SQ 4

Deck the Halls
Don we now our gay apparel
Well I don’t think it’s so odd, but many of my gay friends are completely enamored of this line. I suppose the image of getting into all that holiday attire – velveteen pants, wide suspenders with enormous buttons, floppy ties, tailcoats and top hats – can seem intriguingly ridiculous. It certainly does make a man look a dandy. And those women, in their long petticoated dresses, bonnets tied on securely. Now what am I thinking of? It’s those Norman Rockwell-ish illustrations that always accompany this song. So I suppose our gay apparel could be a different conception now. Chaps without jeans, leather military hats, mirror aviator glasses for the men. Heavy flannel shirts, wide belts, ill-fitting jeans and motorcycle boots for the women. But why must it be stereotypically thus? What qualifies as gay apparel? What century’s definition of gay are we applying here? It could be merry apparel, brightly colored apparel, homosexual apparel (but only men, because women long ago claimed a separate label: lesbian. I’ve always thought saying gays and lesbians was like saying people and women…but no one consulted me). And what, exactly, is homosexual apparel, anyway? Any apparel a homosexual is wearing? A specific sort of apparel? Is there a gay uniform? Maybe it’s the “donning” that seems so strange.