A doctor and Oxford graduate became the first openly gay columnist for top lads' mag FHM. I talked to him about how it felt to stick out like a sore thumb.
In a room plastered with pictures of naked women, an FHM subeditor passed judgement on behalf of 300,000 straight, male readers. With a few clicks of the mouse, he designed a thumbs-up logo for page 54. It said: “He’s okay... for a gay!”
The Gay, also known as Gareth Chapman, is a student doctor from Scunthorpe who bent the rules by becoming the first openly gay columnist for the UK’s leading lads’ mag. Now, in an Oxford pub, the well-mannered Oxford University postgraduate seems an unlikely candidate.
“The Best Breasts in Britain and nude shots of Abi Titmuss were getting dull. FHM was dumbing down – they needed something a bit different,” says Chapman. The 23-year-old decided that a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-type feature could work. “In a drunken haze one night, I emailed the features editor. He asked me to give him a ring. I was terrified,” he laughs for the first time since sitting down.
The Q&A column was commissioned. The ‘agony uncle’ would answer straight men’s questions from a gay man’s perspective, tackling issues from tableware to moustaches and from decorating to anal sex, in the magazine’s sardonic house style.
Chapman agreed to be photographed dressed as characters from the Village People as long as his identity was disguised. He explains: “I didn’t want people to think I was playing the gay guy just to be the extrovert. I said I would write under a pseudonym too. At Oxford medical school you’re not able to be overtly camp.”
The features show Chapman as a pouting construction worker, Chapman as a policeman, Chapman in leather. Underneath, the introduction to ‘Ask the Bender’ tries to excuse the appearance of a homosexual in this elite, chauvinistic lads’ mag world: “He has the best of both worlds: women love him and let him watch them undress. We’re sure he’s good at other stuff too – ironing, colour-matching, hairstyles and the like – but largely that’s it.”
The editorial input and the ‘He’s okay... for a gay!’ stamp were not Chapman’s ideas. “The logo made me pretty peeved,” he frowns. “And the title annoyed me. The column was a bit of a spoof but it was also meant to point to the fact that someone alternative had managed to get into FHM. They dropped the logo in later issues so maybe they got complaints. The derogatory ‘bender’ in the title stayed though.”
It is hard to marry this sober, sensitive man with his cuttingly coarse articles. One acerbic answer in the column advises Jim, London, to quit beer in favour of ‘designer cocktails’ to “take a leaf out the gay man’s book – that’s right, the pink one with glittery pages”, before coming on to Jim. Chapman sips on tap water as he reads.
“I imagine people think I’m quite dull compared to what I write,” he says. “Writing is my little outlet. Working with very ill people, you have to be professional and serious. It can be restrictive. But a lot of what you do is acting, communicating with people effectively. Medicine is a scientific art.
“People recognise that doctors need external interests, as long as we don’t flaunt those interests at work. I don’t have a different personality when I write, but I do have a different persona.”
Not everyone was impressed by Chapman’s artistic side. LGBT, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, argued the column would not further their cause. Chapman nods pensively. “I never wanted to really fight for equality and bash down doors but, looking back, I was probably quite naive. The articles were short-lived and won’t have changed anyone’s opinion of gay people, but at least they got in.”
Chapman is now writing to magazines F*@K and Bent, which brand him ‘okay’ because of his sexuality, not in spite of it. And he is focusing on plans to work at an HIV clinic in Malawi, where homosexuality is not only castigated but illegal.
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