This post was submitted by Topher Burns

Watching History Channel’s Swamp People is really strange.  The subjects of the show are speaking English but almost always need subtitles in order to be understood.  They’re conducting brutal wholesale slaughter of alligators but somehow you root for them anyway.  But the biggest “huh?” moment for me is the major re-adjustment the show is doing to my gaydar.

These swamp fellows are so incredibly straight that every instinct I have says “these dudes are totally gay.”  They’ve got military crew cuts or floppy mop-tops, they boldly wear things like two layered muscle-tees and a pair of overalls, and they sport facial hair that hasn’t been stylish since the early 70’s.  They’re muscley and tanned.  They’re everything my brain has been conditioned to flag as signs that this guy might buy me a drink.

The gay movement has been co-opting hyper-hetero style for a long time (hello, Village People!), but watching Swamp People drove home to me how far the lines had blurred.  What distinguishes Bruce and Mike in the show’s opening credits from the avant-garde Brooklyn bears who go antiquing at open-air markets in Park Slope?

As I think more on this weird phenomenon, though, the happier it makes me.  I like it that even bayou gator hunters can be described as having “gay” style.  Perhaps it’s the years of borrowing inspiration from uber-straight attire that have done it, but however it came about now a gay guy can look like just about anything.  Which has sort of been the whole point this entire time, right?

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