Auntie Fashion

Serena Williams

“I think that gay men are actually the most to blame for many of the problems in the fashion industry, like the absence of womanly curves on the runway, and the hideous, figure-assaulting trend that is the tent dress, which no women who have tits, and no straight men who have an appreciation for tits, have any use for.”

Those are the remarks of Jezebel writer, Tracie Egan, taken from her blog and making the rounds on the Internet.

Now I don’t believe that Tracie is evil, nor do I believe that she’s breaking ground with this revelation.  I heard the exact same line spouted from the mouth of the Menzoid, a regular guest on Charles Adler’s cross-country radio show.  He claimed that gay men wanted fashion models to appeal to the boyish aesthetic they worshipped.  But do I put any stock in those assertions?  No!  Of course not.

Just a few months ago I wrote a post that made me question why the women in the office at FASHION were so enchanted by Natasha Poly’s scrawny legs.  I mentioned that I would much rather look at the legs of “Dancing with the Stars” pro Julianne Hough.  I also can’t stop extolling the virtues of Serena Williams’ athletic frame.  I’ve blogged about the difficulties faced by Behati Prinsloo in the modeling industry because of her relatively massive size-six frame, and I’ve bitched about the manner in which fitness guru Tracy Anderson criticizes anyone with a body type that doesn’t appeal to her own aesthetic.

But I’m not going to pick on any particular women (or men) this time.  I’m just going to mention that most of the gay men I know prefer to look at men who look like men.  They don’t go ga-ga over the twinky, scrawny models that walk the runways of the world.  However, they do go crazy for the buff, athletic frames that are a dime-a-dozen in the world of gay porn.

Perhaps the gay men in the world of fashion are different, but I don’t think so.  When was the last time you saw Marc Jacobs with a man who looked like a boy?  When was the last time you saw Karl Lagerfeld adopting a male muse who didn’t look like he spent all his free time at the gym?  When have you seen a Tom Ford ad that didn’t ooze all sorts of heterosexuality?  Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but that’s my point.  Different people like different things, and making blanket assertions about the preferences of groups of individuals, even when it’s from a socio-political perspective that your education might support, can make you sound like an idiot.

I admit that I generalize all the time, and I try to catch myself doing it before I hit the “publish” button on WordPress.  Nevertheless, I will allow myself to do it this time: Everyone who believes that women are passive, easily-manipulated rubes in the game of fashion isn’t giving very much credit to women.