The Gay Blade

I gather I'm in a minority, but I really like man-buns. I've heard so many friends put them down. Suffering from GOMS (Grumpy Old Man Syndrome) I think. I always think criticising the hair of a younger generation is a dangerous sign that the speaker is getting conformist, slipping into the same sort of middle-aged attitudes we hated as kids and about to launch into "Back in MY day we never ..." sort of platitudes. I regret that I have never had long hair. When it was in in the 60s and 70s I was too young, and Kings Prep had a strict "no hair touching the collar" rule. Kings College was a little more relaxed, and longer hair had become normal by then. But by the time I left school and could make my own decisions punk was in and my hair was short, and dyed in as many colours as I could find. My hairdresser once stole a lime green from a colleague for me. My older brothers, especially the oldest two, really went for long hair in a big way. I remembe...

I just found out that it was Tom of Finland's birthday yesterday - he was born on May 8th, 1920. He wasn't the first 20th Century artist to idealise and eroticise the male body, and others were playing with the same sort of images of hyper-masculine men, but he really made it work in a way that paved the way for so many others. Maybe he was just the right guy at the right time. It's pretty hard to find any of his work that still doesn't resonate with how at least some gay men like to perceive themselves, with how some gay men like to be. Think of all the hours spent in gyms, those tuna and brown rice diets, all that work to get the six-pack and the big biceps, that "perfect" body, so often the one that Tom was drawing. Tight jeans, leather jackets, the massive cock and perfect bubble-butt. Of course, no matter how hard you work it you can't do much about increasing your cock size. But there has always been this  gay tradition of eroticising the...