THE SSO A-Z GUIDE TO QUEER SYDNEY

T IS FOR

Tighty-Whities It really has come to the point in our society where the style of men’s underwear has become the subject of investigative journalism in major newspapers, rather than a pithy celebrity question in trashy gay magazines.

If you believe stories in the Herald or The New York Times recently, it seems the traditional Y-front tighty-whitey is about to be superseded as the last-minute Father’s Day gift by colourful prints and genital-emphasising wondercup technology sold over the internet. Perhaps nobody considered the horrifying implications to seeing one’s own father up and out, so to speak.

But for gay men it sounds like the best thing since the tube sock. Yet even a casual scan of the underwear labels peeking out from the top of jeans in clubs on Oxford Street shows the brand loyalty of gay men hasn’t changed much since the days of Marky Mark billboards.

But just as Calvin Klein single-handedly made tighty-whities sexy, the front-page splash of a captured Saddam Hussein in his underpants very nearly killed the love affair with the entire concept. Clearly society is yet to learn the lesson that newspapers and underwear should never mix.

Tomboys Last weekend Europe had a slew of classically beautiful female vocalists to choose from. There was the buxom brunette with the knee-high boots from Bosnia, the blonde stick insect from Portugal and two air stewardesses from the UK. But no, Europe plumped for Marija Serifovic, a short, somewhat stout Serbian woman with chopped short hair, a stern look, chunky black specs and clad in a dinner suit. Ladies and gentleman, the winner of Eurovision 2007 is -¦ a tomboy.

The tomboy, a woman who rejects her own gender stereotypes and goes and embraces a few male ones instead, is an age-old statement. First coined in 1579 it originally referred to a bold or immodest woman. But in these days where gender lines are blurring a tomboy is hard to define.

Many lesbians, for instance, enjoy close cropped hair, an interest in sporting endeavours and are handy with a screwdriver -“ does this make them tomboys? And what of riot grrrls with their aggressively independent subcultures of music and activism? Or the ladettes, who can drink the lads under the table and still shag them? Are they tomboys? I don’t know, but well done to Marija for at least not being a blond girly girl.