He added that it is his gay customers who need the most convincing that he's straight. 'Some of the straight guys who come in, I never would have thought were straight, and some of the gay men, I never would have guessed either.'Ĭonfused as he is, Mr. 'I don't have a clue anymore,' said Brad Habansky, whose four-month-old men's store and salon, Guise, in the tony Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, specializes in fashionable men's wear.
It notably includes an attitude of indifference to having one's sexual orientation misread hence the breakdown of many people's formerly reliable gaydar. It involves more than grooming and clothes. Gay vagueness affects both straight and gay men. The new convergence of gay-vague style is not to be confused with metrosexuality, which steered straight men to a handful of feminine perks like pedicures, scented candles and prettily striped dress shirts. Call it what you will: 'gay vague' will do. What's happening is that many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues traditionally used to pigeonhole sexual orientation - hair, clothing, voice, body language - are more and more ambiguous.
It's not that straight men look more stereotypically gay per se, or that out-of-the-closet gay men look straight. The result is a new gray area that is rendering gaydar - that totally unscientific sixth sense that many people rely on to tell if a man is gay or straight - as outmoded as Windows 2000.
