Tag Archives: gay

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Lil Nas X Joins the Ranks of ‘Despacito’ and Mariah Carey

To exist in 2019 is to have a relationship with ‘Old Town Road,’ the runaway meme turned song of the summer. Less than a year ago, Lil Nas X was just another rapper with an internet connection and a dream, churning out singles to a micro-audience as he figured out his artistic identity. Then $30 and a downloaded beat later, the Atlanta-based songwriter struck gold when he penned the triumphant and inescapable ‘Old Town Road’ — the defiant ‘Can’t nobody tell me nothing’ refrain was inspired after his family voiced their frustrations with his artistic ambitions and he decided to turn the song into a “symbol of success.”

 

The country-rap song quickly gained momentum due to its sheer memeability (and providing the entire Yeehaw Agenda with a national anthem) which rapidly expanded into actual chart impact. However, controversy arose in spring when the song reached and then was made ineligible for the Hot Country chart for allegedly “not being country enough.” (Read: racism.) But not even that turbulence could dent Lil Nas X’s destined cultural impetus. One remix with Billy Ray Cyrus later, the song shot straight to the top where it’s remained for 16 weeks. This makes ‘Old Town Road’ the third longest-running Number 1 in the Billboard chart’s history (sharing the record with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s ‘One Sweet Day’ and Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber’s ‘Despacito’) and the longest-running rap song to ever top the chart, which for a tune that clocks in at only 2 minutes and 37 seconds is a deliciously ironic feat. And since Lil Nas X came out as gay in June, it’s just another display of queer excellence.

 

Congratulations, Lil Nas X. Listen to the record-breaking song below.

 

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Where to Celebrate NYC WorldPride 2019

For the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots (started by Martha P. Johnson) which ignited the gay rights movement, WorldPride is being held in New York City. Whether you’re a tourist in town for a few days or a local who knows the ropes, we’ve rounded up some key events to hit this weekend. Read on. Happy Pride!

 


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The LadyLand Festival is sure to have you dancing, jam-packed with many music artists to bop to, including Poppy, Pussy Riot, Rina Sawayama, Yvie Oddly, and Gossip. Take Coachella but make it gay. The festival starts today with a second line-up tomorrow, so head over to the Brooklyn Mirage for a live music extravaganza.

 

If you’re trying to get wet this weekend, hit up Pride Oasis. This pool party in support of the Hetrick-Martin Institute is a good time for a cause, with a roster of A-list hosts including Indya Moore, Christian Siriano, Aquaria, and more. Taking place at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, make sure to bring your best swimwear and make sure to not forget to RSVP on the Facebook group — it’s a free event, after all!

 

 


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For dancing, consider Devil’s Playground. This rowdy affair at Webster Hall is presented by DJ Ty Sunderland (known for his monthly Heaven on Earth parties) is sure to be heavy on the pop hits. Meanwhile, The Ball Room is perfect for those who like to dress up club-kid-style. This may sound like a nice high-class Cinderella story type vibe, but get prepared for quite the opposite. Presented by Susanne Bartsch and Dreamhouse, expect a night of drag shows, pole dancing, and more. Tickets cost $15- 25, so your bank account will still be intact.

 

 


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What better way to end a momentous Pride weekend than with a massive EDM affair? On Sunday, Kygo with Cirque du Soleil and other special guests are sure to put on a show at Javits Center. Tickets start at $59 but can go up to $7000 if you’re hungry for the full VIP experience — a luxe way to top off a mighty weekend. Plus did you hear the song he just released with Whitney Houston?

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Exclusive: John Varvatos Releases First Pride Capsule

Honoring the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots — when Black transwomen and drag queens famously fought back against police brutality and brought gay rights to the forefront of the American consciousness — John Varvatos is releasing a limited-edition 3-piece t-shirt collection that benefits amfAR, a non-profit that supports AIDS research. Each of the shirts features a rainbow emblem representing peace, equality, and inclusivity — themes that are integral to the brand as well as pride season as a whole. Additionally, throughout the month JV stores in New York City will display parts of the AIDS memorial quilt to further honor those we’ve lost in the fight for queer liberation.

 

The John Varvatos Pride capsule is available in select stores and online now.

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Equinox Launches Ballroom Pride Campaign

The ballroom scene continues to inspire pop culture ever since Madonna introduced the concept to the masses (aka, the mainstream white public) when she said ‘Vogue.’ And for this year’s pride month — the 50th-anniversary celebration since the Stonewall Riots set the gay rights movement in motion — Equinox is celebrating ballroom culture with its ‘Life’s a Ball’ campaign, which stars members of the community including Legendary Veronica Miyake Mugler, Legendary Chyna Prodigy, Legendary Asia Balenciaga, Legendary Tamiyah Miyake Mugler, the Icon Sinia Alaia, the Icon Leiomy Maldonado, and Tati Finesse. The luxury gym partnered with House Lives Matter, a city-based non-profit that benefits members of the ballroom community, for the campaign — for every post that uses the #PoweredbyPride hashtag, Equinox will donate $1 dollar to the cause. In addition to the campaign, Equinox is hosting voguing classes in San Francisco, LA, New York, and Miami throughout June — tickets for the New York class on June 8th are available online now.

 

Watch the dazzling campaign below.

 

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A Look at the Lady Gaga Museum

Few artists have been able to seamlessly merge the world’s of fashion and pop as effortlessly as one Stefani Germanotta, aka pop savant Lady Gaga. And while the artist has returned to Las Vegas to continue her acclaimed residency, ENIGMA at Park MGM — she took a bit of a hiatus to win an Oscar and tease her upcoming sixth album — fans can rejoice with an accompanying exhibition of her most iconic looks throughout her decade-spanning career.

 

Curated in part by her longtime collaborator Nicola Formichetti, HAUS OF GAGA/LAS VEGAS is an intimate look at some of the artist’s most indelible looks. Each of the pieces — including full looks from music videos, world tours, and various media appearances — was plucked from a temperature-regulated vault in California that preserves their legacy. Some highlights include the infamous cigarette sunglasses (as seen in the ‘Telephone‘ video), the meat dress (which she wore during the 2010 VMAs), the all-white bodysuit she donned during her career-making ‘Paparazzi‘ performance in 2009, and the Philip Treacy-designed rhinestone-covered lobster hat (just worn on a night out in London). Whether you’re a lifetime fan or just someone who appreciates striking design, there’s something to catch your eye in this pop culture time capsule.

 

A select number of pieces will be available for purchase with proceeds going towards the Born This Way Foundation, a non-profit co-founded by Gaga that promotes mental health awareness for youth. Check out some of the pieces below.

 

Images: Getty Images for Park MGM.

 

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Body Language: Revisiting Hal Fischer’s ‘Gay Semiotics’

When Hal Fischer released Gay Semiotics in 1977, he immediately knew he had created something special. The simple image series of young gay men in San Francisco succinctly captured and decoded queer body language and sartorial cues, such as the “hanky code,” and simplified them for mass consumption. It remains a pivotal queer cultural text whose influence continues to be seen in fashion and beyond over 40 years later.

 

“A novelist friend recently mentioned to me that the ‘70s were, in fact, the ‘Age of Gay,” Fischer tells me over email. “I’ve pondered what he meant by this, and I think what he was saying is that in subsequent decades, gay aesthetics, lifestyle, etc. were appropriated by mainstream culture.”

 

Queer aesthetics—like most trends—have trickled in and out of public consciousness for decades. For their Spring/Summer 2019 shows, Vetements featured a number of gimp masks in its collection, while Berluti incorporated leather military caps and Gucci flaunted a number of studded leather jockstraps. These subversive style cues have emerged from the underground and become regular fashion staples, routinely reinterpreted and reappropriated for a broader audience.

 

Gay Semiotics continues to earn retrospective critical plaudits, but Fischer acknowledges the project’s limitations as it centers on a specific type of experience. “I think my work is about gayness from a white male perspective, and not about queerness,” he says. “What has occurred—and this is very positive—is that we’ve gone from gay to LGBTQ. As a label, ‘queerness’ encompasses so much more than the gay white male experience.”

 

While representation and intersectionality continue to dominate the larger cultural conversation, Fischer’s work remains a touchstone that will undoubtedly influence the next generation to challenge and educate. “I believe the transgressive frontier is predominately with transgender and queer artists, as well as with work that challenges traditional stereotypes, [such as] behavior, body type, and action.”

 

Feature image: Hal Fischer
Earring, from the series Gay Semiotics, 1977
Courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London

Below: Hal Fischer
Handkerchiefs, from the series Gay Semiotics, 1977
Courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London

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For SS19, Linder Continues its Love Story

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Images: Linder.

New York contemporary designer Linder has carved a special place for itself in the crowded and ephemeral fashion landscape. Founded by Sam Linder and Kirk Millar in 2013, the label consistently produces romantic collections with a dark edge that distinguishes them from their peers. This season is no different — for menswear, there’s a queerness to the clothes that’s idiosyncratic and entirely organic. We spoke to Millar, who earlier this year took over creative direction for the brand’s menswear while Linder oversees women’s, during the SS19 menswear presentation hosted atop the Public Hotel on the Lower East Side.

“I always, with a traditional fashion show, feel left a little empty afterwards. Like it goes by so quickly, so this is nice” Millar shares, gesturing at the crowd of people mingling on the terrace and generally having a ball. “I can be social with people, and talk them through what they’re seeing. I also feel think in terms of how social media goes and the ability for people to get to take their own photos and let it sink in — it’s a better format.”

For FW19, the designer focused on the queer experience, incorporating various symbolism into the pieces — some shirts were printed with texts from gay romance novels — and dismantling toxic notions of traditional masculinity. The newest collection continues that theme, which is personal to Millar’s own experiences while retaining a universality.

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“Since the last collection was the first I had designed myself, it was an opportunity to open up this door of talking about that,” Millar shares on the collection’s queer themes. “Somewhat with experiences that I’ve had, but just kinda thinking universally about what it means to be gay — what it’s like to come out was the focus of the last collection, but this one is much more like, trying to find companionship, somebody you wanna be with for a long time. It’s definitely baked into this one.”

There is an obvious sentiment to the pieces, which include T-shirts bearing cute graphics reading ‘Boyfriend’ and ‘Wait for Me’ along with a series of vibrant sweaters featuring radiant prints, which Millar elaborates on. “The sweaters are taken from my grandmother’s scrapbook,” he reveals. “The prints stand out a lot, and they all have meaning.”

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Zachary Quinto Becomes One of ‘The Boys in the Band’

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Images: Kevin Sinclair.
Styled by Joseph Episcopo.

When a gay actor in Hollywood embarks on press rounds to promote his latest project, there must be a pressure—not to mention, fatigue—he feels when faced with the inevitable subject of queer representation in the industry. Zachary Quinto, on the heels of a starring role in a Broadway revival of the classic and controversial 1968 play The Boys in the Band, is nonplussed.

That’s not to say that he is indifferent to the conversation. On the contrary, Quinto speaks about his role as a queer actor and the role Hollywood assumes in telling stories about marginalized people, like someone who is never not thinking about this, like someone who is careful with his words but not in a rehearsed “my publicist coached me” way.

“Masculinity,” Quinto begins. “It’s so intertwined with male identity. I think the journey of gay men, of openly gay actors, and the heteronormative idea of what masculinity is, is still at odds in Hollywood. I think it’s something that is changing, but hasn’t changed entirely. It still has a ways to go.”

His eloquence feels earned, particularly when you look at the characters he’s played on stage and screen. Quinto isn’t a stranger to legendary 20th century works by gay playwrights. He played Louis Ironson in a 2010 Off-Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Tom Wingfield in a 2013 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, and now Harold in Matt Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (produced by Ryan Murphy, who he also worked with on FX’s American Horror Story, and directed by Joe Mantello).

Given that Angels in America is currently running, The Boys in the Band feels like an odd choice to bring back (previews began on April 30 with the show opening on May 31), even though it boasts a cast that, in addition to Quinto, includes Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, and Jim Parsons—some of the most established out gay actors working today. Despite its historical importance, many consider it dated, a reaction that stems from a fierce protest of the work’s relevance when it was adapted into a film in 1970. The gay men in the play can feel like stereotypes. They’re loud, effeminate, shallow, and full of a powerful shame that didn’t resonate with audiences and readers as years passed.

Quinto doesn’t disagree, alluding to a time in college, at Carnegie Mellon, when he first read scenes from the play. But this time around, there was something that struck a chord. “Everybody is paranoid. Everybody is afraid. Everybody has internalized this hatred they’ve been pummeled with in the real world. How does that inform a character?” he explains before justifying the timeliness of Mantello’s revival.

The Boys in the Band is a contained work, a short play that takes place in one setting over a dinner party between several gay friends. At the time of its pre-Stonewall release, this felt important. Here are a bunch of men who are unapologetically themselves, and the play follows them through a night of heavy drinking, which opens doors to subtle and not so subtle tensions in their dynamics. It feels astonishingly open for its time in the way it broaches gay men’s relationships with themselves, and the ways in which they grapple with their own identities, which are things Quinto feels still matter.

“How far we’ve come socially, politically, legislatively in the last 50 years is one thing, but where are we in terms of self-acceptance? Self-love? I don’t think we live in a culture or society today that’s any more encouraging of loving ourselves than it was 50 years ago,” he says.

Although he appeared in FOX’s 24 and had a leading role on the short-lived but acclaimed VH1 series So Notorious alongside Tori Spelling, Quinto’s breakout was in the NBC sci-fi series Heroes, where he played villain Gabriel “Sylar” Grey. It was a standout role, one that led to his first film opportunity playing Spock in J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot.

Considering these roles alongside his stage career and other choices—Quinto has a production company called Before the Door Pictures and has produced award-winning films like Margin Call (2011)—his decisions are pretty scattered. “A lot of the things that I’ve done have been zeitgeisty—American Horror Story and Heroes. Star Trek is very iconic. I remember that moment when I was doing Heroes and people didn’t know my name yet. It was a lot of, ‘Oh, you’re that character.’ I remember when it switched and people started recognizing me for myself.”

“[Heroes and Star Trek] was like hitting the lottery twice, as far as I’m concerned. Both of those projects were very sci-fi, comic book-y. That set a kind of expectation right away. Once you get known for something it becomes very difficult for people to know you for anything else.”

Quinto, 40, may be articulate and considerate when speaking about his career, but he also holds aspirations outside of the more stoic—and often frightening—characters he’s played.

He mentions that he wants to try funny again, referring to a small arc he had on HBO’s Girls. He played Ace, a bro-y artist and ex-boyfriend to Gillian Jacobs’ Mimi-Rose, the new girlfriend of Adam Driver’s character. He’ll get the chance to do so with Harold, a neurotic, quick-witted Jewish gay man who shows up late for his own birthday party in The Boys in the Band, but he seems eager to avoid stagnancy in his career.

This pervasive anxiety about being typecast, which feels inherent to any actor who takes on a larger than life role, extends beyond the sci-fi world for Quinto as well.

“I probably feel conflicted about the idea that one of the things that people feel is that it’s all that gay actors can do, which I vehemently disagree with,” he states, noting the hypocrisy in having straight actors play gay characters when gay actors aren’t as likely to have the opportunity in reverse. “It’s about working against the institutional homophobia that still relegates gay actors to playing gay characters, the idea that the only way as a gay actor to be viable in the broader industry is to stay in the closet or to deny your sexuality.”

Quinto, who came out publicly in 2011, rejects this. “I was, personally, not capable of making that sacrifice. It wasn’t worth it to me, and I wish it didn’t have to be worth it for other people.”

This story appears in our Summer 2018 issue, out now.

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