Ask Hadley: How Gay Is The Fashion Exactly?

Why are all male fashion designers gay?

David, by email

"...I'm always amazed at the popularity of this ridiculous canard. Honestly, am I the only one who eagerly snaffles down articles with headlines such as "Ralph and Ricky Lauren show us around their glamorous ranch!" or "Tommy and Dee Hilfiger invite us to their fabulous beach hideaway"? With perhaps the exception of "A day in the life of a supermodel", there is no genre of fashion article I love more than one in which a fashion designer shows off his lovely home, one he often shares with someone else, and, as often as not, that other person is someone of the opposite gender. Just off the top of my head, aside from Lauren and Hilfiger, Paul Smith, Rick Owens, Oscar de la Renta, Christian Lacroix and Yohji Yamamoto are all male fashion designers who do more for the ladies than design clothes for them (sorry – that looks a lot creepier written down than it sounded in my head). All male fashion designers, all straight.
But of course, fashion detractors with homophobic tendencies don't like these obvious examples because they don't corroborate their pet theory that fashion is a medium through which evil gay men humiliate women because they are jealous of their femaleness..."

Hadley Freeman demolishes ye olde canard with her usual wit, gusto and sensible thingness.
From the Ask Hadley fashion problem page in The Guardian.
Now read on...
The "Teh Gays in the fashion secretly hate women" tripe trope has been puked up this year by the awful Amanda Platell in the Mail, and intellectual heavyweights, Richard & Judy in the Express.
It's a big, fat line mad Julie Burchil has been tooting for years.
Did they really all think they were saying something original, insightful and true?

Malawi: Leave Madonna Alone!

Marina Hyde's Lost in Showbiz column for The Guardian - brilliantly punctures pop stars' pomposity and other assorted celebs' delusions of grandeur.
But when other hacks try this trick they are prone to grab the wrong end of the giggling stick.
Hadley Freeman tried and failed today. For those who couldn't be arsed to read her column a sub was kind enough to summarise it in its headline; "Even the all-powerful Madonna would admit that she didn't free the gay Malawians - she just signed a petition." (The online version features a truncated version of this and adds an explainer; "Celebrities don't make the difference they think they do" which indicates the online sub didn't read the piece).
Freeman's schtick is this; "this weekend, large swath of the celebrity press spontaneously credited the singer with freeing Chimbalanga and Monjeza. 'Malawi Releases Gay Couple After Material One Protests', squealed E, the entertainment news behomoth named after the substance one must be on in order to watch it."
But E's actual headline was more quizzical and playful; "A Madonna Miracle? Malawi Releases Gay Couple After Material One Protests."
It stated that; "The Queen of Pop, who launched a vocal campaign to free a gay Malawian couple locked up for homosexuality, is now celebrating their release."
I think the journalist Brandi Flower may deserve some credit for finding a way of getting a serious story onto a media outlet that's devoted to fluff.
Flower certainly doesn't deserve a sneer from a journalist who's writing about fluff for a serious newspaper.
And it's a bit rich to pour scorn on someone using their celebrity to highlight the Malawi couple's case when the only time this story made The Guardian's comment pages was when an open letter was written by one Elton John.