ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Itai Doron examines how male sex workers have used fashion to communicate with potential clients. Analyzing a wide range of depictions of sex workers in films, photographs, Internet profiles, and selfies, Doron documents how male prostitutes cater to different clients by using fashion and styling to embody sexual fantasy. While heterosexual gigolos catering to women often emphasize class, style, and taste, hustlers seeking to attract gay clients frequently use working-class adornment calculated to signal raw masculinity and danger. Particularly interesting are Doron’s analyses of the representations of male sex workers in Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950), the underground films of Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol (1960s and 1970s), Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo (1980), The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018), and the work of numerous photographers. Doron points out that fashion items associated with “rough trade” were crucial in defining gay masculinity in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than finding fashion inspiration in peacocky upper-class men, whom gay middle-class men considered effeminate, clones tried to emulate the look of rough, white, working-class men whose manliness seemed so apparent as to be unquestionable and who traditionally projected masculinity through their utilitarian work clothes or uniforms. Within gay male prostitution, there is still a focus on clone fashion—tight-fitting clothing and “straight-acting” demeanor—with little appreciation for the complexities of style associated with alternative gay masculinities. In advertising their services online, today’s gay male prostitutes today focus on body images rather than clothes. The few items of clothing function to highlight body parts, with fashion fulfilling a role similar to the role it played in physique photography: to draw the audience’s eyes and minds to what lies underneath.
