(Photographs of men in very little, but otherwise not alarming.)
For a month that has both Pride events and Fathers Day in it, two extremes of clothing for men: (2) high-macho sexy bodywear and (3) adaptations of women’s casual clothes — which will take us to (4) the gay rapper Cazwell, a study in outrageous, minimal, and sportsfan dress.
First, as lead-in, (1) a visit to the 2017 International Mr. Leather competition in Chicago on March 25th – 30th.
After several postings on this blog combining a (US) Memorial Day theme with a phallic hot dog theme, Pinterest recently moved the calendar forward from Memorial Day to (US) Fathers Day (June 18th this year), while preserving the focus on hot dogs, as a characteristically masculine food. Fathers Day and Mothers Day are not just (absurdly commercialized) celebrations of male and female parents, respectively, they are also massively gendered holidays (with a hefty infusion of class (middle) and sexuality (hetero) in the gender mix).
I’ll have more to say on the gendering of Fathers Day; here it’s just the hot dog thing, and more generally the gendered food thing.
Passed on by Adam Schembri on Facebook, this topical parody of Magritte’s The Betrayal of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe):
A clever reversal of Magritte’s image by Annette Müllender.
(Descriptions of mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
From the Mic site yesterday, “Needleporn: The queer, wholesome yet sexually explicit craft you need to get into” by Evan Ross Katz.
Nice story, though the only illustrations of Zach Nutman’s work are Safe For Work or have the naughty bits pixellated. So I went off to get some of the hard-core stuff. And then found another source of X-rated gay embroidery, by Maria Piñeres. Three examples from each artist are now available in an AZBlogX posting “X-rated embroidery”.
The Google Doodle for today, viewable here, with this screenshot of the endpoint of an animation in which a gay flag is assembled from strips of material:
(#1)
Today’s Zippy pits Griffy against a familiar figure in the strip, a Muffler Man roadside fiberglass figure — in this case a lumberjack figure, selling tires rather than mufflers, but still part of an automotive theme:
Not just selling tires, but presenting himself as hypermasculinely disdainful of analytic academics.
Today’s Dilbert:
Your people are distressed about the cell-like connotations of cubicle? Easy solution: change the term, to something that sounds more substantial. Yes, they’ll still be working in cell-like spaces, but they might feel better about it. Apparently, the magic of euphemistic, elevating jargon can sometimes work even if the audience knows that it’s jargonistic invention.
Now that we’re into Pride Month, I’m overwhelmed with offers of relevant postings. I’ll start with some plants with flowers in the gay colors pink and purple, mostly purple today (with lavender for another day), including the wild pansy, aka Johnny-jump-up and tickle-my-fancy.
My morning name on Sunday was Zamboanga, which I immediately recognized as a placename, for a city on the island of Mindanao, the southernmost large island of the Philippines. And I immediately understand why it was in my memory: it’s from a song in the music book I had in the 3rd or 4th grade (I’m not sure which — look, this is all from almost 70 years ago), a compilation of folk songs for children. Which included a song about Zamboanga.
The original of the song was in Spanish — “No Te Vayas de Zamboanga” — or possibly in the Mindanao creole called Chavacano or Chabacano, but we sang it in English, probably in the widespread mistranslation “Do Not Go to (Far) Zamboanga”. (A more accurate translation is “Do Not Go from Zamboanga” or “Do Not Leave Zamboanga” — Zamboanga being both a place of great physical beauty and the home of the singer’s beloved.)
The mystery in all this is why this particular childhood memory surfaced on Sunday morning.