ABOVE: The Facts of Life guy is 64?!
Everybody knew, but saying it makes a difference. (Image via Simon & Schuster)
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: I must say I never dreamed Barry Diller would come out on the record as gay. As he writes in his new, soul-baring Who Knew memoir, he had gotten to a place where the whispers were roars, and while I find that cowardly, his explanation for how he had decided to live his life — and his heterosexual union with Diane von Fürstenberg — feels like the end of an era, the era being the era of “everyone knows, why bother saying it?”
His personal bill of rights, as he writes in the essay:
I would live with silence, but not with hypocrisy.
I would never pose or pretend.
I wouldn’t do a single thing to make anyone believe I was living a heterosexual life.
I wouldn’t tell, and I wouldn’t allow myself to be asked.
I would live my life within these constraints, and I would never do a single thing to delude anyone.
I would never bring a man as a date to a heterosexual event — not that there were many guys I was serious enough about to bring — but I’d never bring a woman as a “beard,” either.
It wasn’t courage — it was simply the minimum conditions of my conduct, and I recognize it now as the opposite of courage.
Hard to deny the sincerity, artistry and eroticism in these bygone images — you can't fake it, or replicated it today. (Image by Cavalier from the Vince Aletti Collection)
SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW YORKER: Vince Aletti — whose collection of beefcake, not to mention of Vogue magazines and other ephemera, could be its own museum — writes about the history of physique magazines.
Sample:
I remember the first time I saw a physique photograph, and I remember being both excited and upset at the sight of it. I was probably eight or nine, a child of the postwar boom, and on vacation with my family at the Jersey shore. We had stopped at a convenience store on the way home from a day at the beach, and I was pawing through the store’s magazine rack while my mother shopped. I don’t remember picking up the magazine, but it opened to a page which stopped and startled me. Two mostly naked teen-agers were posed for a picture titled “Victor and Vanquished,” one slung over the other’s shoulders—the spoils of a heated but not unfriendly war. Both boys were smiling, exhilarated, but I was fixated on their points of contact, especially where the naked groin of the Vanquished touched the Victor’s bare shoulder. What did that feel like? What could that feel like? Thinking about it made me dizzy and more aroused than I realized. When one of my sisters showed up to say we were leaving, I had to cover the tent in my bathing suit, already deflating from embarrassment.
You can buy Vince's new book, Physique, HERE.
We have been serving looks for decades, darlings. (Image via Mack)
HUFF POST: Belatedly, former VP Mike Pence is scorching Trump over his January 6 pardons.
OUT.COM: Lorde talks gender ID at the Met Gala.
EXTRATV: Many beautiful looks at last night's Met Gala — very, very few stood out to me as off-theme or unflattering or weird (in the bad way). It was a joy to see Madonna on a proper red carpet for arguably the first time since 2018. She has made appearances, but it so careful about controlling photography (as on her socials), and so it was lovely to see her looking fantastic in a very clean, understated tux that. She doesn't need the filters. I hope she and the spectacular-looking Diana Ross met up for a photo.
Others I thought looked incredible: Demi Moore, Zendaya, Janelle Monäe, Colman Domingo, Rihanna, Sydney Sweeney — too many to name, so check HERE.
KENNETH IN THE (212): Tennis totties.
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