In the September issue of Details, magazine editor, Daniel Perez, writes about overhearing a guy buying "skinny jeans" as Perez, too, was doing but asking his buddy, "Dude, do these make me look gay?"
Gay has definitely become more commonplace in our vocabulary. If homosexuality is still deemed a sin by the conservative majority, gayness (especially lesbianism) has become equated with cool. Straight guys have even adopted gay mannerisms and straight male lifestyle has slowly feminized as feminine values have grown in stature in the larger community, especially among the hip young.
Last night I watched John Hamburg's I Love You, Man, a comedic treatment of this change in how we view masculinity. There was Will and Grace in 1998, then Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in 2003, then the Judd Apatow phenomenon starting with The 40 Year Old Virgin in 2005. I love You, Man stars two from Apatow's stable, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel (seen together, too, in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Rudd plays Peter Klaven about whom his new fiancée confides to her three BFFs that she was worried because he had no male best friend. One friend warns her he could become too controlling or too dependent on her if he has no male friend with whom to spend time and energy away from her. Peter shocked consults his younger brother, a gay man, about the fine details of finding a best friend. He was startlingly dismayed at his attempts until Segel, playing Sydney, walks into his open house to sell Lou Ferrigno's Hollywood palace. The two hit it off to the point that Peter's fiancée, Zooey (played by Rashida Jones) becomes jealous. At a Rush concert, the two guys are so caught up in the music and their male bonding that Zooey felt ignored.
The movie is not without a flaw. Some of the acting appears too pat, too (I hate to say it) stereotypical but the behavior of the two new-found friends is not only hilarious but reminiscent of the playfulness that boys have with each other until hormones and sex enter the picture and peer approval controls how they express their affection for their buddies. I think the "new male comedy" invented by Apatow is just right on, including (and maybe, for me, especially) the crude sexuality of the jokes is refreshing. A viewer described the movie as "smarter than most." Comedy often tends to make us like fools again but sometimes under the ribald tomfoolery is a basic and profound wisdom about how societal pendulums swing from side to side, hopefully in time describing a full circle.
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