That's So Gay... I Love It!

On a warm July day this summer, walking through Berlin, I couldn’t help but sense a new and particular energy swarming the air around me. ‘Guess’ by Charli XCX, featuring Billie Eilish, pumped through my headphones: Eilish, newly out of the closet, cheekily singing of the black underwear she had bought for a female lover in Tokyo. I examined the people around me on that street in Kreuzberg: there was no longer an obsession with all-black or tacky branded clothing, but rather most outfits were colourful, somewhat camp or butch. All around, faces and bodies were spangled with piercings. Men shared secret, trusting glances and women squeezed hands en route to work. Something about this whole scene… was a little gay.

To me, this year has symbolised the beginning of a sexual revolution I’ve seen coming for a while. Deviating from the hetero norm is suddenly extremely cool, and I’m glad for it. Gone are the days of tentative or probing ask.fm questions, asking if you’re gay, bi, or something in between. While it was fashionable to have a girl crush for a period of time aged fourteen, this was, at least in my experience, shortly thereafter, a source of aversion. As a teenager, I desperately repressed this part of myself, the feelings not going away, but certainly not allowed to flourish. 

Oh, to be that age in 2024. At the club, Chappell Roan and Troye Sivan dominate the dancefloor. Sivan’s cutout trousers that reveal his boxers in which he performs, generate admiration, not disgust. Let’s not forget the sheer hypocrisy of some of gay pop’s most ardent followers. These twenty-somethings also jumped on the homophobia train as teenagers, when that was the trend. The girls who picked on me at school on the basis of my burgeoning orientation now take great pride in their ‘progressive’ Spotify Wrapped tastes. Having said that, I can hardly imagine how different it must feel nowadays to be fourteen, a little confused by your own desires, but seeing clear, extremely popular gay figures wherever you look. 

If, dear reader, you’re intrigued by what my own orientation may be, you’ll be disappointed. I don’t have a clue; it changes by the day. But luckily for me, as a twenty-year-old in the 2020s, this is not only a non-issue, but incredibly fashionable. People don’t criticise my indecision; instead, they celebrate my confusion as elusive and open. If I tell a man I’ve been with women, this is more often than not a source of intrigue, but not in a pervy or disapproving sense. It’s just taken as an interesting quirk of my dating life, and we move on.

In their first years of university, many of my friends experimented, leading to an epiphany or just a novel anecdote, a blip in an otherwise straight timeline. Friends who discovered that it didn’t do anything for them mourn that they themselves cannot be with someone of the same-sex, imagining it to be much more communicative and intimate than a heterosexual partnership. This is, of course, a massive generalisation, every relationship having its own issues regardless of its gender makeup, but it certainly beats homophobia. My only gripe — please stop asking me “who’s the man in the relationship?”

In this revolution, mini skirts are replaced with the cool grunge of jorts, perhaps with a chain swinging from a belt loop. Lesbian hiking gear is now ubiquitous in the form of Patagonia fleeces and Birkenstocks. Sick of clingy skinny jeans, everybody goes crazy for baggy cargos. In fact, gay style, for better or worse, has been so widely adopted by the masses that it can no longer act as a signifier of mutual sexual persuasion. It’s difficult to say if it should be gate-kept, but at least it’s clear that people aren’t ashamed to be mistaken as gay anymore.

For perhaps the first time, straight men are the ones ‘left behind’. But in most cases, ask any of these men if they’ve ever felt a gay thought sneak into their head, and they’re not overly ashamed to admit it. Previously conditioned to be outwardly and inwardly hypermasculine, these men are now encouraged by popular culture to explore a diversity of dress, attitude, and interests, which I believe only broadens the idea of masculinity.

Instead of speculating, in 2024, you shouldn’t assume someone is anything at all. I assume that in future, everyone will be initially assumed bisexual. Before you argue that this is an idealistic fantasy, I don’t believe everyone is or has to be gay. I just hope that homosexuality stays relevant, that gay relationships are equally treasured by wider society and not seen as a stylish fad for the 2020s. That the world can be a little more like that street in Kreuzberg.

Photo: Wikicommons