“ Is it fear of being unlike the rest of the crowd, an attempt to acculturate into the white American cultural norms or is it fear of being labeled gay? I don’t know. I do know what some extremely ignorant men have written to me about being hetero-phobic because real men don’t dance and because John Wayne never danced (He did and that’s another story).
Would Michael Jackson have been such a sensation if he couldn’t dance?
Kind of an interesting piece that brings up a lot of issues with men and dancing and then doesn’t really delve into any of them. Is true, though—dancing for straight white guys is often anathema, while men of color and gay men have no problem with it, and the celebrities she mentioned from the Golden Age of Hollywood were dancers. Hell, even in the 80s we had Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, making all the girls swoon. What happened? Is it homophobia, racism, both? (My guess, of course, is a complicated combination of both.)
(via champagnecandy) so this is all a really good point, but i cannot let this slide without reminding everyone of that brief shining moment in american history, roughly from like, what, 1998-2001? something like that? where it was actually super cool for straight white dudes to dance.