Globes set the record straight: Gays get farther with women
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, February 9, 2006
We’ve got one more major red carpet to go this season, and while I do care deeply about the Oscars, I can’t get Isaac Mizrahi’s Golden Globe performance out of my head. For those who’ve been on extended snorkel leave and missed it: The man groped Scarlett Johansson’s breasts (twice!), and asked Eva Longoria about body-hair maintenance.
Yesterday’s release of Vanity Fair’s special Hollywood issue, with designer Tom Ford posing with a naked Keira Knightley and Johansson on the cover, has reignited the question everyone was asking after Isaac went wild: Do you have to be gay to get some? Is gay the new cute puppy?
I called a gay friend (who coincidentally just got a new cute Labrador) and asked his opinion. ‘‘I’ve been accused of trying to use it to get close to beautiful women,” he began. ‘‘In fact, when I came out, there was a running joke that I was just using it as a pickup line (for women).”
‘‘By labeling yourself as not the natural partner of the person you’re with,” he said, ‘‘it creates comfort. Isaac got a lot farther on the carpet than David Spade or Jon Stewart would have.”
So if it’s Isaac’s hand paying a personal visit, let it slide, but if it’s a straight guy, break out the Mace?
‘‘Ask my husband,” one of my friends said. ‘‘He’d say ‘yes.’ In my house at least. He was very, I’d venture to say, jealous, of Isaac that night. I thought for sure the next day he’d buy tickets to ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ ”
I next called a straight hairdresser, Phillipo, of Phillipostyle.com and the Erez Levanon salon on Newbury Street, and asked if he sees a difference between what gay and straight hairdressers can pull off.
Yes. ‘‘They play the gay card,” Phillipo said, which allows them to be muuuuch more blunt with clients. (Ladies, you’ve been warned.)
We were about to get off the phone, when he added this detail: ‘‘I’ve seen women come in with a new butt or chest (achieved through the miracle of cosmetic surgery) that they want to show off to their (gay) hairdressers.”
Meanwhile, a bunch of straight women said they do feel a comfort level with gay men that they don’t always with straight men, because sex is taken out of the equation.
This actually helps to explain homophobia: The straight guys are just jealous.
