Gay Icons: Cover Me

Attitude was launched in 1994 with Boy George on the front, and its cover remains a bastion of men in pants at a time when straight titles are increasingly coy about putting scantily clad women on theirs. The diver Tom Daley appeared topless after coming out in 2014, while the rugby player Gareth Thomas posed naked and nuzzling his boyfriend a few months later. Elton John and David Furnish celebrated their wedding on it in 2005, albeit fully clothed. Even Oscar Wilde has been inducted into the Attitude covers hall of fame.

Being chosen for it has become something of a status symbol among straight stars too. Where once the title had trouble recruiting hetero celebrities, now the Attitude cover has the power to define careers as well as cultural mores. There is a certain pride in being a gay icon...

The spot has become PR gold, changing perceptions of how even people who aren’t gay see those who appear on it. Justin Timberlake, George Clooney and Tom Hardy have all done it (in a wife-beater vest, lime green shirt and silken pyjamas respectively). Ed Miliband was a pin-up in May 2014, although he only removed his tie.

“There’s a sincerity test you have to conduct, so that you don’t just become part of people’s marketing strategy,” says the cultural commentator Paul Flynn. “Some readers are against straight men with their clothes off on the cover, but the men in pants aren’t going anywhere — they sell better.” ...

The Times.

I've often argued that any journalist that uses the fatuous term 'gay icon' knows nothing about gay culture.

It's a term no gay man ever uses in conversation, just an extremely elastic media fiction.

This journalist confuses 'Has appeared on the front cover of Attitude' with being a 'gay icon'.

Needless to say it was not written by a gay man.

And that graphic is so hideously unsexy, it can only have been designed by a straight man.

PS Ben Cohen a 'gay icon' still - LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

PPS And in another tribute to gay fuckwittery BBC News magazine have got an article about rainbow tossing flags.

Tony Blair: Don't Laugh!

Daily Telegraph.

And now let's take a quick look at today's Telegraph cartoon...

GT: Satire!

Asked my mate Darren to mock this up for a larf.

Don't worry, it's not real!

As if anyone would choose this neo-Thatcherite god-bothering cunt and unconvicted war criminal as the greatest gay icon of the last 30 years.

PS You can always trust Independent Voices to come up with the gay wet liberal hackneyed goods.

What's that you say?

The man who wrote that runs the Labour Campaign For LGBT Rights?

I find that very hard to believe.

GT: FS!

I am going outside, I may be some time...

*sound of gunshot*

Gay Icons: GI Blues

Both Garland and Houston, sang songs of sorrow from such great heights, and the meaning willed out. Having fought to be the huge stars they became, and finding themselves locked in a fight to the death with their own celebrity, Garland and Houston invested their material with such devout sincerity that queer ears the world over pricked up. The combination of exploited naivety, mournful foreboding, relentless repression and utterly unique singing voices, gave unprecedented authenticity to their work...

On the first anniversary of her death yesterday, Independent Voices, runs a piece on Whitney Houtson comparing her threat pre-Stonewall gay icon, Judy Garland.
Usually when you see the phrase "gay icon" in print, it's used about people who aren't - maybe a "diva" who had a minor hit in the 80s, or a famous chap who's quite good-looking - and the article tells you nothing apart from the writer is clueless.
Or it'll be some whiny anti-gay snob with nothing more to say than; "Why are the gays still doing this?"
But this piece by performance artist, La JohnJoseph is thoughtful and sympatico.
Brava.

Plug! 'La JohnJoseph will be touring his autobiographical, raucously political and accidentally profound, Boy in a Dress which follows the life story thus far of La JohnJoseph, a third-gendered, fallen Catholic, ex-fashion model from the wrong side of the tracks, from the council estates of Merseyside to the strip clubs of New York. 
'The show will be running in London at the Battersea Arts Centre from the 14-16th March, after a UK tour through Liverpool (26th Feb) Bristol (28th Feb - 2nd March), Manchester (5-6th March), and Brighton (8th March).'

Geoffrey Hughes: "Gay Icon"

“I went to Miami for the BBC and I was jumped on by a waiter in a hotel who said, ‘Oh My God!’ when he recognised me. Apparently Onslow and Daisy were big gay icons in the US because they liked to hold fancy dress parties and the cheapest form of dressing up was as us because we had such shabby clothes.”

The late Geoffrey Hughes, quoted in the Mirror.
Obviously I disapprove of anyone using the daft term "gay icon" - if you mean someone is "popular with some gay men" then why not just say that - but this time I'll let it pass.

Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011

Any friend of Tito's was a friend of mine...

• Usually if you read the words "gay icon" all it means is that the person who wrote them is an idiot who doesn't know what they're talking about. Because of Liz's friendship and support of queens from Monty Clift to Michael Jackson, and her genuinely pioneering work to remove the stigma of HIV/Aids, this was a rare instance when it was actually appropriate: Elizabeth Taylor: A New Gay Icon - Paul Flynn, The Guardian; Statement from THT; John Waters remembers Taylor in The Baltimore Sun; Helen Rumbelow in The Times announced 'Elizabeth Taylor Was a 'Patron Saint' For Gays'.
What are "gays", please?