Hello and thank you for being a DL contributor. We are changing the login scheme for contributors for simpler login and to better support using multiple devices. Please click here to update your account with a username and password.

Hello. Some features on this site require registration. Please click here to register for free.

Hello and thank you for registering. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. If you can't find the email you can resend it here.

Hello. Some features on this site require a subscription. Please click here to get full access and no ads for $1.99 or less per month.

Why do gay men love "The Golden Girls"?

Why do you?

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 20January 18, 2022 3:04 PM

I think it’s only gays of a certain age. Younger gays don’t care except for maybe twinks.

by Anonymousreply 1January 18, 2022 3:36 AM

Because it sounds like dialogue from any circle of gay friends you might have.

by Anonymousreply 2January 18, 2022 4:54 AM

R1 I'm "younger" (early 30s) and I adore the show, as do many friends of mine - gay men and women. I watched it for the first time with my grandma (who lived with us) when I was 10, and it became a ritual for us since a local channel ran it at a certain time each day reliably. And on weekends they'd sometimes have marathon runs of the show on a different syndication/schedule than the usual slot.

by Anonymousreply 3January 18, 2022 5:05 AM

[quote] The Golden Girls: How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals

The Golden Girls television program was never much to look at. A foursome of Florida geriatrics getting agitated about pharmacy bills and shoulder pads– who could ever find such a thing interesting? But somehow these perky and absurd women wormed their ways into America’s homes for an 8-year run in the 1980s. Maybe it was our desire to see our grandmothers having fun that encouraged us to watch. Maybe we wanted to believe old age wasn’t dominated by infections and hip problems, loneliness and crushing depression before death finally stomps us out like the acrid end of a damp cigarette.

The most unexpected segment of this show’s fanbase was America’s young men. In the 80s, these were boys too delicate for sports, too awkward for girls, too “artistic” for labor-intensive work and too flamboyant for peer acceptance in high school. With no real adults in sight, these poor children became obsessed with the poorly conceived characters on this show. Desperate for a firm hand in their lives, they gravitated to the subversive undercurrent of masculinity in these aged matrons.

Many studies have been done on why the gays love The Golden Girls, but science can’t fathom the moral challenges and social upheaval of those historic times. The 1980s was an epoch of President Reagan’s manly wisdom and the terrifying threat of Cold War annihilation. America had sobered up from the flashy lights of 1970s disco. We were skipping all night cocaine and sex parties to focus on our careers. Spiritual leaders like Jerry Falwell were telling us that Christianity was in the majority again. On the other side, there was a subculture of homosexuality creeping up on our youths. It gave them an excuse to wear tight jeans and to sneak off to public parks for quick releases with hairy men of different ethnicities.

by Anonymousreply 4January 18, 2022 5:14 AM

r4

THE GOLDEN GIRLS GAY AGENDA

It was only to be expected that our lonely boys exposed to these conflicted times would succumb to the nagging Golden Girls agenda. These were slender, unathletic children who were left out of the fun militarism of the Reagan years. Skyrocketing divorce rates ruined their faith in traditional relationships. Rock groups like Duran Duran and Styx encouraged big hair and overactive libidos. The show lit a match which enflamed their intense physical urges. With the utmost cruelty and immorality, The Golden Girls seized upon this opportunity to cross the hormonal wires of America’s lost generation.

The results were disastrous. Our horny, lonely boys sought out intimate comforts with likeminded Golden Girls addicts who didn’t mind each other’s theatrical voices and touch-feely hand gestures. Together, these clusters of awkward teens and twentysomethings bonded over their favorite episodes and characters, mimicking the voices and gowns of their tv friends. When the rush of cheesecake and gabfests wore thin, these hairless boys needed a harder thrill. They were so desperate for the next big trend they turned to same-sex sexual experimentation. What woman would have them now, anyway? This led to the worse excesses of early homosexual visibility– the most enormous of drag queens, the dirtiest of leather daddies, the most enticing of twinkie boys, androgyny, overeating, public sex and the birth of “camp.”

by Anonymousreply 5January 18, 2022 5:15 AM

r5

THOSE THREE DIRTY OLD LADIES

If you walk down the street today and bump into a middle-aged homosexual, chances are that the nasty comeback he will shout at you is something he picked up from Dorothy Zbornak of the Golden Girls. Played by noted liberal activist and Archie Bunker-foe Bea Arthur, Dorothy had a hard, masculine voice. She was cold and quick-tempered. She taught our modern butt rompers to disparage everyone in their orbit. She schooled them on insulting people’s clothing choices, body odors, organ sizes and educations. Dorothy taught the gays to speak very fast and have the most superior attitude possible. This formula has worked for many of your urban leather daddies and flaming queens, who attack with the swiftness of a ninja. It often happens that by the time I figure out what the insulting gay man has said to me, he is long gone (probably off groping someone’s son in a Sears lavatory). For others, and here I’m talking about your waiters and retail salesmen, Dorothy has given them permission to be two-faced. They smile at you through gritted teeth when you tell them to keep their nail polished fingers off the edge of your pasta dish or when you make them promise that they won’t peek while you’re trying on a swimsuit in the dressing room. Beneath that smile is a sneer. These gays really hate you for your Christianity and your gold card, your mature good looks or the fact you lead a handsome camping group into the hushed mountains of Tennessee. In whatever afterlife world she inhabits, Bea Arthur is surely pleased by your outrageous outrages, you homosexual anarchists of America.

Blanche Devereaux, played by Rue McClanahan on the show, is one of the sluttiest sluts around. She will do anything to get anyone into her bedroom for hours of offensive copulation irregardless of her aging orifices. Like many contemporary gays, she also demands expensive dinners and presents from her “dates” and takes special pride in catching the rich ones. Blanche’s promiscuity is a common model for the personal lives of today’s homosexuals. Most gay relationships last a week. It is no coincidence that this is the amount of time between Golden Girl episodes when they first aired on primetime. Blanche’s appearances on the show taught today’s 30-something homosexuals that you need a new strange man on your arm every seven days or else your viewers/friends will lose interest in your life’s plot. Sadly, with the Golden Girls in weeknight syndication, the youngest gays have confused this timetable to mean they need five new boyfriends a week. Their sexual adventures have become both shockingly fast and befuddling to their next-door neighbors and Twitter followers alike.

Rose Nylund, played by x-rated comedienne Betty White, was added to the show as a sort of comic relief to the other more serious characters. She is thoroughly dimwitted. Her clueless acting style makes me cringe at her obvious senility. Senility is not at all funny, but the careless creators of this awfulness used her stupidity for a relentless barrage of immature jokes. Once again, Rose’s most salient trait was picked up and celebrated by the gay community. Every buff beefcake I’ve ever met has been tremendously brainless. They can bump out the beats to any Madonna song on a club railing, but are incapable of telling you the difference between Acapulco and an avocado. They lack the concentration to finish reading your text message, let alone a fantastic website article you may have forwarded to them. Most homosexuals love to gallop around a conversation, yammering out a bunch of big phrases to show you how smart they are. The truth is that if they slowed down for a minute you would see that the Lady Gaga references, truckstop handjob stories and Kevin Jennings defenses don’t add up to an intellectual argument. They’re just random phrases strung together by psychotropically-medicated, carnally-motivated ridiculous libertines glazed with moisturizer.

by Anonymousreply 6January 18, 2022 5:16 AM

I preferred Maude to Golden Girls, but I'd say the appeal is probably because those old ladies were rather like drag queens.

by Anonymousreply 7January 18, 2022 5:19 AM

Because Dorothy was secretly a strong, sassy black woman.

by Anonymousreply 8January 18, 2022 5:35 AM

Its a template for a gay man's retirement. I've already got the cheesecake in the fridge. I need to find Rose and Dorothy roommates. I'm not giving up being Blanche!

by Anonymousreply 9January 18, 2022 5:42 AM

We were slutty like Blanche and sarcastic like Dorothy. We always had someone to make fun of, like the housemates made fun of Rose, and we had difficult relationship with our mothers, who we wanted to send to a retirement home.

by Anonymousreply 10January 18, 2022 5:44 AM

It's just a bunch of white chicks sitting around talking wittily (mostly about sex), doing absolutely nothing useful, complaining, and being generally bitchy. A surefire hit for the gays every single time, since this is what we most want to do with one another (besides have sex), and how we see ourselves.

See also: "The Facts of Life," "Designing Women," 'Sex and the City," and "Girls." For an all-black variant, see "Living Single." For stage and film variants, see "The Women" and "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean."

by Anonymousreply 11January 18, 2022 5:46 AM

Other variant versions of that formula: "Steel Magnolias," "The View," "The Talk."

by Anonymousreply 12January 18, 2022 5:52 AM

Because it was so relatable. My grandma was Rose, my mom Blanche, & I’m Dorothy. But my friends all said I’m Blanche.

No show holds such nostalgia for me as this one.

My sister just bought me GG shirt for my bday, but it’s too small (I think it’s a women’s size).

by Anonymousreply 13January 18, 2022 6:22 AM

[quote]Younger gays don’t care except for maybe twinks.

False. Or, another DLism from the 'living my truth' crowd.

by Anonymousreply 14January 18, 2022 6:35 AM

Actresses Rue McClanahan (Blanche) and Betty White (Rose), and writer Marc Cherry reveal what is so appealing to the Gay community.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 15January 18, 2022 7:07 AM

On 27 July 1997, the BBC broadcasted this interview with Beatrice Arthur as part of the television show Gaytime TV. She talks about her part as Dorothy on The Golden Girls, why it became so popular among gays and also visits Soho, London

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 16January 18, 2022 7:11 AM

R16, thank you for sharing this clip. It was delightful.

by Anonymousreply 17January 18, 2022 2:15 PM

R1, that’s not true at all.

As a masculine guy who played sports and loved the Golden Girls, I just thought it was really funny.

by Anonymousreply 18January 18, 2022 2:24 PM

I've never watched it.

But I don't like sitcoms.

by Anonymousreply 19January 18, 2022 2:38 PM

They were four old hags who thought (mistskenly) they were still hot and sexually desirable, just like DL's elder gays.

by Anonymousreply 20January 18, 2022 3:04 PM
Loading
Need more help? Click Here.

Yes indeed, we too use "cookies." Take a look at our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, click ACCEPT. Otherwise, you'll just have to find some other site for your pointless bitchery needs.

×

Become a contributor - post when you want with no ads!