My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Parker Posey (1968): A Pocket Full of Posey

271 Parker Posey A Pocket Full of Posey Michael J. Andrews Iam that guy who prefers chic to elegant whenever I rate my favorite Project Runway couture du jour. I mean, I might not be that guy in a tuxedo shirt and skinny black jeans, but I do pay some attention to what I wear and am a bit of a label whore (in that “pair it with those yard-sale corduroys” sort of way). I also must confess that when I run out of dress shirts for work, I will drag out that tuxedo shirt and tell my put-together Manhattanite coworkers, “Getovahit, I live in Brooklyn!” What I am trying to say is that fashion, in my eyes, should be more Parker Posey than, say, Nicole Kidman, or even Paris Hilton. I’m just over Hollywood glam, 272 L.A. club pics, tabloid cover girls. Though this is definitely not about me, or about fashion, but about ICON. I want everyone to know: I make an UGLY woman and would never wear drag because I hate looking ugly. However, that does not mean I don’t desire to emulate some of the most amazing people ever to grace the planet, and that those might happen to be women. AND I plan on emulating not only their intelligence (Hillary Clinton), their passion (Sojourner Truth), or their trashiness (Lindsay Lohan), but also their style. Hillary, Sojourner, and Lindsay all are very impressive women in one way or another, but GOD, they are so very much not my definition of cool. When I imagine the perfect woman, the one I would “like to have a beer with,” the irony is that it’s not with anyone looking to be part of this big collective unconscious. And I would rather not have a beer, per se. I would rather not try to identify with Midwestern farmers (well, conjugally maybe). I want a goddamn vodka martini in some dungeon of a nightclub or a pitcher of Jack&Gingers stirred on some stranger’s roof deck. And basically I want to be Parker Posey while doing it. Hell, she did get that studly falafel vendor in Party Girl, all while giving ’90s America its first taste of anything “Fashion Forward.” See, this is what I’m talking about: sly, cool, abandoned, and unafraid. So, people were a little obsessed with individuality in the ’90s. There was the tripped-out warehouse scene in NYC with all sorts of bizarre denizens as well as the plaid-clad rockers out in Seattle. Now, I know I’m being nostalgic, but there was a premium in the ’90s on being different, on standing out, standing apart. But the alt rock world mated with NYC, giving birth to the downtown mall of models and lawyers, and the alt rock scene devolved in indie Williamsburg across the river, home of the unlaundered T-shirt, jeans, and designer sunglasses. Yet these are places I adore so much more than the plastic on the other coast! Why can’t we have cool without being either disheveled or primped? Why can’t chic go back to being a fire-engine-red thong from Bergdorf’s? Isn’t Par ker Posey 273 that just a little more acceptable than soiled H&M underwear? Parker Posey is the epitome of a man’s thong. She’s thin as a string, hides just the most vulgar of humor, and contains within herself something much bigger than she appears to. Whereas H&M is just the wrong idea of a European import. “Hello: Chanel!” How is New York to compete with Britney if we don’t take a gander at the Parker of the ’90s? I am a Brooklynite, and I am describing my peers just a little bit harshly, but we need to look to Parker Posey for style, not combine a love of Lindsay with the nostalgia for Courtney Love. Let’s walk down Metropolitan Avenue like the cosmopolitan faggots we are. Let’s bring LES Party Girl land to Brooklyn. Manhattan is full of middlebrow chains. Let’s not rebel by being bums; let’s rebel by showing them up. What ever happened to combining fabulous with intelligent? Parker has played a role in which she campily explains that a folk group took her off the streets, and another as a bit-part Roller Blader cursing Steve Martin. Remember cool Steve Martin? Remember L.A. Story...