On today’s Daily Beast, Rachel Kramer Bussel explains, or tries to explain, why and how male bisexuality got cool. There’s a lot of talk of “bromance” and “man crush” and all that, and while Bussel talks more about examples of male bisexuality than she does explaining it, she does hit upon the idea that guys doing gay things is no longer the big deal it used to be.
And that’s a big deal.
She says:
Still, whereas bisexual women had their fling with pop culture in the 1990s—when everyone from Drew Barrymore to Madonna messed around with women, not to mention the famous Vanity Fair cover showing Cindy Crawford shaving k.d. lang—“bromances” are now the driving force behind Hollywood comedies and Style section features, as men find more ways to play for both teams, or at least act like they do.
. . . It’s an emerging version of male bisexuality that’s more pose than sincere. The celebrities who engage in it take pains to make it clear they’re straight—half-ironically goofing around, often as a blatant grab for attention. But the fact that they’re even taking it that far is something new . . .
. . . In addition to these tongue-in-cheek, sometimes tortured expressions of straightish-male love are indications that some men—non-celebrity civilians—are embracing a nuanced version of bisexuality as well. . . It’s not just about being seduced into a same-sex encounter, but about men claiming bisexuality or bicuriosity on their own terms.
I keep thinking what it would have been like if, when I was a kid, I had seen guys, famous or non-famous, acting like being gay was the cool thing to do. How great would that have been? And how great is it for the gay kids coming out and up?
Read the entire article over on The Daily Beast
