Not Your Father’s BMW Advertisers are masters of the double-entendre, but sometimes the sexual meaning is so obvious that it’s hard to figure out what the “clean” interpretation would be. Such was the case for an ad that ran in various American newspapers this winter, a picture of a BMW with the caption “Hard Top. Firm Bottom.” (Do cars have “bottoms”?) This is what made it so odd when a spokesman for the ad agency offered a “Shocked, shocked!” response when asked about the campaign. “You’re the first person to bring it up,” said gsd&m Idea City account director Corey Platt, admitting that Race to the Bottom Award We’re a little late with the winner for 2007, but this year’s award goes to the European Union country whose attitudes about homosexuality have progressed the least since the Middle Ages. And the winner is: Bulgaria. The Slavic countries have been receiving a lot of press lately for their lingering struggles with the whole gay thing, most visibly Russia and Poland, but also Ukraine and even the Czech Republic. But a survey in Bulgaria (reported by 365gay.com) revealed by far the most backward-looking attitudes of any nationality. The fact that eighty percent of the respondents hold a “negative view” of gay people is fairly extreme even by ex-Warsaw Pact standards. But then there was a question on whether the respondent would be able to “carry on a conversation” with someone who was gay, and a scant seventeen percent answered in the affirmative. So this means 83 percent would be unable to talk to a gay person? A new twist emerges, especially if you’re gay in Bulgaria, on what it means to be “Balkanized.” Larry Craig Isn’t Done with Dudes The last time we visited the Idaho senator it was with the belief that he would soon resign from the U.S. Senate (this was last September), seemingly a foregone conclusion that the Senator unexpectedly forewent. And while Sen. Craig had to give up his committee posts—including on a subcommittee of Interior, Environment and Related Agencies—he did manage to attach an earmark to an omnibus spending bill allocating $1.6 million to fund a dude ranch at Idaho’s Gold Creek Ranch. The measure sets aside a 640-acre parcel in northern Idaho for the dudes to congregate as part of the U.S. Forest Service’s Legacy Program. Meanwhile, Craig’s tenure in Washington is winding down after last year’s men’s room incident at the airport, and his thoughts have doubtless turned to his new life back in Idaho… Divine Justice There are those who would say “There is a God!” on learning that Randall Terry—founder of Operation Rescue with a side career of attacking gay rights—has a son who’s gay. It was last May that Jamiel Terry wrote a piece in Out magazine in which he came out to one and all. His father then declared in an op-ed piece, “He is no longer welcome in my home.” A predictable enough reaction; still, in Randall Terry’s world one would think this turn of events would be seen as some kind of sign from God—is there no lesson to be learned? And yet, in a recent interview (at www.belief.net) all the elder Terry could do was gloat about his son’s financial difficulties, which is of course a sign of God’s displeasure, and a grave one. So, no running outside on a stormy night crying “Why me?” for Randall Terry; it’s all about snubbing the sinner. Gaydar Lightning Round A BTW in the last issue ended with the semi-rhetorical question, “Do GLBT people actually look different…?” Studies were noted that point to measurable differences between gay and straight people’s fingerprints, hair “whorl” patterns, and handedness (left or right). But now a new study has been released suggesting that gay men really can be picked out of a crowd based solely on their physical appearance, specifically their mug shot. In the study, which was conducted at Tufts University by psychologist Nalini Ambady, male and female volunteers were shown photographs of gay and straight men for very brief duration, and were able to identify the men’s sexual orientation nearly seventy percent of the time, greatly exceeding the odds of random guessing. What’s more, it took a mere tenth of a second of exposure time for people to make this call. Longer exposure didn’t seem to matter, suggesting that this is a snap judgment that’s made without conscious thought (a phenomenon amply documented in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Blink). Consequently, people are hard-pressed to say just what tipped them off about the men—is it the lips? the eyebrows? the tilt of the head?—which means we’ll just have to wait for the next study to come out. America does want to know.
“I can definitely see how it can be taken that way.” Denying that they had deliberately targeted the gay audience, he then mused that this appeal was an added “bonus” in cities like Miami and L.A., where more gay men are presumably driving BMW’s these days. The clincher seems to be the phrase “It’s so L.A.” (or Miami, etc.; italics mine) that they’re pitching to a very special market. But the question remains: what could the words “hard top, firm bottom” possibly mean to a straight car buyer?
