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Encounters with the Tripods: Heterosexism on 1960s Children's TV
It's hard to remember my first encounter with the Tripods, the army of adults, parents, teachers, neighbors, babysitters, coaches, youth ministers, and complete strangers who kept insisting that...
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Ryan Pinkston: Punked No Longer
No relation to Rob Pinkston of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Ryan Pinkston got his start in martial arts: he received his black belt in Wushu Kung Fu at age nine and has won championships...
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Christopher Jones: Wild in the Streets
Wild in the Streets (1968), like many 1960s movies and tv shows, including That Cold Day in the Park(1969) and even The Bugaloos(1970-71), draws on establishment fear of the youth counterculture....
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Don's Party: Mostly Heterosexual Boys in the Band
Don's Party (1976), based on the long-running play by David Williamson, is set on the night of the 1969 Federal Election in Australia, where the conservative, establishment Labor Party is expected to...
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David and Ricky Nelson: the Men on the Flying Trapeze
Sons of bandleader Ozzie Nelson and his wife Harriet, David Nelson (born 1936) and his kid brother Ricky Nelson (born 1940) began their careers playing "themselves" on The Adventures of Ozzie and...
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Edson Stroll: Bodybuilding Opera Buff
I met Ed Stroll when I was working for Muscle and Fitnessin Los Angeles: dashing, energetic, and still extremely buffed in his 50s. He was working in real estate, but he spent most of his time at the...
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Dingdong and Arthur: Gay-Positive Filipino Buddies
Dingdong Dantes got his start as a member of the boy dance troupe Abztract Dancers, and hit teen idol stardom in 1995, at age 17, in the Philippine teen drama TGIS (Thank God It's Sabado). Many teen...
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My Babysitter's a Vampire
When you're a gay kid, the adults want desperately to believe that you don't exist, and they'll try their hardest to make you believe it, too. So the tv programs, movies, books, comics, and toys that...
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Pele: Futbol and Homophobia Come to America
When I was a kid in the 1960s, only three sports existed: baseball, basketball, and football. I hated them. Boring, tedious, pointless attempts to gain control of a silly little ball. To this day...
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Belgium: Skinny-Dipping Farmboys and a Gay Santa Claus
We moved to Rock Island, Illinois in 1968, the summer after second grade. The people who owned the house before us left a box of books in the attic -- but to my surprise I couldn't read some of them,...
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Doug McClure: From Physique Pictorial to The Simpsons
One of the supporting characters in the "my secret" teencom Out of This World(1987-91), about a teenage alien, was Kyle X. Applegate (Doug McClure): a bumbling, dimwitted has-been tv star. In 1991, a...
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Christopher Masterson in the Middle
From 2000 to 2006, Christopher Masterson played eldest brother Francis on the dysfunctional family sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. While Justin Berfield's Reese got most of the gay references and...
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Elijah Wood: Fear of the Buddy-Bond
Unlike his Lord of the Rings costar Sean Astin, Elijah Wood never got much play as a teen hunk, and he didn't do a lot of buddy-bonding roles; the only one that springs to mind is Radio Flier (1992)...
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) contains a rather blatant gay subtext that is not present in the original novel by Jeff Kinney.Seventh grader Greg Heffley (12-year old Zachary Gordon) often manipulates...
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Lalola: What Transgender Characters Always Get Wrong
The Argentine romantic comedy series Lalola (2007-2008), about a man who becomes a woman, is an international success, airing all over the world, with local remakes in Belgium, Indonesia, Greece, the...
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Bobby Sherman Gets With Wes Stern
In the spring of 1971, Bobby Sherman was probably the #1 teen idol in the country,or maybe #2 to David Cassidy of The Partridge Family. He had a dozen hit singles, including "Easy Come Easy Go" and...
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Austin Mahone Says He's Not Gay
I count such teen performers as Uriah Sheldon and Jimmy Bennett as gay-positive even they haven't made any public statements in support of LGBT persons, because their songs are decidedly not...
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Circus World: Beefcake and Bonding on the Flying Trapeze
My grandmother took me to a circus once. Creepy clowns, leering acrobats, a lady in a stripper costume riding an elephant. Bleachers full of scared little kids and bored older kids whose grandparents...
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Dave Draper Doesn't Get the Girl
Dave Draper, "The Blond Bomber," was the go-to guy for movie bodybuilders during the 1960s, when most of the bulkers had moved to Italy to do sword-and-sandal flicks. He never appeared in the gay-vague...
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Daniel Boone: a Big Man
Daniel Boone was a man --He was a big man!Sounds good so far. When I was seven or eight years old, I was all for watching tv shows about a man, especially a big man. Especially a big man who was a...
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