Gay fashion is the new straight fashion in "the hood"?
My friends at Youth Radio have just produced another thought-provoking radio commentary in their fantastic "What's The New What" series. In this episode, Anthony Waters says that "gay fashion is the new straight fashion... in ghetto neighborhoods." From Anthony's commentary:
MP3: What's The New What? Gay Fashion is the New Straight Fashion (Youth Radio), Transcript (What's The New What? blog, thanks Lissa Soep!)I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the white T look. I’m all about big shiny sunglasses, sparkling necklaces, tight legged jeans…and this cute shirt I spotted at one of my favorite stories: DD’s Discounts.
The straight boys who used to whisper about me on the bus haven’t discovered DD’s yet, but they are jacking my style. It all started when artists like Kanye West, Pherrell, and Cam’ron showed up on the TV screen, suited and booted in outfits I would have picked out in middle school. Now my uber-macho nephew, AR, is raiding my closet.
the latest
latest episodes
Fallout from ghetto fashion becoming the new suburban yuppie-spawn fashion?
crab-people?
Flamboyance in Hip Hop culture is nothing new.
Those who subscribe to the over-the-top "urban" style definitely spend more time on their wardrobe than almost anyone.
What other guys do you know who wear giant fake diamond and gold earrings.. on both ears, even!
They wear clothing that is covered in pattern, accessories, jewels (usually fake) and overall bling, often to the point that would have made Liberace proud.
I think it's all the more interesting that these people would never associate the term flamboyant to their style without a fight.
Just last week I saw a dude all hiphopped out in the city calling some gay dude a "faggot". The name caller was wearing an oversized pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses with the huge D&G logo on the temple.
Do they know they are (actually, were) a gay Italian couple??
Hip Hoppers couldn't be more gay.
Now, excuse me, I need to glue on these little plastic gems I bought from Michael's onto my little golden goblet for tonight's set.
I would not have guessed that guy in the photo was gay, based on his clothes...I mean, does wearing clothes that fit mean you are gay?
And as far as the trickle-down of ghetto fashion to the suburban malls, this looks more like the opposite...dude looks like he just stepped out of a Gap dressing room, to me...
Furthermore, the last time I looked(yesterday), the baggy-white-shirt, limpin'-cuz-my-belt-around-my-knees look is still as big as ever...
either way, this is why Kenley should have lost this week. GRRR!!!
sincerely,
diggum
does Madzack need a nap-time?
Any kids out there want my leather chaps? Slightly worn, particularly in the ass area.
I've been seeing rappers like The Cool Kids and The Knux dressing this way and I never perceived it as "gay fashion". I sort of took it as a throwback to the 80s since these guys are also wearing gold chains and rapping about pagers. This style is just a sub-genre under underground hip hop.
The overwhelming majority of hip hop fans and artists are still wearing t-shirts that look like dresses and giant baggy jeans. We'll see if the underground goes over with them..
"Can't wear skinny jeans 'cuz my knot's too big." - Jay-Z.
you mean fashion for people who THINK they live in the hood.
You call those jeans tight? I've got a Melvin with your name on it.
The only reason I heard about this before boing-boing posted it was because kxlu is doing a fund raiser.
And I don't own tight girl/boy pants, but my 11 year old daughter has a pair.
#2 Takuan - you beat me to it. :-)
What? Not according to the gangbangers in my area.
I was riding home from the train on a white 1-speed nishiki wearing rolled up black cords which fit, but I would call them tight. They are my size. I was wearing a hoodie and I had my bike chain around my waist. This chain is 1/2" tool steel bar bent and welded into a chain that weighs ~10lbs. So anyway, I'm riding by a bunch of thugs with some younger ladies who they were probably trying to impress when one of the thugs says right to my face 'You Gay'. This kid was at least half my size and probably half my age. I had to stop and see what the F*** he was thinking. Bad idea, because they felt threatened enough to start reaching for guns (whether or not they had any, I don't know), with which they were about to 'flame me'. Before giving them the smackdown of a lifetime, I asked them what makes me look gay, whereas to me, they were the ones who looked gay. Nothing's gayer than an oversized white tank top and colorful jeans hanging down to your knees like you just got bummed or had been getting oral pleasure from your buddies.
Apparently, wearing a 10lb steel chain, riding a white bike and rolling up your cuffs so they don't get stuck in your chain is gay. I couldn't get much more explanation than that.
I get no end of laughs out of gang bangers walking around trying to hold up their pants with one hand while talking on the cellphone with the other.
So I guess the gangs around here are behind the times. They're stuck in the early 00's.
This is definitely true for the D.C. ghetto. I'm continually shocked at how "gay" the fashion has become. It's strange because these guys like to act tough, but the gayness of their clothing is in stark contrast to toughness. It's a lot like the tough Latino guys blasting happy oom-pah music from their badly customized Japanese cars. It's just weird. And funny, I guess.
well, crap! nobody told ME there was an official "gay fashion" -- they've probably all been laughing at me behind my back. where can i get this stuff? and do they deliver to the desert?
same old, same old -- straight people copping gay fashion. happens all the time.
Jamaican dancehall artists are even more flamboyant and even MORE homophobic than the US hip hop chaps
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bossip.com/wp-content/uploads/elephantman6.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bossip.com/6349/badboys-elephant-man-banned-in-toronto/&h=600&w=397&sz=79&hl=en&start=9&um=1&usg=__Zqo5l0UhblzYsYy
An episode of the Boondocks takes takes on this issue.
http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c39217d474560117d56061040018
Aight, aight, who been readin 'B-Boy Blues'?
He doesn't look gay to me. The sunglasses look stupid and those shoes look like they came from the 80's, but I wouldn't say he looks gay.
Meh. I'll stick with the regular old t-shirt & jeans style, thanks. The better to blend into a crowd with! Blending-in is great for assassins, thieves and chronic farters.
@#3 A rapper and producer named Big L named his record label 'Flamboyant Records.' But he seems to always have worn (he's dead) black Carhartt gear and white t-shirts. But unlike in the picture above, for tight clothes on 'urban' people, just google for pictures of Run-DMC in the 80s, or their contemporaries.
Most homosexuals I know are either lawyers or travel agents and dress like it, or are all tatted up and pierced and kinda scary-lookin. Guys, at least.
In a way, I think its unfortunate that 'homosexual' and 'gay' are generally considered synonymous. I usually think of 'homosexual' as a sexual orientation and nothing else, and 'gay' as a descriptor for anybody who acts or looks silly to me, and that's not necessarily derogatory. Like, "Whoa, that's the new guy at work holding hands with another guy. It is apparent he is homosexual." Versus, "Man, those two brothers on 'Frasier' sure are gay!" Come on, a divorced man in his mid 40s with an apartment that tasteful?
No matter what, most people in any given group will adopt a particular fashion of dress along with other lifestyle choices, and tend to criticize other groups on the most obvious attributes like clothes or hair or skin color or whatever, because it's easier than dealing with any real fundamental differences, or accepting that each of us actually has equal value!!
Didn't we already go through this with hair-metal bands?
'Cause the boys in the hood are always hard?
As the great Gangstalicious sang, "Homies over Hoes"!
What? Gay people setting fashion trends?? What's up with that!
um.. you guys are wrong.
tight jeans = hipster
low cut jeans = gay
thanks.
As the great Gangstalicious sang, "Homies over Hoes"!
It's hardly a new thing, is it? Long hair, short hair, bell-bottom jeans, chinos, tight jeans, bandanas, every kind of hat, biker clothes, leather in general, s&m inspired fashion, Cuban heels and so on and on and on. My impression is that a massive percentage of fashion for the last fifty years or even more has either crossed over from urban gay cliques or at least they were early users of these fashions.
Every time somebody has ventured out onto the streets in a new style they have been told they look like a queer, by somebody wearing clothes that five years before would have made the wearer get the same reaction.
isn't everything boughwa these days, i mean of course since before the nazi uprising? 500 years of the same parts different players bullshit. fukin' humans suck
I remember an item in Details magazine many years ago that stated, "Straight fashion = gay fashion - 4 years, gay fashion = straight fashion - 25 years". You could maybe fudge the numbers, but there's still a grain of truth in it.
i feel ill equipped to comment, as i live in the gayest place in britain. wood for the trees etc.
Well-put, #15 starcadia, although to me it sounds more like carnival music that my Salvadoreño neighbors are blasting from their rides (at full volume as they peel rubber up the street in their Japanese hoopdees).
In London town true "badmen" rail agin this new "gay" fashion and ,well,a whole bunch of things including ,somewhat inexplicably,-Snapple! http://vice.typepad.com/vice_magazine/2008/09/london---badman.html
it's no mystery why these dudes look like this now. kanye west et. al. started dressing that way because he/they, like most image conscious stars, hired stylists, often women or gay men, to dress them. just look at justin timberlake. she's been poncing it up for years now. what's more interesting to me than this now few years old trend is the obverse, ground-up twist. i just moved from ultra-middle class, hipster williamsburg to deep in the hood, ghetto bushwick, brooklyn. kids here have the best style. weird and impeccable and suddenly there's an undercurrent of informed irony that goes beyond the usual suspects of bling or preppy golf/resort wear. here kids look like early 80's hardcore punks. full-on crusty-wear, but color coordinated. monochrome purple, or red etc. or head-to-toe outfits with a heavy dusting of kid 'n play realism. box fades, shades, blue shirts and yellow pants. granted that whole style was lifted from what black kids in baltimore and d.c. were doing two or three years ago but who cares? it's all so much more interesting and oddly beautiful than the kind of recursive neo-con drag sweeping the post collegiate crowd who can afford 500 dollar shoes from opening ceremony.
...Coming up next: Ebonics with a lisp and a limp wrist :-P :-P
Fashion trends come, fashion trends go, I remember us laughing about how silly 70's bell-bottom pants were in the 1980's, and then 10-years later they returned. Maybe this is the first sign that the ridiculous baggy-sagging pants trend is finally on it's way out.
Fashion trends make me wish I was more dishonest. I should start snatching wallets from all those hipsters/emo kids in the sagged, super tight jeans. Then as I saunter away while shouting "Bet you wish you wore a pair some pants that allowed you to move freely, huh!?" As they struggled to chase after me.
But seriously, why must it always be gay men that are credited with setting trends? I've seen plenty of straight men set trends... like Billy Ray Cyrus and "The Mullet", and, and, oh ok I get the point.
I may be late with the comments, but listen. I'm bi, and to even consider what this guy is wearing to be anything fashionable or attached to gay style is absolutely absurd and riculous. It's insulting. As a male model, I think I know a little about my fashion and this just isn't a part of that.
If I also may address this entire white shirt, baggy jean trend as being hood: PLS NT: WRNG JNS FF YR SS WS BTYCLL SGNL N JL ND STLL S. DTS. G T JL ND D THT ND YR SS WLL GT RPD (LTRLLY).
=)