Could boxing be the newest gay fetish? And, if so, what does it say about the direction of gay culture? A few years ago, soccer and rugby were both consumer obsessions and prime fetish material with David Beckham’s hair and bulges flopping across fields. But suddenly, it seems, everyone-from amateur personals sites (link NSFW) to major porn studios-is throwing punches.
Mario Testino photographed Ashton Kutcher for the Spring/Summer cover of V MAN Magazine as part of a spread curiously entitled “I’M NOT REAL.” Is it just us, or is that Ashton’s symmetrically optimized bulge talking? We know that Calvin Klein hasn’t started to make padded, shape-enhancing briefs for men, but since this sci-fi scene takes place in a fashion world overrun by Photoshop and special effects makeup, we’re wondering if the bulge that has blogs abuzz might be the result of a snugly-placed set prop.
The poem is called “The Platonic Blow” and is included in a new volume called The Best American Erotic Verse, and as New York Magazine puts it, it’s basically “like a Penthouse forum letter… with no women.” Auden (pictured, right, with lover Christopher Isherwood) apparently wrote it in 1948 and circulated it only among friends, but when an unauthorized publication occurred in 1965 he denied writing it. Auden was openly gay his entire life, traveling to Weimar Berlin in 1929 because it was the only place in Europe where one could be openly gay. But this poem was written in New York, on “a spring day… when the air/ Smelled like a locker room.” It’s about picking up a stranger on a stoop for an anonymous blowjob, and lest you believe that gay sex prior to the 1970s was always furtive and shameful and conducted in through a glory hole while wearing a tweed suit, this poem will prove otherwise.
When the Wall Street Journal covered the burgeoning mirdle (male girdle) industry this weekend, blowing the blouse off our collectively Spanx‘d muffin tops, we were awed if not exactly shocked: Homosexual undergarments have been offensive for years. Of course, what would we expect a mincing ladymale to wear under his embroidered Antik Denim? After the jump, the worst offenders.
Barely a month after his tumultuous split from Road Rules alum Danny Dias, Erik Rhodes is off the market, having been snapped up by none other than Marc Jacobs, and ratcheting the designer’s mid-life crisis to code red. The source this time isn’t Rhodes’ blog but gossip ground-zero Page Six (it’s sort of like the old-fashioned version of Perez Hilton for all you young’uns out there). Like Perez, Page Six’s reporting is just as sloppy… they pull a quote from Rhodes’ “ManNet.com” profile (Uh, we think you guys mean ManHUNT.net.)
Rhodes responded to the story in an uncharacteristically brief post on his blog yesterday.