Christmas Bitches

We unexpectedly had a chance recently to sit and paw through an entire stack of guilt-inducing women's magazines' annual Christmas issues. From Martha to the Ladies Home Journal, every last page haughtily proclaimed "You'll never do anything as nice as this, you failure of a woman." And of course, we were enthralled. Why wouldn't we be? Every carefully lit centerpiece and folksy down home wreath gave off distinct whiffs of gay. Veritable armies of style gays and cuisine gays and editor gays had left their frosted pink touch all over each editorial on vintage glass balls and silver-themed rooms and bacon-wrapped somethingorothers. We had to laugh. So this is where they all went.

You see darlings, while we hadn't actually opened one of these types of magazines in years, there was a time - many, many years ago - when the Christmas issue of Redbook or Family Circle or Good Housekeeping would show up in our mothers' stack of mail and Oh, what mysteries and promises it held for the fledgling little gayboy. It was like a placeholder for the porn we would discover a decade later. A secret way for each babymo to assert his gayness before he had any idea what any of it meant. The handcrafted tchotchkes and badly photographed Ambrosia Salads seemed like a glimpse into a mysterious world. One more shiny and perfect and sophisticated than the one in which we currently resided.

Secretly, we judged our mothers for not utilizing more plastic grapes in her holiday centerpiece or for being so gauche as to not have designed a Bicentennial-themed tree, since it was clearly what everyone would be doing that year. We smiled wanly at the storebought bows and drugstore wrapping paper and cried inside at the memory of having to futilely explain to her the importance of raffia.

We got older of course, and while we still don our gay apparel as well or better than most people we know, we don't obsess over Christmas the way we did when we were little queens looking for our thrones, stopping on the way to admire or covet those sparkly, pretty, unattainable things that both hinted at a better life and fulfilled the hidden side of ourselves.

Looking at the current output of Christmas mags, we can only surmise that many of the suburban boy fairies of our generation took a decidedly different route and latched onto that little bit of glittery fabulosity in their mother's kitchen and rode it all the way to the editorial pages in the big city. Those bitches own Christmas now, girls. And they are here to impose it on the rest of us. Sure, Martha poses for the pictures, but she has legions of high-strung perfectionists with high-pitched voices making it all happen behind the scenes. And those poor dears, they've lost something along the way.

Oh sure, the layouts are uniformly gorgeous and even some of the ideas are workable. But everything went from that faux elegance of our youth to...well, we'd argue it's still faux elegance, but it's much better packaged faux elegance. Where are the monstrous crocheted centerpieces of old? The Christmas trees made out of spray-painted egg cartons? The pinecones dipped in glitter? The prodigious usage of acrylic yarns, glue and felt? Can't those bitches make one thing out of a juice can anymore?

Ah well. It was bound to happen. Back in the day, these magazines were places where career-minded women could fulfill themselves while still maintaining a veneer of traditionality. Now, career-minded women have a much wider array of choices and the uberfags have moved in, so it's all become as laminatedly perfect as they could make it and we can't help thinking some of the charm has been lost in what has apparently become a competition and not a holiday anymore.

As for us, maybe we'll put some of our old skills to use. We're pretty sure we can still make that M&M topiary from memory - and a paper towel tube of course.