Send in the Clones
Don’t ask me why it started, but by the beginning of the 80’s ‘the clone’ was beginning to become a universal phenomenon (and I don’t mean Dolly the sheep!).
Some commentators suggest the first clones appeared in San Francisco’s Castro Street; others that they came from New York’s ‘Village’. Either way, by the 80’s the look had been adopted by gay men around the world.
The most obvious elements were the (obligatory) moustache and ‘the uniform’. Depending on where you lived, the latter would be based on a Lacoste sports shirt, chinos and ‘loafers’ (USA) or checked shirt, jeans and trainers (UK). These minor national differences notwithstanding, the overall look was an overt and unambiguous statement – not just about dress sense but also masculinity and sexuality.
The Clone Ranger. Extract from gay club advert.
This was an extremely significant act for that time – not least because gay men were, on the whole, still largely closetted. Yet, in spite of this, here were large groups of gay men choosing an image – and a highly sexualised one at that – for themselves. Prior to this, the only ‘sexualised’ images of gay men were as predators – of ‘defenceless’ straight men and, of course, children since we were all paedophiles. And, needless to say, they weren’t images of our choosing.
Within the UK this was also another indication of the Americanisation of gay men or, perhaps more accurately, the gay identity. In a sense, it was almost inevitable, given the sustained hostility to all things gay in the UK (e.g. Mary Whitehouse’s attacks on Gay News, the raiding of Gay’s the Word and other bookshops). The USA was the principal source of many gay resources – from porn to political material. (I shall cover this in more detail in a later blog.)
Get a room! Gay hotel ad.
It could be argued that it was the clones who started to put the sex into homosexual: there are certainly some commentators who believe that they paved the way for other groups such as leather men and bears. Certainly, the collective visibility of so many self-defined gay clones can only have helped put us on the map as a population that was much larger – and a lot less apologetic – than many people had imagined.
Of course, there were always some queens who took it all a bit too seriously. Thankfully, there were others who managed to combine the playful and political elements of the clone. No one in the UK did this more successfully than the artist David Shenton, through his character ‘Stanley’, who appeared regularly in Gay News and then Capital Gay.
Stanley (second from right) pops into his local gay bar. Taken from 'Stanley and the Mask of Mystery' by David Shenton. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist. World copyright © David Shenton
I’m not sure if the clone has totally disappeared from the gay scene or simply merged into one of the other diverse ‘identities’ our community now has. But it would be a shame if we were to forget what was our first, ‘home-grown’ positive gay stereotype.
Some gorgeous clones in 1980s Melbourne. A difficult time but one of the happier memories for me was seeing so many beautiful boys.
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The clone is an interesting paradox. On one hand, it’s an homage to working class, straight masculinity — originating, almost indisputably, in gay porn. On the other, it’s a look that once standardized and stylized is unambiguously gay.
I found the same paradox in the clones themselves. You’re right, there is an implicit militancy in a gay look. But in my experience, clones in the 80s, at least in London when I was there, tended to be less militant politically than the army of British gay men taking their fashion cues from James Dean and Morrisey and becoming a kind of clone in their own right.
I could be over-generalizing since I’m just going on my own vast experience as a bar hound and slut, but I felt the 80s clones — as opposed to their 70s counterparts — tended toward a reductive view of gayness that lent itself more readily to commodification and the cheesy gay nationalism that came with it.
Here in the States you see vestiges of The Clone, mostly in the remaining leather bars. Otherwise, there is little in the way of a commonplace gay look. Having pretty much won the culture war, and situated in an increasingly atomized society, younger gay men here seem far less tribal than their forefathers as well as less intent on proving they’re men.