The Rise of the ‘Bromosexual’ Friendship
A recent ad for the Bravo TV show “Shahs of Sunset” finds two of its male stars lazing on lounge chairs at the beach. Amid a scene of scantily clad sun worshipers, the best friends Reza Farahan and Mike Shouhed gaze at different objects of desire: Mr. Farahan at musclebound guys, Mr. Shouhed at voluptuous women.
Their distinct lusts, which may have alienated gay and straight men from each other in the past, inspire the ultimate gesture of fraternal connection: a fist bump.
“Mike and I are so similar,” Mr. Farahan said. “He has been a womanizer and I’ve been a player. In the ad, we’re having a moment, and it’s the same moment. The only difference is that I’m looking at men and he’s looking at women.”
The bond strikes the Irish author Jarlath Gregory as fresh for the culture and familiar to him. His latest novel, “The Organised Criminal,” has at its center a brotherly friendship between a gay man and a straight man.
“That kind of easy relationship would not be credible to a broad audience 10 years ago,” said Mr. Gregory, 38, who is gay. “One of the things my publisher liked about my book was that this friendship was something we haven’t seen much before.”
At least in pop culture we haven’t. Obviously, there have always been friendships between gay men and straight men, but only recently have they become more prominently, and comfortably, represented in TV shows, movies, books and blogs.
There is often a traditionally masculine sense of familiarity at play in these portrayals, exuding a feeling particular enough to suggest its own term: bromosexual relationships.
Their emerging representation contrasts with one that has become a cliché: the connection between a straight woman and her gay male best friend.
The latest media reflection also takes a significant leap from one of its earliest iterations. From 2003 to 2007, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” presented gay men as magical beings who functioned as helpers to heterosexual men, schooling them in matters of fashion and home décor while keeping much of their own lives off-screen.
By contrast, the last season of “Scream Queens” found the hunky Nick Jonas presenting himself as a gay frat boy who bonds over golf with his straight fraternity brother and best friend, Chad.
retrieved@https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/fashion/mens-style/gay-straight-men-friendship.html?_r=0 dated 3/13/2017
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