Who doesn't know Tim Gunn is gay? Maybe not readers of "USA Weekend"

Who doesn’t love Tim Gunn? I certainly do. But truth be told, I really don’t know that much about the man, other than the fact that he’s been co-hosting Project Runway for the past six seasons, alongside former supermodel, Heidi Klum.

Thankfully, this past Sunday’s USA Weekend Magazine offered up a profile of the fashion maven entitled “How Project Runway’s Tim Gunn Became America’s Fashion Guide.”

How nice, I thought, it was to see a gay man profiled in this very "middle of the road" publication that goes out to 49 million readers in 600 Sunday newspapers. Surely, the article would clue me in on everything relevant about Mr. Gunn!

And I did learn much in said article, including that Tim is 56-years-old. He’s the former chair of fashion design at Parsons The New School for Design and current chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne. He recently became a first-time homeowner. He is a fifth-generation Washingtonian, grew up a less than athletic nerd, and suffered from a debilitating stutter, facts that had an impact on his relationship with his father who Tim describes as a “big, jock-y FBI agent” who passed away 15 years ago.

Pretty informative, eh?

But what I did not learn in the aforementioned article is that Tim Gunn is gay.

Of course, being gay myself, I just assumed this fact. “It takes one to know one,” gaydar, and all that.

But what about straight people not equipped with gaydar? How would they know Tim is gay since USA Weekend either didn’t seem to know it or care to discuss it? Surely, it's been well-documented many other places, right? After all, Project Runway is one of the most successful reality shows of the past five years.

A quick Google of “Tim Gunn gay” led me to a September 2007 article from Washington DC’s GLBT news magazine MetroWeekly entitled “Naked Gunn: Bravo's style maven and gay icon, Tim Gunn, opens up about his past challenges and present success.” Next on the list is an AfterElton.com interview from August 2007 in which Mr. Gunn talks openly about being … gay. This is followed by a 2006 mention on sogay.tribe.net of an interview Tim gave to Out in which he mentions “this guy who I loved more than myself.”

What do these profiles and interviews have in common? They are all found in “gay” media.

USA Weekend is most definitely not a gay publication. Neither is The New York Times who profiled Tim in April 2007, stating, “He had been an unhappy child, introverted, a stutterer, spending sunny days in his room reading books, practicing the piano… He was the last one chosen during mandatory team sports — a disappointment to his tight-lipped father, George William Gunn…” The Times even went so far as to quote Tim saying, “I was the one they called the horrible slurs that ended up being prophetic… Little did I know.”

Talk about easy lines to read between: “I was gay then and I am now!”

But why should I even have to read between the lines?

Maybe USA Weekend and The New York Times both failed to mention this fact because it’s not a big deal. The point of each article isn’t about Mr. Gunn being a gay designer, so why bring it up?

Because such personal information is almost never the "point" of these profiles, yet when written about straight people, such information is almost always included.