This is an interesting article on a social trend, but my critique of this style of writing is the narrow base from which it draws its observations.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

It is late June, when many cities across the country celebrate gay pride, and bare-chested he-men dressed in very little are out in the streets again. But look past them, and June is more confusing. As gay men grow more comfortable shrugging off gay-identified clothing and Schwarzeneggerian fitness standards, straight men are more at ease flaunting a degree of muscle tone seldom seen outside of a Men's Health cover shoot. And they are adopting looks - muscle shirts, fitted jeans, sandals and shoulder bags - that as recently as a year ago might have read as, well, gay.

The result is a new gray area that is rendering gaydar - that totally unscientific sixth sense that many people rely on to tell if a man is gay or straight - as outmoded as Windows 2000. It's not that straight men look more stereotypically gay per se, or that out-of-the-closet gay men look straight. What's happening is that many men have migrated to a middle ground where the cues traditionally used to pigeonhole sexual orientation - hair, clothing, voice, body language - are more and more ambiguous. Make jokes about it. Call it what you will: "gay vague" will do. But the poles are melting fast.

The new convergence of gay-vague style is not to be confused with metrosexuality, which steered straight men to a handful of feminine perks like pedicures, scented candles and prettily striped dress shirts. Gay vagueness affects both straight and gay men. It involves more than grooming and clothes. It notably includes an attitude of indifference to having one's sexual orientation misread; hence the breakdown of many people's formerly reliable gaydar.

While one interview subject was described as being a from a tony Chicago nabe, virtually everyone else in the story appeared to be from Manhattan and in the fashion or nightclub biz in some way.

One can argue that's where (and among whom) fashion happens, but the simple fact remains that in any nation, that would be a very small subset of the overall population.

There may be a trend going on that makes for good salon chatter, but it also has no real impact on the lives of millions of others -- a point rarely made in such stories.

Certainly in good old T.O., once you go out to Etobicoke or Scarborough, let alone the further-out burbs and small towns, talk of gay-straight vagueness would be seen as laughable.

I would argue that not having a mullet and a fu manchu in some of those areas would be enough to put you in the gay-vague category. :)