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Home » Blogs » brian's blog » AfterElton Briefs: Vanessa Williams lets her gay show, the Pink Flight to Mardi Gras takes off, and more!

AfterElton Briefs: Vanessa Williams lets her gay show, the Pink Flight to Mardi Gras takes off, and more!

by
Brian Juergens


AfterElton Hot 100 vet David Beckham plays peek-a-boo at a Seoul press conference

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual assortment of carefully-selected news items, interested readers can find a refreshing pic of a hot man in underwear after the jump. Yes, we're serious.

  • Why did no one tell me that there was a new episode of Planet Unicorn?! In fine PU form, it's a Christmas episode ... in February. This is your brain on drugs, kids.
  • This fella is liveblogging (kinda) the Pink Flight to Sydney Mardi Gras. The updates stopped when he got on the plane, so either he couldn't get online or he had one too many pink martinis and blacked out in the lavatory.
  • Anderson Cooper covered the murder of gay teen Lawrence King on his show, but unfortunately the CNN podcast elected to cut that segment in favor of a singing kid in underwear.
  • A big happy birthday to Elizabeth Taylor. The legendary actress and tireless AIDS research supporter turns 76 today. 
  • Vanessa Williams was given the HRC Equality Award over the weekend, and gave a lovely acceptance speech. Even better, it was presented to her by Becki Newton (Ugly Betty's wonderfully evil Amanda) and Nessie dropped some great UB references and told some great stories about her own growing up with gay colleagues and friends along the way.

And today's Briefs are brought to you by...

Up-and-coming Hugo Boss model Joe Lazo!

 

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    • Submitted by
    Brian Juergens
    on Wed, 2008-02-27 17:19.
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    Evan's picture

    Break the Cycle

    Submitted by
    Evan (2890 points) (574 posts)
    on Wed, 2008-02-27 18:30.
    Afterelton is becoming more hostile to gay people.  When vistors come to the blog they are hit with a large image of David Beckham.  Did he donate money to a gay charity or raise awareness about anti-gay hate?  No.  He is their because he's good-looking and straight (supposedly).  Then when you click on the article you are hit again with another large picture of a straight male.  This is why I haven't been to the website that much lately.  There are endless websites dedicated to straight people yet on almost every gay website the majority of the pictures are of straight people.  Should gay people embrace straight "supremacy" (like we have for thousands of years) and make everything about straight people?  Gay men and lesbian women (you do it too, I've been to lesbian sites) need to realize what they are doing and ween yourself off the straight supremacist ideology that straight people are better than gay people.  Someone will say that that's not what is meant by these pictures.  It's implicilit.  Almost all the pictures of straight males on gay websites are meant to be worshipped while it's rare for pictures of gay males to be posted with the same intent.
    Average (1 vote):
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    RJ's picture

    Quite the leap in logic...

    Submitted by
    RJ (1294 points) (281 posts)
    on Wed, 2008-02-27 21:24.

    It's quite the leap in logic to link AE showing pictures of attractive heterosexual men to the site becoming "hostile" to gays. And if you truly believe the majority of pictures on AE are of straight people, then you really haven't been paying attention.

    Btw, I don't know about you, but I don't worship pictures of anyone, on AE or elsewhere.

    Of course, one could say that your buff avatar is an example of superficial sexual imagery and embraces the straight stereotype that gay men are obsessed with sex.

    Or maybe, sometimes a picture of a handsome dude is just that - a picture of a handsome dude. No more, no less.

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    Evan's picture

    It's Just Thinking

    Submitted by
    Evan (2890 points) (574 posts)
    on Thu, 2008-02-28 01:47.

    You are looking at this like it's an isolated incident.  It's not. This happens day in and day out on gay sites across the globe.  When you look at all the pictures they are almost always of straight males.  That sends a message to gay men and teens that straight is the best.  I wouldn't mind if there was a picture of a straight male here or there but when every picture is of a straight male it sends the wrong message.  Gay men exist and should be represented.  Period.

    I get really sick whenever I mention this a gay person says that it's ok that straight people's pictures are everywhere endlessly.  So everything has to be straight-dominated?  Gay people can't have spaces where they are free from intimidation?  Gay people can't have a space where there are other people like them that they find attractive?

    RJ, you can't say because one gay man has a picture of a bare-chested muscular man that all gay men are obsessed with sex.  That would be bigoted to conflate the actions of one person onto an entire group.  If you looked at a vast amount of gay men's avatars and found all bare-chested men then you can draw that conclusion.

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    Loving Every Minute's picture

    It's not a picture of an

    Submitted by
    Loving Every Minute (235 points) (48 posts)
    on Thu, 2008-02-28 05:31.

    It's not a picture of an "attractive and straight male", its just a picture of an attractive male. If the site was littered with pictures of straight couples and not gay couples, well that would be weird, but a picture of person on their own generally doesn't demonstrate their sexuality. These icons are not "worshipped" because they are straight or gay, but because they are hot.

    As for it being rare for pictures of gay men being posted with the same intent-- if there is only one person then again I don't think that their sexuality affects how physically attactive the person in the picture is. But I guarantee that plenty of pictures of John Barrowman snogging various men are posted for similar "worshipping" purposes.

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    Fansprez's picture

    You Go Vanessa!

    Submitted by
    Fansprez (135 points) (26 posts)
    on Wed, 2008-02-27 19:59.

    Congrats to Vanessa. I'm not completely sold on the effectiveness and validity of the HRC, but it's nice to see them recognize and honor Ms Williams (who doesn't get enough recognition in my book).

     

    And yeah, totally over the Becks. Not that I was ever under the Becks...but, well, you know.

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    luvluke1's picture

    Now you...

    Submitted by
    luvluke1 (573 points) (107 posts)
    on Wed, 2008-02-27 23:48.

    ...just keep posting pics of great looking guys. As long as they aren't homophobes I don't have a problem with it. I personally am not over Mr. Beckham just yet. As for AE it touches on a lot of subjects some serious and some not so serious there is something for everyone. If you have some thing to say you can always create your own content.

    The model is cute but a little too generic for me. Not that I'm not looking 

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