Tag: Harry Styles

Affairs of the Heart

Wednesday morning and the dark is pushing up against my windows again this morning. This weekend is when the time changes, isn’t it, or is it next? No, it’s this one, and that extra hour of sleep is going to fuck with me for awhile, I know. That’s just kind of how things work, isn’t it? I get used to doing something one way and it takes me forever to adjust to that change, so I figure I’ll get used to the time change sometime around the time it changes again. Yay for being old and cranky and crotchety! Heavy heaving sigh. But part of the fun stuff about getting older is becoming more set in your ways, I suppose.

Ever so much fun.

It is funny how things change, isn’t it? The other day I went on Twitter to just waste some time (really, that’s all it is, no matter how much you enjoy interacting with your friends, it’s still a time-wasting hellscape for the most part) and saw that young Kit Conner, who plays Nick on Heartstopper, has come back onto social media–from taking a break–to tweet the following:  Back for a minute,I’m bi. congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.

This was followed up with a wave of support and outrage–as it should have been–because what was happening was this young man, who’d previously said in interviews that he was comfortable with his sexuality and fine with it, but preferred not to talk about, was accused of queerbaiting because a picture of him holding hands with someone of the opposite sex had made the rounds. I am not entirely sure what this means, to be honest; but from what I gather it’s a celebrity who “teases” that they may be queer but never comes out and says so in order to gain fans? Other examples given on Twitter were Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. I know there’s a thing about queer roles being played by non-queer actors, and queer actors not getting opportunities because straight actors are getting those roles (and being praised and getting award recognition for their “bravery”–although no one is ever considered brave for playing a serial killer or a mass murderer or a Nazi). But the thing is we don’t know how everyone identifies–that’s just the truth–and is it really any of our business? I have long deplored the culture where fans are hungry and desperate (thirsty, is the term now, I believe) to know everything about their favorite celebrities, but I don’t really care who Taylor Swift is sleeping with, or which Kardashian is now involved with what professional athlete/actor/model. I get curiosity–and of course we queers have been guilty of speculating about the sexual preferences of celebrities, primarily out of a hunger for visibility.. But we older queers need to remember that the world has changed–partly because of all the work we did being visible and so forth–and while speculating isn’t particularly harmful, this whole queerbaiting thing just strikes me as particularly nasty–especially when it’s applied to a person. A person can’t queerbait–unless they are actually pretending to be queer, for whatever reason, for financial or career gain, when they actually are not–queerbait is a term used primarily for movies and television shows that promise queer content to get us to buy tickets or tune in to watch, but don’t deliver. Like oh look there’s a queer character in Star Wars at last! Only to have it be a same-sex kiss between two characters that aren’t even in the main cast, flashed on screen for maybe two seconds. Disney is notorious for doing this. So, going after an eighteen-year-old for queerbaiting is absurd on its face, and the entire point of the show Heartstopper was, in fact, that it’s okay to be confused and not understand everything immediately, but to figure it out for yourself in your own time.

Queerbaiting also consists of pretending to be queer to give your writing about queer people a false authenticity, but that’s a subject for another time. I think it’s great we have reached a place in our culture and society that more and more celebrities are feeling comfortable enough to come out publicly, but we really need to stop speculating about people’s private lives and give them the room to figure it out for themselves. Some may never be comfortable coming out publicly, and that’s okay too. In the early days of the queer equality movement, we urged everyone to come out–power and safety in numbers, and the more visibility we had the more people would stop seeing us a “threat” of some sort. But times change, and they have. And while I certainly hope that everyone has the courage and the ability to eventually live their authentic lives they want they want to, I also understand that some may never do so. It’s a process, and it’s different for everyone.

And shouldn’t everyone be free to come out on their own timeline of comfort?

I had insomnia again last night. I was exhausted after I wrote my chapter last night–I was exhausted when I got home from work. honestly–and eventually went to bed early, around nine. Scooter woke me by caterwauling for no apparent reason right around eleven thirty–woke me from a deep sleep, I might add–and I was never able to fall back asleep. I did get my chapter written, despite being so tired, and after I did that I collapsed into my easy chair for a while. I tried to read to no avail, tried to find something, anything, to watch, and finally as I was dozing off in the chair decided it wouldn’t hurt to go to bed early. The chapter isn’t very good, either–none of this draft is good, to be honest–and last night the stress and anxiety about everything I have to do finally built to a point where it peaked, I had a bit of a meltdown, and I snapped back into normalcy, which I hope will last through the day. It has been building for quite some time now–I found myself getting angry really quickly yesterday and over nothing, really, and that’s a sign–but unfortunately there’s no way around it other than letting it build till it boils over and I get the pressure release and I am fine again. I think last night writing the chapter and knowing it was terrible and knowing I am behind and I have so much left to do and then it’s going to take such a massive overhaul to rework it all into something decent that I just started freaking about everything I have to get done and so I had my little meltdown and hopefully, that pressure won’t start building again for a while at any rate.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Dress

And it’s Thanksgiving, and a holiday! Huzzah for holidays! Thanksgiving isn’t really one of my favorites (other than the obligatory four day weekend that results; I wonder who had the brilliant idea to have the holiday fall on a Thursday instead of Friday in the first place? Give that person a Nobel Prize, please, even if it’s posthumous), but I’m really not much of a holiday person now, nor have I ever really been.

For me, it was always about time off–from school, from work, from responsibility–and now as an adult? I just appreciate paid time off from work, which is always welcomed.

I actually slept late this morning, too–almost all the way to nine thirty, without waking up once and looking at the clock and thinking oh go back to sleep for a bit. This is, obviously, unusual; I must have needed the rest, frankly, so I am not going to question it at all. I am taking the day off from everything guilt-free–it’s a goddamned holiday, so my guilt can just fuck right off–and in a moment, once this is finished, I am going to take my cappuccino into the living room and embrace The Hot Rock and some short stories.

I am making a turkey breast roast (that sounds just wrong) in the slow cooker today in a nod to the holiday–it’s a very simple recipe and then when it’s done I shred the meat with a fork, so it’s really pulled turkey–and yes, I make boxed stuffing because a) it’s perfectly edible and fine and b) if you use chicken broth instead of water, it’s even better. Plus, it’s easy. And the older I get, the more I embrace easy. (I still, however, will make a cheesecake from scratch because it’s so much better.)

I try not to engage much on Twitter–tempting as it may be, the amount of trolls there is truly amazing, and I certainly don’t have the time to bother with keyboard warrior trash– but at the same time, Twitter can be highly entertaining. (My standard rule of thumb for engagement is this: if I start writing an angry and/or snarky response to something someone has tweeted, I either report the original or block the person. It’s enormously cathartic.) I remember being riveted last Christmas, for example, by the massive meltdown of RWA (hard to believe we haven’t reached the one year anniversary of that, isn’t it?).

One of the most enjoyable things I’ve watched/read/scrolled through was the conservative reaction, led by Grifter Supreme Candace Owens, to Harry Styles appearing on the cover of Vogue in a dress. Harry, obviously, doesn’t have a fuck to give about pearl-clutching trash like Owens and her audience; it’s actually lovely to see such a handsome young man with a big career secure enough in his own masculinity to don a dress on a major fashion magazine cover–and it’s also historic, as he is the first male to ever grace a Vogue cover (something Owens herself will never do, but the thirst for it is fucking real). As RuPaul has famously said, “we’re all born naked and everything else is drag.” Fashion and styles change all the time–and it really wasn’t all that long ago that men wore make-up, wigs, heels, and tights. So, apparently, Owens doesn’t believe the Founding Fathers were masculine enough for her?

Anyway, it was thoroughly enjoyable watching her get dragged for the filth she is on Twitter. Like so many on the right (and let’s be honest–there are some on the left as well) she’s in it for the grift; being the go-to female black voice for the right is apparently lucrative enough for her–married to a white male whose own “masculinity”, as defined by the right, is questionable–to continue being a sideshow barker trying to stay relevant and keep the cash coming in.

And speaking of grifts, Ann Coulter certainly has become irrelevant, hasn’t she? (I am NOT complaining. Back in the day, I used to read her books–I used to read a lot of right wing polemics passing as non-fiction political tomes because I thought it was important to not only see what they were actually selling and saying, but to try to understand their position. All it did was convince me that they were sideshow hucksters hawking snake oil and grievance, so I abandoned that around 2003. And trust me, if you’ve read one Ann Coulter pack of lies from cover to cover, you don’t need to read any others.)

There’s only so much toxicity one brain can handle, frankly.

We started watching an Australian series on Acorn last night, Mystery Road, which stars Judy Davis and a lot of indigenous Australians (which is awesome); it’s interesting and entertaining, and I would imagine is going to have a lot to say about Australian racism and how the indigenous there are treated. Judy Davis is always marvelous in everything (I can never watch the Renee Zellweger Judy Garland film because I’ve already seen a definitive Judy Garland, and that was Judy Davis’), and the rest of the cast are quite good as well. The premise is very simply that two young man vanish in the middle of a wasteland–taken from their vehicle, with the doors left open and the motor running–and it also is taking a look at the community itself; I suspect the show is a slow burn. They also bring in police detective from elsewhere who is indigenous himself (played by Aaron Pederson). The two boys who disappear are a white backpacker and a local indigenous soccer hero; it’ll be interesting to see where the show goes. (I had to look up the actor, and apparently the second season is set elsewhere, with Pederson working with a new local cop in a different location)

I’m not sure how we’ll spend today, but whatever we do, it will be relaxing and chill.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!