King Kong Barbies!

BETWEEN the great sexual divide of the straight man’s world sprawling with Dockers and Dickies and the gay man’s universe teeming with photogenic misses is a line that binds the disparity together. Best seen under rose-tinted Ray Ban aviators, one thread stitches these parallel worlds in harking harmony—fashion.

Amidst a bevy of she-men who garbs fab with RuPaul accoutrements on high level aura mode (Shante! Shante!), there is an emerging parliament of gay men that shuns ruffles and chiffons, abhors vertigo heels and head-splitting slits, defies high-nose threaded brows and simply veers away from thick foundation makeup worn like second (and third and fourth) skin.

Enter the King Kong Barbie.
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Whisked at front row of the recent Philippine Fashion Week, I was amazed to see how my sistahs dress up the oxymoron—y’know, uber macho and virile fashion hanging on both the decidedly effem and the buffed gurls. Some were fashion victors, while others were victims wearing their flaccid virility on their sleeves.

At the bench, mascula-dolls, buff girls, and dandy dudettes wore their cockiness and pseudo-macho flamboyance. They looked so fashion-literate (I’m sure they all know how to spell f-u-c-h-s-i-a). They pose as if their faces can only be touched by the holy trinity—Shu Uemura, Shiseido and, eeek!, San San, and their farts can only be sweet and innocent like baby’s breath. Leather bands on limp wrists, tattered jeans on bubble buns (worn oh-so-low strung some cracks went on a peep show and wrinkled lotsa noses in collective “Ew!”), and baby tee’s two-sizes smaller seemed to be the order of the day.

On the other side of the kleiglights, the runway has morphed into a testosterone hardcourt with male models volleying for what is brawny and bright.

With observant gazes adoring good ol’ fashion’s virility and kissing washboard bods of sex-packed six pack-abs and tattooed dreams, today’s gay men-gone-bad mod is a welcome mix of two disparate cultures of the straight and the flamboyant that create an unprecedented third—the King Kong Barbie.

He is the New Now Thing.

Welcome his harking entrance, add his name to the list…and then you know it’s okay if you feel like blushing when that mist of baby’s breath come wafting through the air.*