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| Cornelius Robinson (left) and Antoine Edwards say that gay teenagers model clothing that sets them apart from their straight peers. (Photo by Adam Cuthbert) |
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HOME > ENTERTAINMENT > FEATURE
By: KATHERINE VOLIN COMMENTS
 
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mean you can have a label on me and put me in a box.’”
The current approach to sexual orientation that Savin-Williams has noticed is one of greater fluidity and fewer labels than in the past.
“It feels more integrated, their sexuality. It doesn’t feel the defining part,” Savin-Williams says. “The possibility now is that kids are integrating their sexuality as one part of their personal identity and it’s not overwhelming their identity.”
Savin Williams says he wonders if the view of sexual orientation as more of a spectrum might be a permanent generational perspective.
“I just think we ought to take those sentiments seriously and not dismiss them as part of the adolescent,” he says.
AMANDA BERNAL, 19, who identifies as queer, says that she sees the divide between gay and straight fashion diminishing.
“Before the ’70s, at least in lesbian culture, there was a distinction between butches and femmes and you were one or the other and there were certain rules you played by for each,” Bernal says. “So if you had short hair and were more masculine and a female you were automatically identified as a butch lesbian. But I feel today, while there certainly still are stereotypes and people who feed into them, you can have short hair and be athletic and be a straight girl and no one really cares.”
Among men, Bernal says, the role of sexual orientation in fashion is also becoming more flexible.
“In the age of the metrosexual … it’s popular to look, dress, groom like a gay man,” she says. “So there’s less of a distinction between gay and straight, which I think translates into more freedoms fashion-wise because we don’t feel like we have to identify through clothes.”
Bernal adds, however, that she does see gay fashion as more androgynous than straight fashion.
So even though gay youth may not feel as though they have to dress a certain way, sometimes they choose to simply announce themselves to the world as different.
“I think any population that doesn’t feel accepted or visually represented … uses fashion to express themselves … to say, ‘I’m here, I know that you see me,’” SMYAL’s Price says. “This is just one expression to say, ‘I’m confident and trying to find my way through this mess that’s going on’ that a lot of them may not understand.”
A lot of the students that come to SMYAL are from areas of Washington, D.C., where it is difficult to be openly gay, Price says.
“They know people can tell that they’re gay,” Price says. &ld
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