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If I’m honest, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about A-Rod’s gay picture since I saw it last evening. Does that make me a shallow fag? Maybe I’ve just been so focused this week on heavy-duty topics and now at the end of the week, I need a diversion.

I had seen some mention of it earlier this week, but whatever it was it wasn’t enough to drag me in to check it out. But is was Fallon’s parody photo that got me to the real thing. By the way, I think Fallon’s spoof is funny as hell.

While the focus of the pic is the self kiss, what gets me is his arm. I’m a chest and arms guy. I’d type a smile emticon here, but I have pledged never to use emoticons in my blog.
But the kiss is the big deal and what I want to write about, and actually fits with all the heavier-duty stuff I’ve been writing about.

Before I dig in, let me say for the record, that I don’t think there is really anything gay about the picture, except it is a guy kising a guy type pic. And possibly it is the quitessential gay fantasy of hot identical twins…. I said, I needed a diversion, right?

What I see in the picture however, is this notion of hyper-masculinity, as if the steriod use is justified and both accepted and worshiped. Everything I have been writing about in terms of marriage equality or equal rights- the underlying issue is what it means to be a man or a woman. Heterosexuality loves its idea of what that means, and it is pretty selp-obsessed with maintaining it that way. So when others see the pic and dismiss it as narcissistic- well of course it is. Heterosexuality is totally obsessed with itself! It is one reason why straight culture (or part of it) works so hard to squash queerness, because it suggests there are others way of being male- other norms. By dismissing the photo it diverts the attention away- we never stop to question how heterosexuality perpetuates stereotypes of maleness. His team mates claim they will give him a hard time, but in reality, they will be glad he did it. For his actions help substantiate their own maleness.

Fallon, on the other hand, really got criticized, for he isn’t the overly macho testosterone driven beast of a man. For him to look so self-obsessed seems foolish, seems wrong- seems really gay. But in reality, it is the finer question- the more accurate review of what is maleness.