The Top 10 Pop Songs: Beefcake and Gay Icons

Yesterday I discovered that the most popular country-western songs involve rather gym-deficient white guys asking girls for dates, discussing their girlfriends' hotness, or crying in their beer after their girlfriends dump them, with gay people nowhere to be found except in a few homophobic tweets.

But maybe pop music is similar.  I haven't really been paying attention to it for a long time, but back in the day, "girl!  girl! girl!" reigned supreme, and no one ever acknowledged that gay people existed, not even Sir Elton John (I remember when rock was young: men and Suzie had so much fun).  It would only be fair to look up the top 10 pop songs on Billboard's list, andsee if they are just as bad as the country-western crooners.

1. Jonas Brothers, "Sucker":  I'm a sucker for you.  I'll follow you anywhere, even if it gets me in trouble. 

No "girls! girls! girls!"  Gender not specified.

The Jonas Brothers are proud to be gay icons.  In 2013 they appeared on the cover of Out magazine.

See: The Jonas Brothers: I Wanna Be Like You

2. Sam Smith with Normani, "Dancing with a Stranger." A duet, with boy and girl parts.  We broke up, so I'm dancing with a stranger.  Jealous?

Ok, that's rather heterosexist, but Sam Smith is gay, and Normani recorded "Love Lies" with Khalid for the gay teen drama Love, Simon

3. Ava Max, "Sweet but Psycho."  She's crazy, but boy, tell me you don't love it.

The music video stars Prasad Romijn as the pretty boy being poisoned, tied up, and chased with a butcher knife by the psycho girl.

Ava Max is gay-positive.  She tweets: "Thank you for having me at the iconic G-A-Y heaven in London.  I love you!"

4. Post Malone, "Wow."  A rap song.  Most of the lyrics are obscure, but the gist is that he's rich and famous: "I got a hunnid bands ($100) in my pocket, so when I come in the room, people say 'wow.'"  

Gee, I've had a hunnid bands in my pocket lots of times.  Nobody cares.

No romances in the song.

Post Malone is mentioned in online articles about rappers who support LGBT people, so I'm concluding that he's gay-friendly.

5. Ariana Grande, "Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored."  Self-explanatory.

The music video stars Charles Melton (top photo) and Ariel Yasmine as the couple Ariana is trying to break up, and ends with a girl-on-girl kiss, which according to an article in L'Officiel, left many gay fans "confused and disheartened," fetishizing lesbian sexuality without providing a meaningful narrative for the gay experience.

But Billboard has an article on 10 times she was a gay ally.

6. Lil Nas X with Billy Ray Cyrus, "Old Town Road"  This is Lil Nas's first published song, a country-western-rap hybrid, so what is it doing on a pop list?  The lyrics are obscure, but I think it's about how rich and famous he is: he's riding a horse onto old town road because he's tired of his life of "bull riding and boobies."

Lil Nas is rumored to be gay. Wow -- a gay black country-western singer.  How many more barriers are there to break?.

Billy Ray Cyrus is pro-gay.

7. Taylor Swift, "Me."  Boy, there are a lot of girls out there, but I'm the only me.

Taylor Swift is a gay icon.  According to the NewNowNext website, she was expected come out as gay or bi in April 2019, but instead she released "the gayest non-gay music video ever."  She does sing in male drag in pastel colors, and she and pansexual Brendan Urie do find a rainbow-colored skyscraper, but it's still about boy-girl trouble.

8. Ariana Grande, "7 Rings."  A parody of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, but instead of simple pleasures, she likes Breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles/ Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble.

No boys mentioned.  The music video shows her surrounded by girls.

9. Khalid, "Talk":  Let's talk about our relationship.  Gender not specified.  He states that he doesn't use pronouns in his songs because he wants them to take the point of view of the listener.  The music video shows him trying to talk to a girl, but then there's a boy there, then a whole group.

10. Halsey, "Without Me"  We broke up, and now you're regretting it, aren't you?  Gender not specified, but the music video shows her kissing a boy (Will Brandt) a lot.

Halsey is bisexual.

Results:  Wow, talk about diversity!  Male and female, black and white. The themes are similar to country-western: 7 relationship problems, 1 "things I like," and 2 about how rich and famous the singer is.

Heterosexism: Counting only the lyrics, only 5 of the 10 songs specify heterosexual romance.

Beefcake:  3 of the 5 male singers (counting Billy Ray Cyrus) have presentable physiques, but most of the female singers perform with hot guys.

Gay Content:  None in the songs, but 10 of the 11 singers are gay allies!

I don't think we're in Alabama anymore.

See also: The Top 10 Country Songs

You: What's Worse, a Predatory Lesbian or a Hetero Stalker?

I don't usually watch romance movies, and I didn't even know that romance tv shows were a thing, but when you're visiting relatives, you watch what they watch, and what they watched was You.

A tv series with a title that makes internet searches extremely difficult.

It's a bland anxiety-stalker romance with not enough twists to keep your interested past the first episode.  Unless your relatives insist.

Manhattan used-bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley, who I originally confused with comedian/atheism activist Penn Gillette) falls in love at first sight with customer Beck (Elizabeth Lail), a creative writing student. Through a combination of traditional stalking and social media mining, he manages to arrange some meet-cutes and tries to push his way into becoming her boyfriend.

Beck has some problems: she's insecure about her writing, a gold-digger, and a sex addict with a penchant for authority figures.  And that's just obvious: there are dark secrets in her past.  But nobody's perfect.

Of course, there are obstacles on the way to True Love.  Joe kidnaps, and eventually kills, Beck's ex-boyfriend Benji (Lou Taylor Pucci, left), manhandles her harassing academic advisor (Reg Rogers) and the therapist she's having an affair with (John Stamos).

Rich friend Peach (Shay Mitchell), a predatory lesbian with designs on Beck, is the worst threat, suspecting Joe from the beginning.  So Joe kills her, too, both to keep his secret safe and to keep Beck out of her clutches.

Meanwhile he befriends Paco, the kid next door who is living with a druggie mom and her abusive boyfriend (Daniel Cosgrove, left).  See, he's not such a bad guy.  Besides, he has a dark back story of his own.

I expected more plot twists to maintain audience interest.  I expected Beck to turn the tables and be a stalker-murderer of her own, like on the episode of Amazing Stories where a serial killer discovers that his intended victim is another serial killer who's been targeting him!

But nothing that clever.  I only saw 4 episodes before leaving Indianapolis, but back home I watched Episode 8, and it's still still "Oh, gee, that guy's a threat, I think I'll kill him, and then go buddy-bond with Paco."

Gay characters: A predatory lesbian, but otherwise this is a gay-free Manhattan.  I expected more from Greg Berlanti, who is gay in real life.

Beefcake: A lot of chests and butts of the guys Beck screws.  A lot of hunky cops, bookstore patrons, party guests, and bohemians. And don't forget the cheery, lacking-in-dark-secrets Ethan (Zach Cherry).  Frankly, I'd rather date him than any of jerks-with-muscles on the show.

The Haunting of Hill House

In the summer of 1992, the five Crane children, Steven, Nell, Shirley, Luke, and Theo, and their parents, move into the gigantic, long-deserted Hill House to fix it up for resale.

Scary things start to happen.  Luke sees a strange floating figure in a bowler hat.  Nell sees a lady with a crooked neck. There are imaginary friends and dead kittens.  One night they all rush out, except for Mom, or whatever Mom turned into.

They never return.

No one ever returned to the house except for the police.

26 years pass, and the kids grow up.

1.Steven (Michiel Huisman, left) has become a writer, specializing in paranormal nonfiction, although he doesn't actually believe in ghosts -- he thinks the events of that summer were all the power of suggestion, bad dreams, and Mom's insanity. The other children are angry with him for capitalizing on their trauma.

2. Nell has been most affected by the trauma, suffering from sleep disorders and strange visions.  She marries sleep disorder tech Arthur (Jordan Christie, left), but "the house" kills him.  Then she decides to return to the house for the first time in 26 years.

3.  Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, left), Nell's twin brother, is a heroin addict in and out of rehab. He is troubled by visions of the Man in the Bowler Hat.  He has a  friend who is a girl, but no romantic relationships.  As a child he dreamed of a tree house with "no girls allowed" except for Theo.  Maybe he's gay.

4. Theo is a child psychologist with "sensitive" powers. She is a lesbian horndog, going through a series of one-night stands, afraid to open up to a relationship.  She appears in the original novel as well, although as a sad, pathetic "freak of nature."  Here she's out and proud.

5. Shirley is a mortician, along with her husband Kevin (Anthony Ruivivar, left).  She also believes that the events were caused by mental illness and suggestion.

None of them are speaking to their father, Hugh (Timothy Hutton), due to his refusal to tell them what really happened that night.

The Netflix tv series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) is inspired by on the Shirley Jackson novel, but not based on it.  There are a few characters retained, and a few other nods here and there. The entire first paragraph is copied into Michael's book, and Mrs. Dudley, the caretaker, gives her famous speech about being alone "in the night, in the dark." But she follows it with a plea to accept Jesus -- Mrs. Dudley is an evangelical Christian!

The juxtaposition between the 1992 and 2018 is effective, I like the sibling interactions, and there are many scary or disturbing images.

However, I found myself fast-forwarding past many of the "cute kid hugging a teddy bear" and "mom climbing in bed to tell her everything's ok" scenes, especially those that were not related to the primary plot.  For instance, a foster parent brings his little-girl charge in to see Theo because she claims that a monster named  "Mr. Smiley" comes into her room every night.  The answer isn't supernatural.  It's exactly what you're thinking.

There is a surprising amount of beefcake, a lot of men asleep in their underwear when scary things happen.

And Theo the horndog lesbian.

Definitely worth a look.

Whoops:  I just saw the last three episodes.  Family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family family.

And the big reveal is a gigantic letdown:

When Dad is getting them out of the house, he goes to Steven's room and tells him that he'll carry him out, and to keep his eyes clothes.  We've been wondering through 10 episodes about what gruesome sight Steven may have seen. 

Spoiler alert:

Nothing gruesome at all, just a crazy Mom who wants to kill her kids to keep them safe from the world.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale (1997) is difficult to watch now, when there are so many parallels between its near-future dystopia and the real society that the U.S. is becoming.  Our own Orange Fuhrer and his cronies might start ordering the round-up of "gender traitors" at any moment.

The Republic of Gilead, in what used to be the Northeastern United States, is run on strictly Protestant fundamentalist principles.  If the Bible says to stone adulterers to death, that's what we're going to do.  Adulterers, fornicators, sodomites, Catholics, and Jews are all executed, unless they are fertile women who can become handmaidens, given the job of getting pregnant in the place of their owner's wife.

June (Elisabeth Moss) was a book editor before, but women are no longer permitted to have jobs, or even to read -- if they are caught reading, their hand gets chopped off.  Because she was married to a divorced man, she is an adulterer, sentenced to become the handmaiden to Commander Fred Waterhouse and his wife, Serena Joy.  Her name was changed to Offred (Of-Fred) to designate that she was his property.

Serena Joy is not altogether happy with the world she helped to create.  She was once a conservative Christian activist who wrote books and held rallies on why women should stay home, and now she is cut off from all decision making ("we have men working on it").

Male infertility doesn't exist.  If Offred doesn't get pregnant, she will be sent to the Colonies for a quick, painful death handling radioactive waste.

Although these are fundamentalists, they don't follow any of the rules I knew as a Nazarene.  They smoke and drink.  There is no religious music.  There don't seem to be any church services.  One gets the impression that they're Protestant fundamentalists without religion.


There are no gay male characters -- they've all been killed.  There are several lesbian characters, including June's best friend from before, Moira (Samira Wiley), and Emily (Alexis Bleidel), married with a child before, now forced to become a handmaiden, first Ofglen, then Ofwarren. When she is found in a relationship with a Martha (a household servant), the Martha is executed, and she is "fixed" through genital mutilation.

Although there are parallels with today's facist society, there are significant differences.  Racism doesn't exist in Gilead.  There are black and Asian Commanders and wives.  Nor is anyone screaming about illegal aliens.  One assumes that the society is anti-Muslim as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic, but this is never mentioned.  The main injustice is that of women, "restored to their rightful place" in the household, with men in charge.

You don't watch The Handmaid's Tale for beefcake.  It's about women's thoughts, women's lives, women's bodies.  There are very few men around, except for soldiers with guns, and only three men in the main cast:

1. O.T. Fagbenle, who is gay in real life and a star of Looking, as Luke, Ofred's husband, who managed to escape and helps runs a resistance force called Mayday.  He appears mostly in flashbacks.

2. Joseph Fiennes, who played a gay character in Running with Scissors, as the singularly unattractive Fred, who has a fetishistic interest in watching Offred do forbidden things like play Scrabble and read fashion magazines.  He's always fully clothed, even in the scenes where he has to have sex with Offred.

3. Max Minghella, who played a gay character in The Mindy Project, as Nick, the Commander's chauffeur, also an Eye of God (informer) and possibly a member of the resistance.  He begins an illicit romance with Offred.   He's the only one to appear shirtless, and we even get a shot of his butt.

See also: The Handmaid's Tale, Season 2

Nancy: Lesbian Panic in a 1950s Comic Book

The cheesecake comic strip Fritzi Ritz premiered in 1922, with gags involving the aspiring model and her series of boyfriends, notably the nerdish Phil Fumble.  And a lot of sex jokes.

In 1933, Fritzie took in her orphaned niece, Nancy, a mischievous and rather melodramatic child.  Soon Nancy became the star -- the titular character in 1938 -- and acquired a series of friends and antagonists, including poor boy Sluggo.  Fritzie became mostly-absent parental figure.

Nancy has remained in print ever since. In contemporary strips, written by Guy Gilchrist, Fritzie is in her 50s and works as a music reviewer.

Nancy appeared in several issues of Dell Four Color and Dell Giants, and got her own title in 1957 (numbered #146 for some reason).

When John Stanley retired from the Little Lulu comic book,, he went to work on Nancy, writing all of the stories in issues #162  through #173, and then the renamed Nancy and Sluggo through #185 (1961).

Stanley specialized in the terrors and anxieties of childhood, and in Nancy's world  he goes unbrindled. The result is disturbing, sometimes painful to read.

Fritzie is at best neglectful, and sometimes downright abusive.

Nancy is jealous, spiteful, vindictive, petty, and vain.

Sluggo lives alone in an abandoned house and often goes hungry, unless Nancy agrees to feed him.

They are not friends, like Lulu and Tubby; they are dating, adding dark humor to their interactions as Stanley hints about just how physical they have become.

Neither has other friends, just antagonists and enemies who ridicule, criticize, manipulate, and harass them.

Sluggo has an adult nemesis who literally intends to kill him.

And the weird physical manipulations that, in Little Lulu, happened in stories, here happen in real interactions with the yoyos, who will transform you permanently unless you trick them into letting you go.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the yoyos are the adults who fall into their trap, and spend their entire lives transformed, until, in old age, Nancy rescues them.

To top it off, there's Oona Goosepimple, who looks like Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family comics, an orphan (that's three of the regular cast).  She lives in a spooky old house with her usually absent grandmother.  Other relatives usually appear, as threats.

One uncle is a giant, lying asleep in the basement.  If he ever awakens, his movements will bring down the house.  So Grandma keeps him drugged.

Nancy dislikes the "creepy" Oona, and rejects all of her overtures of friendship -- but finds herself drawn unwillingly to the house anyway.

She is invited to a party, but arrives to discover that she is the only guest.

Oona pushes Nancy to eat cookies, play games, and spend the night.

Nancy tries to refuse, but can't help herself.

A weird compulsion to spend the night with a creepy girl, or eat the forbidden fruit.

During the 1950s, gay men and lesbians were portrayed as expert seducers, pulling innocents unwillingly into their "deviance."

Just another of the horrors of Nancy's world.

See also: Little Lulu

Orphan Black: Male Nudity, Gay Characters, and Clones

Orphan Black (2013-) is a Canadian science fiction series about a con artist named Sarah Manning who discovers that she is a clone, created through Project Leda by an evil corporation called the Dyad Institute.  There are clones scattered all over Canada, Britain, and Finland.  Some are self-aware, some are not.  They have monitors to keep them in line.

Along with some of her fellow clones and allies, Sarah founds the Clone Club and tries to discover the sinister reason for her creation, while trying to avoid capture by the evil Neolutionists and assassination by an anti-clone hate group, the Prolethians.

In case that's not enough mythology for you, there are also Castor clones, with suspect motives, secret government installations in Finland, secret alliances, mistaken identities.  Sarah has a daughter, the only known offspring of a clone, drawing the attention of even more nefarious corporations, mad scientists, and clone liberation groups.

Oh, and Sarah has taken the identity of her clone Beth, a police officer, so there are police cases to deal with, plus druggie ex-boyfriends and miscellaneous scalawags.

 Felix (Jordan Gavaris, left), Sarah's foster brother, is a street kid, hustler, wannabe artist, and gay.  He doesn't have a lot of romantic interaction, although he does date the transman clone Tony (Tatiana Manslany).

There is also a lesbian clone, Cosima (also Tatiana Manslany -- these are clones, so one actor plays several characters).  A graduate student at the University of Minnesota, she dates several women through the course of the series.







Or you can just watch for for the beefcake.  Orphan Black pushes up the nudity factor, in male clones, allies, and kid brothers.

1. Ari Millen (top photo) as the evil Prolethian Mark Rollins and several other clones.

2. Jordan Gavaris

3. Dylan Bruce as Paul Dierden.  When Sarah takes on Beth's identity, she has to deal with Paul, Beth's boyfriend and monitor.

4. Kevin Hanchard as Art Bell, Beth's police partner.

5. Michael Mando (left) as Vic, Sarah's drug-dealing ex-boyfriend.

6. Josh Vokey as Cosima's classmate at the University of Minnesota, who eventually joins the Scoobies.

7. Kristian Bruun as Donnie, husband of the clone Allison (Tatiana Manslany).

8. Justin Chatwin as Donnie's drug supplier.

9. Michiel Huisman as Cal, Sarah's ex-boyfriend and the father of her daughter.

10. Daniel Kash as Tomas.  It would take too long to explain.

In the U.S., Orphan Black airs on BBC America.