Looking Gay!

By Zia Ravenscroft (he/they/it)

One of the most common concerns I hear from young queer people is that they don’t look “gay enough.” Being visibly queer makes it easier to make other queer friends, and signals to the cishets that you are not one of them. However, some of us have never had the option of looking less gay - I’ve been obviously gay to anyone looking at me since before I came out, which is about my faggy mannerisms and voice more than my fashion sense. Queerness is an act and something you do, as bestie Judith Butler tells us. Doing more gay things and just being gayer will make you feel a lot more comfortable in your identity without getting hung up on whether other gays can recognise you as one of their own. If you do want to try and look a little less like your entire wardrobe comes from Glassons or Hallensteins, here are some ideas on how to flag from queer history. 

One of the oldest queer signifiers is the colour purple, which goes all the way back to Ancient Greece. Sappho of Lesbos (no prizes for guessing what words we get from her) wrote poetry about her female lovers wreathed in violets. Since then, violets have been a symbol of lesbian love. Lavender is also a significant colour. Over five thousand LGBTQ+ federal government employees were fired on the basis of their sexuality  in America in the 1950’s, in what was called ‘The Lavender Scare.’ In the 1970’s, anti-lesbian feminist Betty Friedan called lesbians ‘the lavender menace’ which was adopted as a great slogan for t-shirts. 

You’ve probably seen someone on campus with their keys on a carabiner clipped to a belt loop. The carabiner is another queer signifier, stemming from working-class lesbian butch-femme communities after World War Two. As well as a practical tool, the side you hang your carabiner on also indicates your sexual preference. Wear it on the left if you top, and on the right if you bottom. Hang it on a hip loop if you’re versatile!

I have eight total piercings, including four in my ears. While piercings, tattoos, and body modification have a shared queer history, there is one specific ‘gay ear.’ You might have heard the saying about male ear piercings, ‘left is right and right is wrong,’ where the ‘wrongness’ refers to gayness. Having one piercing on the right ear is an indicator of homosexuality, which goes back to the 1980’s. Similar to the lesbian carabiner, it was a small and subtle way to flag. I dressed up as Earring Magic Ken, an infamous Barbie Doll for Halloween a couple of years ago. He has a lavender leather vest,  an earring (unfortunately, not on the gay ear) and a necklace that resembles the 1990’s gay trend of wearing a cock ring on a necklace. Quite possibly one of the gayest outfits ever. 

I’ve saved my personal favourite for last. The handkerchief code, where the term ‘flagging’ comes from in the first place, is a system used by queer men in the 1970’s and 80’s to non-verbally communicate sexual interests and fetishes. Like with carabiners, wearing a bandana on the left side of your body means taking the active role, and the right side means taking the passive one. Different colours mean different things. For example, red is fisting, black is sadomasochism, and gold is a threesome. Queer magazines published updated lists of the different colours and patterns and what they meant each year. Lesbians also had use for the hanky code, with updated lists to include things like menstruation and breast fondling. The handkerchief code is immortalised in a scene in 1980 film Cruising, where Al Pacino has it explained to him by a shopkeeper.

Last year, my theatre class adapted The Rover by Aphra Behn to set it in a 1970’s disco club. My character was rewritten to make him explicitly gay. I made sure to wear a dark blue handkerchief in the back pocket of my flared pants - on the right side.