Dress For Suck-cess

Wandering through Fagland - particularly in the West where it's a clearly defined zip code, but also on the streets of Asia - it's pretty easy to tell where one is and what one is looking at without having to look at street names or fluttering rainbow flags. The generic fag exudes a dress sense that covers a spectrum:

• "cloney", 
• "screaming fag", 
• "quaintly stylized", 
• "GQ wannabe", 
• "gym rat", 
• "corporate professional with an anal twist", 
• "urban trash"
• "read my labels".

Somewhere in there is a sorry breed of ageing fags - in their 50s and up - who never quite matured intellectually and emotionally. Like guests who overstayed their welcome at a party long since finished, they are the sartorial standard bearers of what was - and what should definitely not be.

Often, they appear like elephants out of a thicket forcing one to duck for cover in order to take it all in. Sometimes they'll be dressed like paunchy twinks, squealing attitude and "Oh My God..!!" and all.

Others will be in cut off shorts and Doc Martens. Those vascular legs are varicose veins from sitting on barstools for hours. Or they could be dressed like slobs. Or they go to the other extreme and dress totally bland as a belated fashion penance for their lifestyle. Or they go super macho with skin tight jeans, a beer belly, flabby arms, triple chins, a tight body shirt and an exaggerated sense of "I could have been a Navy Seal" attitude.

Sometimes it's pathetic, other times it's laughable. For those ageing fags, their world is the ghetto - both the postal code and the state of mind.  They couldn't survive much longer without it.

Ageing is inevitable.  Done holistically, incorporating body type, body changes that come with age, dress sense,  dressing right and differently plus re-invention, it could be liberating.

If the fag has kept his body and his looks, good for him. FuelMix has seen twinks, 30 and 40 somethings gravitate towards some very attractive jock and non-jock 50 somethings and older who displayed impeccable (not necessarily conservative) dress sense, great manners and the charisma that comes only with confident maturity. They had absolutely nothing to prove and they knew it.

For other grey fags for whom time has not been so kind and who are still dressing like they did 30 years ago, a crash course in Image Disaster Management might be in order.

Originally published 31 August 2009
Amended and Republished 19 August 2013 | 24 July 2017