Magic Mike

Men flirted and showed off their muscles through tight-fitting tank tops. Women with no shoes gyrated next to men with no shirts. A D.J. played deep beats. Shachar Keizman, 24, climbed atop an armrest and peeled off his shirt to reveal a chiseled torso. People screamed and stuck dollar bills in his shorts.
Then the lights went down, and Channing Tatum got naked.
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, a cineplex in Manhattan, had become a makeshift gay bar. It was Friday night, and four theaters were showing “Magic Mike,” the Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s new movie about a troupe of male strippers. The pouty-lipped Mr. Tatum, who has been open about his past as a stripper, plays the title character.
“It’s a fun night out with a bunch of gay friends to go see a movie about hot boys,” said Aaron Rhyne, 32, a theatrical projection designer who saw the film with about 10 friends. “We’ve been throwing the trailer around, laughing about it.”
Mr. Rhyne wasn’t alone in organizing a group. While the scene at Chelsea Cinemas may have been more raucous than most, interviews around the country indicated that gay men have been flocking to “Magic Mike” in numbers not seen since the release of “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005. But unlike that film, about two cowboys in love, there’s nothing explicitly gay about “Magic Mike.” Unless you count muscled men thrusting their pelvises without pants. That was enough for Bill Venne and his friends.
“Let’s be honest: it’s men taking their clothes off,” said Mr. Venne, 49, who lives in Minneapolis and saw “Magic Mike” on Sunday with 16 gay men and one straight woman. “It’s the kind of thing you want to see, but not by yourself. A middle-aged gay guy in the audience might as well be wearing a trench coat.”
Released by Warner Brothers at a cost of $7 million, “Magic Mike” finished second at the box office over the weekend, taking in about $39.2 million, a stronger-than-expected showing. (“Ted,” Seth MacFarlane’s film about a crass teddy bear who comes to life, was in first place, with an estimated $54.1 million.) The reviews for “Magic Mike” were mostly positive. Manohla Dargis, writing in The New York Times, called it a “funny, enjoyable romp about male strippers and the American dream.”
The movie has been on the gay radar since the production was announced this year. Mr. Tatum, one of its producers, appeared on the cover of the gay magazine Out, and the trailer has been posted on gay blogs. The film was also promoted at gay pride events across the country last month, like the West Hollywood, Calif., parade that featured a “Magic Mike” float. At the Chelsea Clearview over the weekend, where a stripper-theme photo exhibition was on display, giveaways included “Magic Mike” clothing, posters and dog tags.
Sue Kroll, president for worldwide marketing for Warner Brothers Pictures, said the studio coordinated a “well-concentrated and tailored” campaign intended to capture gay moviegoers’ attention. The demographic wasn’t part of the studio’s initial marketing push, but that quickly changed, Ms. Kroll said, once it became clear there was interest among gay men.
“Every single one of my gay friends was talking about how they couldn’t wait to see it and how gorgeous Matt Bomer is,” she said, referring to the gay actor who plays a stripper in the film. “It wasn’t like we sat down and said, ‘This was the target.’ But we handled it a bit more specifically and overtly for this movie.”
Warner Brothers hired the Karpel Group, a New York entertainment marketing agency, to generate buzz online and at gay bars and clubs. “Hot guys are a big part of the appeal of the movie,” said Craig Karpel, the company’s owner. “It’s something that captures gay men’s attention and imaginations.”
The film’s trailers were an essential piece of the campaign. Dennis Ayers, the editor of AfterElton.com, a pop-culture Web site owned by the gay cable channel Logo, said users of the site hated the first trailer because “it was marketed as a romantic comedy” that focused on Mr. Tatum’s relationship with the female lead, played by Cody Horn.
“It underplayed the reason why gay men would be interested in the film: the male stripper,” he said. “But their marketing changed, and they played up the male form part of it.” That included a red-band trailer, reserved for mature audiences, that showed Mr. Tatum’s posterior.
“I think there’s a change in how straight men are willing to be physically objectified and want that kind of admiration,” Mr. Ayers said. “They are happy to have gay men find them attractive.”
Ms. Kroll said Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Tatum were “100 percent supportive” of the movie’s outreach to gay filmgoers. “A lot of actors who are at this point in their career might hesitate to make this movie,” Ms. Kroll said. “They don’t want to mess with the broad appeal they have. But Channing’s taking off his clothes, talking about his past and supporting the movie. He’s confident in who he is.”
As much as the movie winks at a gay audience, it was still mostly women who went to see “Magic Mike” over the weekend. According to the database BoxOfficeMojo.com 73 percent of the audience for “Magic Mike” was female. And around 60 percent of women who saw the film went with more than two other people, according to a spokeswoman for Warner Brothers.
Roger Gore, 42, said the gay quotient was low when he and five friends saw the movie in Nashville. “The women were hooting and hollering in the theater,” said Mr. Gore, an-owner of Arrow, a male strip club in Nashville that closed in 2010. “We were a little more subdued.”
Donnajean Ward took a group of straight women and gay men to see the film in Washington.
“It was sexy and fun,” Ms. Ward, 49, said. “But I don’t think anybody walked out of it hot and bothered.”
One of the few straight couples in the audience in Chelsea on Friday was Abraham Fellner and his wife, Diane. She ran an exotic lingerie boutique in Manhattan called the Secret Self that closed four years ago.
“We used to sell things for strippers,” said Ms. Fellner, 78. “I want to see how it’s evolved.”
Mr. Fellner, 87, said he knew the film “was something about male strippers or what have you.” But he also heard it was about “a critique of capitalism.” He added: “That caught me more. I’m interested in ladies, not men.”
from The New York Times
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Frank Ocean

Both Anderson Cooper and Frank Ocean made revelations about their sexuality this week, but Ocean’s could end up being the more significant announcement.
Ocean – the rising R&B singer behind the single “Novacane” and the self-released album “nostalgia, ULTRA,” which critics heralded as among the best of 2011 – announced on his Tumblr page Wednesday that his first love was a man. He also tweeted a link to the post.
Earlier this week, CNN’s Cooper acknowledged that he was gay. But the admission from the 24-year-old Ocean – who is part of the hip-hop collective Odd Future and was prominently featured on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch the Throne” album – is noteworthy because he inhabits the world of rap, where anti-gay sentiments have long been part of the regular vocabulary. Gay epithets are often used in lyrics – one of Lil Wayne’s catch phrases is “no homo.”
“I think it’s definitely important and it really signifies that there is a changing of the face of hip-hop,” said Chuck Creekmur, founder of the leading website allhiphop.com. He called Ocean’s announcement “a sign of the times,” noting Cooper’s announcement and President Barack Obama’s recent support of gay marriage.
Ocean wrote: “4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide.”
Ocean concludes the post: “I don’t have any secrets I need to keep anymore. … I feel like a free man. If I listen closely. I can hear the sky falling too.”
While Creekmur stressed that Ocean’s announcement did not hold the same weight as if a rapper had come out, he said it was significant that the hip-hop community’s initial reaction was positive.
“I don’t believe that Frank Ocean revealing his gay experience at the age of 19 will cause a bunch of rappers to come out of the closet. I don’t think that we’re there yet. I do think that we’ll see a lot of support for him. … I think that it’s a process,” he said. “Just a few years ago, if this had happened, it could have marked the end of his career. This could mark the beginning of his career.”
Creekmur also noted that Odd Future is known for being progressive, despite the fact that its leader – Tyler, The Creator – has been fiercely criticized for his use of anti-gay lyrics in songs. GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, criticized Tyler last year and called him “irresponsible.”
Tyler expressed support for his friend on Twitter, in typical crude fashion, saying that it was a difficult to acknowledge and that he was proud of him.
Ocean has a new album, “Channel Orange,” coming out July 17. Creekmur said it was hard to determine what impact the announcement would have on its sales.
“I think to it could work to his benefit. I think he’ll definitely get more sort of praise and acclaim, and it will probably help his sales,” he said. “But I think a lot of men will have difficulty singing his songs knowing they may have been penned to another man.”
Ocean said he had intended his post to be part of his album credits, but because there have been recent rumors about his sexuality, he decided to post it on his Tumblr page.
“My hope is that the babies born these days will inherit less of the shit than we did,” he wrote.
from The Associated Press

Paul Buranosky & James Lazar

James Lazar is married to a man. He won’t buy anniversary cards that picture a man and a woman. He didn’t want his Facebook page to show those symbols, either.
“I don’t like being forced into typical gender roles — because we aren’t,” he said by phone. “I think it’s offensive.”
The 38-year-old Chicago man wouldn’t have considered changing his Facebook status to “married” until recently — not because he wants privacy, but because Facebook hadn’t created icons for same-sex couples. His marriage would have tagged with a cake-topper-looking picture of a male-and-female couple, and there was no way to change it.
But on Saturday or Sunday — Facebook won’t say specifically when — the 900-million-person social network updated its marriage icons to include one for men who marry men and women who marry women. The changes took place automatically for many people. Lazar updated his status because of the news.
“I honestly didn’t realize it was going to show up in my feed,” he said with a laugh. “I have 80,000 people ‘liking’ it and congratulating me and I’m like, ‘Well, it was seven years ago!’ ”
Facebook’s icon shift may seem like a relatively minor update, but for some members of the LGBT community it’s a sign that the social network — and other tech products that, increasingly, serve as some sort of stand-in for real-world identity — are becoming more inclusive of LGBT people.
“People can say ‘Who cares, that’s just an icon,’ but we definitely don’t see it as that because of the scale of this platform and because of its role in our culture today,” said Allison Palmer, a spokeswoman for GLAAD, a group that advocates for fair inclusion of LGBT people in the media. She added: “There’s more marriage equality on Facebook than there is generally in the United States. In most states your marriage can be recognized by Facebook but not your state.”
This is just Facebook’s latest step in reaching out to the gay community. The social network in 2011 added “in a domestic partnership” and “in a civil union” to its list of relationship statuses, which long has included everything from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated.” This summer it painted a courtyard at its California headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag, in support of gay-pride month. The company likes to brag that the courtyard, which displays the word “HACK,” is visible from space.
And the trend, of course, isn’t limited to Facebook. Apple recently updated its mobile operating system, iOS, to include text-message “emojis” of same-sex couples. Google employees march in gay pride parades, and the company controversially added a rainbow feature to its search engine last summer in support of the gay and lesbian communities.
MySpace (remember that?) added “Gay” as a relationship status in 2003 and the dating site eHarmony added same-sex icons on a spinoff site in 2009 following a lawsuit. Check out a timeline of same-sex icons in tech history on BuzzFeed.
Facebook, however, has become a specific target for LGBT activist groups in part because the network does so much these days to shape a person’s digital identity. The social network has formed a taskforce in collaboration with LGBT groups to address issues sensitive to them.
That doesn’t mean there’s always been a warm reception for these changes.
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes published an update to his page over the weekend indicating that he had married his boyfriend Sean Eldridge. The item got media attention because of the recently released same-sex icons, and Hughes’ history with Facebook. More than 2,700 people “liked” the update, but one person commented that the marriage was “NOT normal!!!!!!” Another used a derogatory term for gay people.
Last year, in a highly publicized case, Facebook deleted a photo of two men kissing, which was seen as violating its terms of use. Facebook apologized and the take-down was chalked up to Facebook’s arduous process for vetting content that is flagged as inappropriate.
Additionally, some LGBT advocates have called for Facebook to include gender options that go beyond “male” and “female” — such as “third gender” or “other” — for people who have another gender identity. Facebook has said such users can opt out of selecting a gender on the site, according to news reports.
And there has been debate about the role Facebook plays in outing people as gay or straight. In his 2010 profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the difficult choice he faced about Facebook and sexuality.
“Users are asked to check a box to indicate whether they’re interested in men or in women. I told Zuckerberg that it took me a few hours to decide which box to check. If I said on Facebook that I’m a man interested in men, all my Facebook friends, including relatives, co-workers, sources — some of whom might not approve of homosexuality — would see it.” He added: “Facebook had asked me to publish a personal detail that I was not ready to share.”
LGBT Facebook users can opt to have their relationship status seen by only a certain category of Facebook friends, although users need to know how to navigate those setttings in order to hide the information from some groups of people. That may seem like no big deal, but consider that in 29 states, a person legally can be fired for being gay, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
For Lazar, the man in Chicago, and his husband, Paul Buranosky, the same-sex icons provided a new way to show that they’re proud of their relationship. Lazar compared it to flying a rainbow, gay-pride flag in front of their home in a mostly-straight neighborhood.
Buranosky, however, had changed his status to “married” before the same-sex icons were released. He said he wanted to recognize his wedding on the digital network in whatever way was available at the time — even if his timeline had a picture of man and woman next to the item about his 2005 wedding.
When the new icon was released, he said, “I was deeply excited.”
“The little things like that are really important as a gay man,” he said. “When you’re’ taking about marriage, it’s all about the vernacular and the context of where things are. It makes a distinction. I think having those icons that are two men is really important.”
from CNN

Megan Rapinoe

Less than a month away from the London Games, U.S. women’s soccer standout Megan Rapinoe says publicly for the first time that she is gay.
The timing is important, because Rapinoe, who turns 27 on Thursday, wants her story to empower others in the LGBT community.
While she’s long been openly gay to her family and teammates, Rapinoe addressed her sexuality definitively in an interview with Out Magazine:
“For the record: I am gay,” she said.
She explained her reasons for coming out in a Monday evening phone interview with USA TODAY Sports.
“To be honest I’ve been thinking about it for a while, trying to find a time that works, now leading up to the Olympics, people want to get personal stories,” she says. “Our team in general is in a position where people look up to us and kids look up to us. I embrace that and I think I have a huge LGBT following. I think it’s pretty cool, the opportunity that I have, especially in sports. There’s really not that many out athletes. It’s important to be out and to live my life that way.”
“It’s about standing up and being counted and saying you’re proud of who you are.”
The reception so far?
“It’s been good,” she says. “It’s all been extremely positive, which makes me really happy.”
Rapinoe is dating an Australian soccer player and brought her home to visit family in Northern California last Winter. Rapinoe says she knew she was gay by her first year of college and says coming out to her family was followed by an adjustment period.
“I just kind of sat them down and told them,” she says. “My mom, whether it’s right or wrong, she had dreams for me to have a certain life. It takes time to get used to that. But they’ve been really supportive and they love me for exactly who I am.”
She says the atmosphere for out athletes on women’s teams is far different than on men’s teams. She thinks it’s okay for her teammates to date, if all involved are mature enough.
“I think it’s different for everybody. You never want to create any kind of drama,” she says. “Sometimes when you date people you end up breaking up and if teammates are mature enough to deal with that, then it’s okay. I never want to bring any undue drama to the team.”
Rapinoe laments the difficulty for closeted male athletes. She believes the first active players to come out in a high-profile men’s team sport will usher change.
“The climate is much different for men,” she says. “That stigma is only going to be broken when people come out and see that there is a positive response. That doesn’t mean there will be no negative response, but if people can have the courage to be one of the first, which is very hard, those barriers can be broken down very quickly.”
from USA Today
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