It was something about the way Nate’s piercing eyes met me from across the store that made me do it—I purchased Out magazine recently for only the second time in my life. But after the first flip-through I was left feeling annoyed that I spent the money. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the magazine; it’s the fact that a part of me feels that, by purchasing Out, I am bankrolling the continued decline of decent queer representation and discourse in mainstream media.
I know the very fact that Out exists represents some of the huge strides made by the gay movement in the last four decades. I understand I should feel grateful that I even have access to a glossy portable presentation of what it means to be gay (to some people), let alone be able to share it and disagree with it. I even recognize that I am lucky enough to be able to purchase it at a convenience store in the middle of the day and then carelessly flip-though it as I share an elevator ride with strangers.
And yet, I can’t bring myself to fully embrace Out. As much as I recognize what is right about the magazine, I feel that, as a queer citizen who cares about my community, there is a need to highlight what is wrong with Out.
As queerness continues to come further and further out of the closet, gay is becoming globalized; homosexuality is becoming homogenized. In the process, the vast breadth of what queer can and could mean is being melted down into a rainbow plastic bracelet worn by chisel-faced same-sex couples frolicking on a beach. Flip through Out and you’ll see for yourself: out of 90 pages, zero contain any representation of the T part of LGBT, and only 14 of them contain images of women (of those, three of them are images of dolls, for some reason). And don’t hold your breath if you want to find representation of a person with a Body Mass Index higher than 24.9—you’ll die of asphyxia, falling face first in to a photo spread of tanned six-packed bodies wrestling in their underwear.
The saturation of shallow, paternalistic, materialistic gay “realities” presented in magazines like Out, along with movies like Another Gay Movie and TV shows like Queer as Folk (don’t even get me started on porn) is leading to what I see as an excluding epidemic among a population where more outreach is needed and diversity cultivated.
The oversimplified and vapid portrayals of homosexuality are not only a disservice to gay people but also give the wrong idea to non-gay people. As I flipped through Out it become clear to me why, as a member of a group that is organizing an upcoming queer arts festival, I have been recently asked rather pointedly, “Why do we need a queer festival?”
For one brief second I could almost see where the person was coming from. From the outside of gayness, it could look like we have it good—in Canada gays can marry, for the most part our rights are protected and the world got to see Ellen walk down the Oscars’ red carpet with Portia di Rossi—right now, Gay looks ooookay.
But from the inside, the kids are not all right—and sometimes the adults are faring even worse. No matter what steps forward we take, queerness is still a minority. We are still “other-”ed, which in our culture means glass ceilings, ignorant asides, lack of mobility and at the very least having to endure ridiculously unfunny jokes like “who’s the man?”
What I found Out to be missing was a diversity of voices in writing and visual representation. For a magazine billing itself as “A gay and lesbian perspective on style, entertainment, fashion, the arts, politics, culture, and the world at large” I found Out to be largely a magazine for upwardly mobile, young, North American gay men. In the issue I read there was no content of substance relating to lesbian issues, to say nothing of the deafening silence on trans and trans related issues.
So was the $7 worth it? Maybe. I got this column out of it and I was reminded that, as much as Marshall McLuhan was correct that the medium is the message, it is just as important to remember that the audience is the filter.
It is not Out’s responsibility—any more that it is Vue’s, really—to be the dynamic voice of reason for the gay community. It is up to readers, viewers and audience members to be alert as they consume, be vocal in their criticism and be proactive in their communication. If I want a decent conversation to happen in my community, then it is up to me to start it
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