Gay Today: People

Do Our Heroes
Have to Be Straight-Acting?

By Bob Minor
Minor Details

It's finally happened. Gay men have officially arrived in the new millennium. What convinced me was the appearance of "The First Ever Gay Men's Wedding Guide" in the August/September 2000 issue of Hero magazine. And if Hero is, as a press release says, "the largest magazine in the U.S. for gay men," then the new millennium is most likely to be the "straightest" we have ever seen.

>From its first appearance just three years ago, Hero has been one of the most consumer-oriented glossies. The others are not far behind in their advocacy of conspicuous consumption as a way to save us all. But Hero has been playing that game much better.

It's "mainstream approach to gay life" (another quotation from its press release) has garnered corporate advertisers who dream of how much money they can make off of our insecurities and our discontent with ourselves. It is so much like it's straight equivalents that it has been featured in the straight media. That's a clear indication of what a political statement it makes, even though it claims not to be political -- wouldn't want to offend those advertisers.

It's not that the gay community shouldn't have such magazines. We have the right to all of the sicknesses and dysfunctions of the larger society. In fact, we have a lot of catching up to do so that, just like heterosexuals, we can hide our humanity behind all of the "straight-acting, straight-looking" roles that some heterosexual people are questioning.

Curiously missing from the "wedding" issue was that passive aggressive phrase that first appeared on Hero's masthead: "The Magazine for the Rest of Us." Who are these "rest of us"? Those who don't have sex, or don't act like they do? Those who don't use sex for any reason other than love and commitment?

It can't be. The magazine uses sex throughout to sell its products and itself. Gay men in their underwear, without their shirts, and in provocative poses are everywhere. Every cover until the "Wedding" issue has featured the usual white, males who fit the standards of male beauty that any other American magazine promotes. The ads are just as sexually oriented and use sex just as much to sell everything as those in any magazine, straight or gay. The "Wedding" issue has its first African American on the cover. He is helping a white man straighten his bow tie.

And while all of the most interesting heterosexual couples I know are designing their own ceremonies, rejecting much of the marketing that sells the things someone says we "need" for a "perfect" wedding, and even questioning the state's role in relationships, Hero promotes "Hawaii, the Ultimate Honeymoon" as well as "10 Great Honeymoon Ideas" including Bali, Paris, and Noosa in Australia.

There is a "Wedding Timeline & Planner" which tells us "Everything You Need" in order to have the perfect, white wedding. Six weeks ahead, you know, you should be designing a wedding program and having it printed.

A state-by-state guide to wedding resources tells you "everything you need to marry." There are even dieting and exercise tips with a reminder that "more pictures will be taken of you on your wedding day than probably any other time in your life." Of course, the "Timeline" says you need to book your photographer and/or videographer nine months ahead.

It was sad enough to hear a man say in a National Public Radio interview that with the legalization of same-sex unions in Vermont his relationship "finally felt legitimate." I would hope it already felt that way for personal and self-esteem reasons. But Hero has now given us the way to buy feelings of legitimacy. And we do so by looking as non-gay, as non-sexual as possible - except in the way "straight-acting" consumers already do. To be a "hero" we must exchange our ways of living sexually for the patterned ways defined by the wedding industry.

There are reasons we buy this version of living. We have been taught that the "straight" way is best and our ideas are inferior. We seek to feel okay because we don't feel legitimate without the same purchases and products others crave.

We think that our sexuality should be in the closet, and looking and acting "straight" locks it in there deeper than heterosexual sex has ever been closeted. We are ashamed of being sexual. On top of this, we have all the fears about sexuality that straight people do and, just like them, we'd rather not face our fears either.

We believe that we can buy ourselves out of discrimination and oppression. We think "straight" people will like us better if we act like them, and we desperately need their approval. We're ashamed of others in our community who don't act "straight" enough, men who don't look and act "manly" enough and women who aren't "feminine."

I'd like to believe that we are getting healthier. I am unconvinced that Hero is any sign of the health of our community any more than Glamour and Esquire are signs that the straight community is healthy. And in a day when many heterosexual people are challenging the wedding industry and creating weddings that are very queer by "straight" standards, I am struck by the fact that the largest selling gay men's magazine is hoping to make our weddings and our heros as straight as possible.

The message from corporate America is that we're just supposed to do things the way "straight" society says we should to do them? And I thought the heros of gay men were supposed to be especially creative. There goes that stereotype.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Arrow Magazine: Now You Can Be as Straight as an Arrow

Gay Marriage is a Heterosexual Trap

Masculinity in the Pages of MS. Magazine

Related Sites:
Hero Magazine

Fairness Project

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Robert N. Minor, Ph.D. is author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He may be reached at www.fairnessproject.org