Stuff Gay People Like: Miniature things

Gay people are both trendsetters and trendy. We love what’s in demand, and anything else we love will soon be demanded.

Examples: social networking, dance remixes and oral sex. Most people are pretty grateful to gays for popularizing those things, but leading pop culture is not always a blessing; there is a lot of stuff in mainstream culture gay people could be blamed for. Like deep V-neck tee shirts. Next could be nipple piercings or the thorough decoupling of the terms “jock” and “athletic” from sports.

Trends that are good for gay people can also be abused when they become mainstream. In past decades gay people began understanding themselves as being in a long, ambitious battle against oppression. So upper-middle-class suburbanites – though they already had more rights than they knew what to do with – decided they also should get one of those, and formed the Tea Party (gay people also like tea).

Finally, gay people are commonly connected with gentrification – the process of embracing diversity by living on a street named for the minority group being kicked off of it. In the mid twentieth century, young gay people, who were poor, began moving in droves to urban neighborhoods colored by government neglect and police brutality. Most people considered those neighborhoods shitty for those reasons, but investors spotted a great deal and envisioned making gayborhoods shitty for a different reason, as unaffordable and generic.

Maybe it was just a coincidence – or indeed gay magic – but real estate prices skyrocketed during the push, which turned barbershops into yoga studios, carnicerias into boutiques, historic buildings into parking garages and early gay bars into French restaurants.

That’s the biggest problem with being trendy. If everyone likes what you like, there soon won’t be enough to go around. You must either force someone out (minorities) or make everything smaller. It’s especially true for living spaces, and gay men, who must now live in minuscule apartments, have to adapt everything they have to follow suit.

So gay people are experts in miniaturization. Tiny microwaves, tiny toasters, tiny drink shakers and tiny end tables are not only space-saving in tiny apartments, but also easier to haul up and down the stairs when gay people move to a new building every other year.  Gay people also have tiny dogs, since tiny dogs poop less, run around less, and generally don’t stink as much when you’re living in intimate quarters.

There are probably a couple things you can think of that many gay men prefer big. But their interest in miniatures is more obvious when you try to imagine straight guys liking the same things: smoking miniature cigarettes, admiring miniature cupcakes or feeding their guests hors d’oeuvres.

This has made gay people, without particularly trying to be, very environmentally-friendly. If Greenpeace and the Sierra Club want to get every person to consume less and reduce carbon footprints, they should look to gay people for strategies!

Gay men like their clothing small – especially underwear – for different reasons. But their openness to miniature gadgets, miniature containers, and miniature cars is once again, just practical. Try parallel parking a big pickup truck in Brooklyn, even just once, and you’ll never question the appeal of miniature things again.

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