Latest news with #OutMagazine
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Very Gay Life of Edmund White
Edmund White might have invented the unapologetic queer on the page. At least he did for me. Nothing coded gay, vaguely tragic; nothing furtive or metaphorical or obscured behind the billowing curtains of literary flounciness. I can still recall the thrill of spotting the cover of his 1983 novel 'A Boy's Own Story' in a rotating rack of paperbacks in a bookstore in my dull, conservative hometown, Marlborough, England. I must have been about 15. It was the mid-1980s, the thick of the AIDS plague, and gay men were being cast as vectors of their own destruction. It was a complicated time to be thinking about coming out. But here was a novel with a boy on the cover who looked close to my age, his thick glossy hair gently ruffled by the wind, his lips plump, his jaw strong. His tank top revealed the slope of his shoulders, the contours of his biceps. I'd never seen a cover or read a book that spoke to me like that. The fact that a gay teenager could exist in fiction blew my mind. The fact that one, like me, could exist in the world did, too. 'A Boy's Own Story' was daring not just because it placed a queer adolescent at its center, but also because it did so with sophistication, introspection and horniness. The narrator — clearly, as with all of his narrators, based on him — is vividly real. Ed White and I were later to become friends, when I had moved to New York and was editing Out magazine. This was not a surprise: Ed, who died on Tuesday at 85, was always very open to meeting young literary men. He was a raconteur and had stories for miles. I lapped them up. We all did. Talking frankly about sex was a hallmark of his writing.(Among his many nonfiction works was 'The Joy of Gay Sex,' a sex manual he co-wrote in 1977.) He always saw himself as a gay writer for gay readers, the distinction he drew between his generation of queer writers and those who came earlier, like Gore Vidal and James Baldwin. They might write gay characters, but they never seemed to be writing for gay readers. Ed was. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Black America Web
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
10 Celebrities Who Can Help You Understand Pansexuality
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin There's a lot we need to work on as a society, but from a general perspective the world has grown in strides when it comes to accepting people for who they are however they decide to identify. Our team always keeps an eye on what's tending, who's being searched and where the conversations are happening throughout the digital world, and pansexuality is surprisingly enough a strong topic of curiosity. Last month we saw rising country sensation Tanner Andell, also well-known as one of Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter collaborators, confirm to Out Magazine that she is pansexual and later appeared on The Zach Sang Show music podcast to indulge further. Take look at a clip below: RELATED: Black Celebrities Who Identify As Bisexual, Pansexual & More 'It's funny when people ask me my sexual orientation, but I feel like you should be able to hear that in my music,' she also told Out Magazine , which is admittedly fair given tracks like her 2023 BUCKLE BUNNY album cut, 'Strawberry Crush.' Lyrics like, 'Strawberry wonder, strawberry lover / Bet she tastes like strawberries under the covers,' make it clear that Tanner is craving some feminine energy. At the same time, the next verse confirms she's got a boyfriend who's over in aisle 10 checking out produce. The fluidity in how she shifts her attraction based on feeling instead of typical gender norms is a perspective we've seen in a handful of celebrities before her. SEE ALSO Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
