Okay, to start off with, the Latin heart throb of the late nineties has decided to come out of the closet. The revelation started off on his blog that he is a, quote, 'fortunate homosexual man'. Of course, this has taken off in the twitter and blogosphere like nobody's business, hell, you're reading about it in a blog by a gay man in New Zealand.
Now, the way I see it, there are three important aspects to this story:
Firstly, short and sweet, Really? Did anyone NOT know this?
Second, the way that announcements like this is considered 'news' concerns me slightly. For instance, let's look at the Times coverage of this. ALL they've done is taken the pertinent, best written aspects of Ricky's journal, fluffed it out a little with their own wording and then presented this as news.
Finally, while I admire Ricky for choosing to come out of the closet, BELIEVE ME, I know how difficult this can be and I think he's outlined his reasons pretty clearly, what irritates me the most is that it's taken him, what, 10-15 years to do so?
I (as shameful as it is to admit this), came out while he was at the top of his game and absolutely adored him as a teenage boy. To this day, Private Emotion is one of my favourite songs. However, and I know retrospect is 20/20, my image of gay men when I was growing up in a small town in Backwater New Zealand was what I saw around me - older, slightly skeezy gay men. To have had a public figure who was young, attractive, popular and successful as a role model, well, I don't think it would have hurt...
Having moved to Wellington at 18 and immersing myself in what is a very liberal city, I now have plenty of openly gay friends and role models, people I have, and still do to a certain extent, look up to. Successful gay men and women in a range of disciplines. But for young men growing up, it's disappointing that it's still seen as a hindrance to one's career and aspirations. Ricky has come out and had support on a lot of fronts, and rightly so - as mentioned earlier, this is a difficult decision for him to have made. However, I can't help but think this may do more harm than good - if I was a young man thinking about coming out and I heard this, it might possibly push me back deeper into the closet - "Well, Ricky Martin chose to keep himself hidden to have a career, perhaps I should too?".
Or perhaps I'm totally off the mark. Perhaps our society has enough gay role models these days - Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper, Allan Cumming just to name a few, and maybe we've come far enough as a society, that this will be but a blip on the radar. I really hope that this is the case.
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