Fag UP! America

 

America’s Big Gay Musical

When I saw a very similar shot of these three US Marines, celebrating Osama Bin Laden’s death, in the Sunday Times newspaper, I thought it was a scene from a Gay Musical on (or off) Broadway. But no, it is just another scene in America’s Big Gay Musical of Machismo.

Mark Simpson, who has written astutely on the arch campness of America’s macho culture, including the military,  and relatedly but in a slightly different vein on the homo-erotics of America’s military, said:

‘There’s no doubt that the most profound impact of 9-11 in the US was on American machismo. The Hyperpower humiliated. The ‘Twin Towers’ emasculated. The Pentagon ‘ring’ penetrated.

That’s part of the reason why Bush described the suicide pilots as ‘cowards’. Or in some accounts ‘gay’. Why US servicemen scrawled ‘take this faggots’ on bombs dropped on the Taliban. And why there was an attempt – so obviously bogus – to portray Bin Laden as ‘cowering’ behind his wife’

Fagifesto

http://us.dockers.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=11173216

This is the faggiest thing I have seen in a long while, and believe me I have been looking at some VERY faggy things lately- in particular as part of Mark Simpson’s current ingenius project, ‘Fag Up!’

‘But today, there are questions our genderless society has no answers for’… if only we were living in a genderless society. .

 

Fag Up! Mark Simpson Outs America’s Inner Fag

Our favourite Renaissance Fag has come up with a brand new project: to out America’s inner fag.  Mr Simpson has captured my imagination once more with this delightful idea:

‘Fear of The Fag Within still dominates most American media discourse about masculinity.  It’s what prompted the backlash against metrosexuality in the mid-Noughties, around the time America realised the sexual ambivalence inherent in it – and its queer provenance.  It’s why for the last few years the word ‘man’ and ‘he’ has been strapped on to anything that without them might look a bit… faggy.  Or not phallic enough.  Manbags.  Manscara.  Mandates.  As a way of saying, yes it’s a trend, men’s behaviours are changing and that’s why it’s newsworthy – but don’t worry!  Men are still MEN!  And this isn’t about a niche! It’s about NORMAL GUYS!!’

…

‘So here’s a red-blooded idea.  From now on, whenever you hear ‘man’ or ‘he’ strapped onto the front of something in a desperate attempt to try and butch it up and banish the inner sissy, just replace it with ‘fag’.

Fagbags.  Fagscara.  Fagvans.  Fagliner.  Fagdate.  Fagmance.  Fagfood.  Fagly fag.  Faggans.

You know it makes sense.

It’s a fun game, but you’ll also be doing everyone a huge favour by outing The Fag Within and letting him swish around giddily to his heart’s content.  Getting it over and done with so we can talk about other stuff, instead of fixating over not mentioning this fucking boring pink elephant in the room.

And who knows?  It might even finally make a man out America’.

Mark has promised a ‘fagbag’ of fagly goodies to the winner of this fagtastic game. But early entries are pretty impressive so you will have to come up with something of Action Fag quality if you want a chance of winning.

e.g.

‘I love you fag’

‘Best fag’

‘It’s a fag thing’

‘The fag code’

‘Neanderthal Fag’

‘One small step for fag-but one giant leap for fagkind’

Mark missed this amazing  snickers advert though: ‘Quick! Do something manly!’