I see lots of gay men who seem to be suffering from an extended adolescence. Dressing like 17 year olds into their old age, they’re really immature and act like sorority girls. Does anyone else notice it?

by Anonymous

reply 30

May 21, 2023 3:24 PM

Only when I look in the mirror.

by Anonymous

reply 1

May 20, 2023 12:20 AM

The whole urban gay culture, as most things today, is superficial and intensely youth-based, so it makes sense that they dress younger and want to look youthful in order to fit in. Also, I think a lot of gay men who were marginalized/bulled in HS and were jealous/lustful of the popular jocks live their lives trying to be them. It's a weird type of Stockholm syndrome.

by Anonymous

reply 2

May 20, 2023 12:24 AM

I receive many comments on looking like a modern day Fonz.

by Anonymous

reply 3

May 20, 2023 12:27 AM

A few months ago a friend and I were out having lunch and there were two gay men at the table next to us that looked like they had bought their outfits straight off the A&F store mannequins. They looked late 40s/early 50s and were talking about how excited they were for “spring break.” So bizarre.

by Anonymous

reply 7

May 20, 2023 12:52 AM

In the 1990s, there was a trendy backpack phase. Every gay man in Chelsea was walking up 8th Avenue with a small, designer backpack strapped to his back. I always thought it made them look like gay Cub Scouts.

by Anonymous

reply 9

May 20, 2023 12:59 AM

There’s an arrested development there with some of the booms, X and millennials.

by Anonymous

reply 10

May 20, 2023 1:09 AM

[quote] Dressing like 17 year olds into their old age, they’re really immature and act like sorority girls.

Straight women excel at this.

by Anonymous

reply 12

May 20, 2023 8:04 AM

"Peter Pan syndrome" in relation to gay men always seemed slightly derogatory and like sour grapes, especially when coming from straight people. 'Like, look at that grown man! No wife, no kids, what a Peter Pan!'

by Anonymous

reply 13

May 20, 2023 8:19 AM

Why do you care? Good for youthful people who DONT care what uptight, starchy people think

by Anonymous

reply 14

May 20, 2023 11:00 AM

I'm with R14. Some of us are doing the best we can. Undoing all the crap you've been put through as a kid isn't as easy as it sounds and sometimes takes a lifetime.

The best you can also includes not being so fucking judgmental, OP.

by Anonymous

reply 15

May 20, 2023 11:05 AM

I also think the AIDS epidemic did away with the gay male Peter Pan mindset.

by Anonymous

reply 16

May 20, 2023 1:40 PM

Oh, like it's only gay men? How about all the straight men who spend all their spare time playing games, and whose wives call them the "3rd or 4th child"? Or all the straight women who spend 50 years trying to look 20?

Seriously, in today's world, everyone is prone to Peter Panning... except some lesbians.

by Anonymous

reply 18

May 20, 2023 4:04 PM

You know I am starting to look at things and realizing that either I've seen this before or I saw it coming. Gays have been saying this since the dawn of time about each other, and our world is so meta now that this passes as somehow a fresh observation. We are talking about an affliction that is fostered by a constant drive of narcissistic consumption and freedom for typical nuclear family bullshit - it's a feature, not a bug i'm 57, and a robust example of what I call my own flailure to entirely grow up is that in the last 5 years there has been a MASSIVE amount of guys in my peer group dying (overdoses, which are usually unintentional suicide, cancer and intentional suicide. Narcissism and party drugs eat away at you, and eventually you either age out or die. Those seem to be the only options

Here"s a ponder - what if AIDS hadn't erased all of those guys it did? Would the mortality. numbers of guys in their 40s & 50s look considerably different than ours do today?

by Anonymous

reply 20

May 20, 2023 4:45 PM

R20, would you care to type that out again, this time in English?

There may be an interesting point or two in the incoherence, but nobody can tell.

by Anonymous

reply 21

May 20, 2023 5:07 PM

I am not 67 being told by people that I look 29, in fact I am not 67. But I do get told, "I thought you were (5-10 years younger)" and I believe it up to about the 5-6 year discount. I have always thought it was not having children, and the frumpening that comes with parenthood as they & their needs assert dibs on your time & energy. The only thing that makes a gay man look older than dirt is either trying to wear what college kids wear OR sticking with a look well past its fresh-until date (looking dead at cargo shorts & AF t-shirts . . . they are not timeless). Also, using the slanguage of 20-somethings who are not the modern equivalent of you when you were 20-something (surfers and skaters but you weren't athletic, lyrical phrases from genres you were never into) . . . I have a 41 year old friend who tries to do TikTok dances & posts that shit and, well, "being a Christian woman, I can't say it."

by Anonymous

reply 22

May 20, 2023 5:10 PM

When I was 17, OP, I wore jeans and t-shirts/sweatshirt. Many decades later I'm wearing jeans and t-shirts/sweatshirts. BFD and get off my lawn.

by Anonymous

reply 23

May 20, 2023 5:11 PM

i don't see it as the gay thing, the cult of eternal adolescence is a nationwide problem. one of the many factors in the mass american psychosis

by Anonymous

reply 24

May 20, 2023 5:12 PM

Maybe not a gay thing, exclusively, today - it did kind of used to just be a gay thing put a pin in that I'll come back to that. Narcissistic consumption as a lifestyle driver - that's the through line.

by Anonymous

reply 25

May 20, 2023 5:15 PM

Huh. I thought the gays were more about a Tinkerbell syndrome.

by Anonymous

reply 27

May 20, 2023 5:23 PM

For the benefit of R21, and others who found my R20 post either incomplete or illogical.

Narcissistic consumption is a feature not a bug of the out gay lifestyle. We then packaged and sold it to the general population, and slowly over time we have built this society of self-absorbed and in need of constant affirming gratifying validation. Now what?

And

Had AIDS not wiped out those who it did, what would the demographics look like for gay males in their 40s and 50s in say 1993. I think it would be disturbingly close.to ours.

by Anonymous

reply 28

May 20, 2023 5:35 PM

"They looked late 40s/early 50s and were talking about how excited they were for “spring break.” So bizarre."

Spring break = Lotsa college-age dick.

I'd get excited, too.

by Anonymous

reply 30

May 21, 2023 3:24 PM