dining table) made before 1987 or either by hand by my father.
Do I get points?
Hi.
Big points.
I do have a Jennifer Convertible sofa in my family room, but only because it had to come upstairs in pieces (Edwardian-era house; the mattresses had to be hoisted by strapping men and pushed through the second-floor windows).
By and large, I refuse to live in a house built after 1980. Reagan deregulated the architecture and construction industries, and many things went to crap thereafter.
I also don't really do furnishings that aren't midcentury modern, but that can sometimes be a problem more than an asset. (To Wit: we have a Dunbar Sofa, but it has electrical tape on it.)
But yeah- there's IKEA in our house, too. You can't do battle with kitchen cabinetry that only costs $2500.
My parents redid their house which had formerly been in all New England antiques, and I took everything I could fit into a U-Haul.
@Yucko: I either go for mid-century modern (Dutch – OMG there is this AMAZING furniture antique store in Brooklyn Heights) or total Victoriana.
I have a mishmash, but I make it work. The living room is tied together by a 1980's Trinitron TV.
My Dad REFUSES to throw our old 10" (that's right, I said 10".) Trinitron set out. Even after he determined that it wouldn't work with a digital converter-box.
Mine does!
And I think it's 10"
#thingsshesaid
"you're doing it wrong."
#Things my mom says
Oh, and on the subject of Ikea: I find it so sterile and non-confrontational, that you can sort of incorporate it into any decorating scheme. It's kind of the Arial of furniture.
I like the Billy bookshelves (let's disregard how the wider shelves sag, for now), if only because they don't detract from my painstakingly curated, ever evolving collection of crap. I find Eames ESUs and the like to be attention-hogs.
And here I thought we'd gotten past IKEA's font woes.
My bookshelves were handmade by my dad, and are creatures of beauty.
I could care less about which stupid font they use, they need to open a store that isn't 6-8 hours away from where I live, Fjükkers!
@HG: Quality bookshelves can be a deal-maker.
Pft. Of course the day I'm slammed until 3:30 EST is the day that this conversation happens.
As a young who is nonetheless WAY too into design and furniture I end up with Ikea slotted in between ridiculous one-off pieces I am slowly picking up. Like my spinny coffee table or my lamp made out of science parts.
@Art: It's really strange to live close to an Ikea after so long without one. Mainly because I constantly want to go and eat dinner there. $2 Swedish meatballs and $1 soft-serve!
@Doctor: "but when I Twittered about it…"
FACEPALM.
I looked EVERYWHERE for a picture of that house either before or after. I'll assume it is from a private collection?
Your writing always makes me a little nervous, Choire, and I'm certain that is one of the highest compliments one can pay a writer.
I was mulling this over a few days ago, Choire, and one of the things that occurred to me then is that maybe modern gay men are such enthusiastic, unreflective consumers because in the early nineties, before there were gay characters popping up everywhere in movies and television, it was the big brands that first started to acknowledge gay men as a distinct group, reaching out to them, flattering their tastes and leisure pursuits, advertising in Out and The Advocate, promising that even if societal acceptance wasn't quite forthcoming, you could still have nice things.
Early rough draft, obvs.
I only grasped half of it but really good piece.
Gay.
Hollister is the Devil (I think Matt already said something akin).
The bastard offspring of Abercrombie & Fitch after a regrettable fling with American Eagle.
At my local mall, the Hollister is literally next door to the American Eagle and across the way from the Abercrombie and Fitch. Junior sits right between mommy and daddy. Regrettable doesn't tell the half of it.
Great stuff, Choire. So when can we buy this sort of finished book?
I felt a little hurt that I had to learn about it from someone else :|
So who wants to buy a handmaid ascot?
Only if it comes in Chintz.
So close, but you tow the line too closely. The thesis, if we can call it that, is sound, but the argumentation makes for nothing so much as another type of A-list faggotry.
Though I join you in aggrandizing those early inhabitants of Fire Island with their architect-designed shacks, aren't they, in the end, just a bunch of (relatively) rich white guys playing at the beach?
Yes, that's funny. The rich A-list guys in their cute crafty wooden houses above the Castro are happy to consort with a generic A&F/Hollister/AE wearing dude, as long as the goods are there underneath it all.
Aestheticism has its limits!
This is where I too felt like the argument went south. Choire drops a couple of architect's names, one he admires and one he abhors. But architect's names are essentially brands too, just vastly more expensive ones — so expensive, in fact, that the wealthy, enlightened consumer can afford to buy the only extant copy of the item.
It's a function of wealthy bourgeois societies that they buy up a lot of overpriced junk; the difference now is that most of the overpriced junk on the market is mass-produced. A century ago, empty-headed faggots were snapping up garbage paintings from Montmartre and Greenwich Village and buying their clothes from big-name society tailors. It was handmade but it was still junk.
Maybe you need to get out more, Choire, or hang out with a more diverse gaggle of fags.
Gaggle of fags? It's not a pride?
La Cieca: Choire's argument is definitely only applicable to a certain subset of gay men in New York. But the series "What Pride means to YOU," and that's Choire's world and his opinion. And I adore FYF without being a part of that subset, but it's geared towards that NYC gay subset anyway.
In which I post linkbait to my own blog:
http://www.thisisfyf.com/2010/06/folsom-east-through-a-fresh-pair-of-eyes.html
Now many people, and some of this is dependent on their income level, can choose or not choose to be the property of brands…
I am not convinced this ever happens beyond, I dunno, the occasional jackass who gets a Zune tattoo and the like.
I suspect people, both pro and con, love to to describe The Brand as some kind of unstoppable world-historical force because it both simplifies and renders mystic and ineffable the idea of consumer capitalism.
There's a difference however between buying a piece of clothing from a brand or label, and buying a shirt BECAUSE it says 'Gucci.'
I, for one, prefer Brooks Brothers suits, but only because they are items of quality. I would never buy a shit that said 'Brooks Brothers' across my chest.
i had a one-legged taiwanese hooker shit on my chest once. it didn't say brooks brothers, but it did cost extra.
Some day, we'll find a way to market to the elusive lesbian as well.
All I could think during L.A. pride was, DAMN this is expensive. Parking, drinks, food, everything was double what it usually is.
Actually, that’s not all I could think about. After I met this gay-in-the-military, I wasn’t doing a whole lot of thinking at all.
But still: I felt like the whole thing was just a way to get gays to spend money.
I've been going to parties all week, and I haven't spent a cent.
#reasonsIleftLA
as faggots, we are supposed to be on the cutting edge.
So wear a double-knit Palm Springs leisure suit, live in a foreclosed Mc- Mansion, drive a plymouth Volare or a Renault Le Car…
We MAKE it sexy.
So, what happened? When did we stop being bold?
(oh, and my LeCar was a hopeless mess, I could not rebuild it)