Naked Condo: “the string-back bikini exposure in a beach context, which is what, a slightly sensual yet permitted display for women, but would be considered a bit déclassé/gay in a man. Male summer and bathing attire is supposed to be shorts which (perhaps to demonstrate non-gayness?) seem to get longer each year, to the point where they are getting into capri territory.”
To answer his parenthetical question, Kevin Esser has argued that baggy pants represent male sexual represiveness in fashion. Baggy clothing, Esser wrote, were a response by straight men who felt the need to identify themselves as distinct from gay men or straight women. Not only that, but both groups—and especially the latter—have effectively a permanent monopoly over tight and revealing clothing, where straight men can no longer go "back" to wearing tight or revealing clothing, because while straight men do not want to be identified as gay or as female, but gay men and female not only don't mind being identified as much (again, the latter group more than the former), they can, if they wanted to, move between the tight and loose clothing. Because what do they have to fear? They're already gay men or already women.
