Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i Attitude Magazine

Darren Styles OBE ATTITUDE PUBLISHER My late father, Ron, owned a newsagent for two decades, and I was the proverbial kid in a candy store. But my sugar rush was magazines. From sumptuous Vogue to automotive bible Autocar, from Country Life’s millionaire’s row to The Dandy gigglefest: something for everyone. Including, come 1994, me. Attitude changed everything. Wrestling with my sexuality, I’d sneak a copy from the shelf and peep into the world I wanted to inhabit. I’d never have imagined, one day, I’d buy Attitude outright, and become the title’s first gay owner. But it rocked my world then, and it still does, every day. Vasilis Rallis PHOTOGRAPHER The cover of Attitude magazine that left a lasting impression on me is issue 92, featuring Elton John. I first encountered…

Jacqui Rhule-Dagher (she/her) Lawyer Who is the LGBTQ+ community’s bridge between the past and the future? Who possesses the wisdom of Audre Lorde, the bravery of James Baldwin and the resilience of Marsha P. Johnson? For me, it’s Lady Phyll. Her persistence and advocacy make her one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ figures around. Additionally, her influence extends beyond our borders and reverberates around the globe. Significantly, her activism is intersectional, thereby making it especially impactful. In 2005, Lady Phyll made an invaluable contribution to LGBTQ+ rights when she co-founded UK Black Pride. In 2022, I was part of the 25,000-strong crowd when UK Black Pride made history by becoming the largest Black Pride in the world. It was empowering seeing Ted Brown, who organised the first Pride in 1972,…

For three decades, Attitude has been the guiding light for LGBTQ+ people, shaping our lives and affirming our identities. And as someone in their thirties (no, I won’t reveal my age, bitch), I’ve been looking back at how my confidence with sexuality has changed over the past 30 years of my existence. Being gay means constantly questioning what we deserve. It’s hard not to when society questions our very rights, and when we’ve lost so many of our queer ancestors to HIV and AIDS. The trauma runs deep. Like many of us, I’ve suffered with my mental health as a result. And it’s only now that I’ve stopped trying to erase it. I can’t just pretend everything’s fine. But I’ve realised that we can thrive within our trauma. We can…

McKinley Belcher III was working as a paralegal for a law firm when he had an epiphany. “A lot of the attorneys I was working for were very wealthy, but very unhappy,” he says. Sitting at his desk, having interned at a law firm while studying for a degree in communication studies and political science at Belmont University, Tennessee, and having taken his Law School Admission Test (LSAT) after that, it hit him: “This is not it.” Had a friend of Belcher’s at Belmont not roped him into acting in a play (Raisin in the Sun) and its director not suggested he go to New York University (NYU) for post-graduate studies because they thought Belcher could be an actor, he could have been at a loss as to what to…

Sam Altman is one of the most powerful figures in the tech industry, known for his significant contributions to artificial intelligence as co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. As an out gay leader, Altman has played a pivotal role in driving innovation within the sector. At OpenAI, he has led the development of the groundbreaking tool ChatGPT, which is revolutionising multiple industries. Here, Altman talks about his journey from “nerdy little kid” to the biggest name in perhaps the world’s most important emerging sector and, according to Forbes, a newly minted billionaire. Do you remember when your interest in technology began? I don’t ever remember not being interested in technology. I was a very nerdy little kid. I liked computers the first time I saw one. It was a defining part…

What can people expect from a Samantha Togni set? High energy and raw fun. Which track are you loving right now? Really enjoying the remix of ‘Tactical Mayonnaise’ by CTSD. What introduced you to dance music? I used to be big into bands growing up — punk and hardcore were my thing. Then I discovered Prodigy, which felt like a perfect bridge between the music I grew up with. I remember buying the CD of ‘Baby’s Got a Temper’. I was so fascinated by the music, the iconic video clip and their energy that I played it on repeat. It’s definitely one of the tracks that made me fall in love with electronic dance music. Which dance record changed your life? ‘Fatherfucker’ by Peaches. It opened a new world to…

Mona of the Manor is the 10th book in the Tales of the City series. What keeps bringing you back to Barbary Lane after all these years? I have been on a journey with Anna, Michael and company for 50 years now. I never imagined that would be the case. The series was originally a serial for the San Francisco Chronicle that I presumed would end when I left the paper. Then I realised how much people felt connected to these characters, which in turn made me feel connected to them. I know them so well now that they’re sort of second nature for me to write. In the case of this novel, it was Mona herself because I realised I had neglected her in rounding out the series. When…

When around 180,000 fiction titles are published in the UK over a single year, how do you choose just 30 novels that represent the past three decades of British and Irish gay fiction writing? Consider this list a flavour of some of the utterly extraordinary, pioneering gay/bi/queer male storytelling published between 1994 and 2024. Gay fiction puts gay lives centre stage, and for a sexuality that has historically been demonised and erased — the love that dare not speak its name — there is something powerful and beautiful about that. These are not just books, but acts of self-articulation and self-possession; testaments to our originality, creativity, vision and insight, as well as allyship, with a number of these books written by female and non-binary authors. Queer writing today is one…

There was a time when truly queer cinema in Britain was largely confined to the fringes. For many of us, our formative memories of seeing LGBTQ+ lives represented on screen came via such polite gay romances as Merchant Ivory’s Maurice, or as subplots in the straight-led likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral. (The wild queer dream worlds of Derek Jarman were a revelation to those who dared.) But the past 30 years have been a transformative era for queer filmmaking, incorporating an ever-expanding range of experiences and perspectives into a mainstream spotlight. Meanwhile, what was once a branch of cinema largely confined to the white-male end of the spectrum is diversifying all the while — a work in progress still, but excitingly in flux. Here are the highlights of…

The UK was a bleak place for gays when Attitude published its first issue in May 1994. The age of consent for men who have sex with men was still unequal (then at 18 years) and would not be brought in line with laws for people of the opposite sex until 2001. Civil partnerships were 10 years away, same-sex marriage, another 10. The mountain of other rights yet to come — from protection against discrimination in the workplace to making hate crime illegal — felt insurmountable. While gay identities still remain vulnerable to the whims of toxic masculine opinion, the battle for queer emancipation today has shifted to wider gender and sexual autonomy. The visibility of bisexual people — our biggest LGBTQ+ group — is still poorly reflected in the…

Describe your stage persona in three words. Chaotic, provocative, generous. What’s your most memorable career moment? Opening for Peaches at the Royal Festival Hall in 2009. I came on after Charli XCX and did a kind of spoken word a capella rap in this little shrug made of CDs to thousands of people. It was an extraordinary moment. What’s the best compliment you’ve ever been given? You’re so zeitgeist, and you’re so free, so two. What vital elements should a good show have? I’m a big fan of roller coasters, so it should be thrilling, unexpected, dangerous, exciting, and to some degree, exhausting. What should be banished to a deserted island? Contouring. Everyone looks the same — it’s like a mask now. And I don’t know how to use it.…

Trauma patients are notorious black-and white thinkers. After being diagnosed with complex PTSD last year, one of the first things I learnt in trauma therapy was how emotionally binary I can be. I identify as non-binary and have always tried to approach my creative work and life with fluidity — intellectually and spiritually, I feel anything but black and white in my approach. Emotionally, however, the grey area has always terrified me. It’s a contradiction in my psychology I’ve only recently reckoned with. This is common for trauma patients, because those past experiences have taught us to become hypervigilant, sensitive to the minute changes in people’s behaviours and the world around us. Our mind and body have learned to protect us by approaching absolutely everything with a sense of impending…

PRINT Don’t miss an issue of the brilliant, new-look Attitude magazine. Our exclusive print subscription offer sees our luxe format mailed directly to your door six times a year and saves you almost 15% on the published cover price. ONE YEAR, 6 ISSUES £36 HALF-YEAR, 3 ISSUES £18 ATTITUDE.IMBMSUBSCRIPTIONS.COM DIGITAL Have Attitude at your fingertips 24/7, wherever you go, when you subscribe to our digital edition, in slick mobile-friendly format or configured to best suit your tablet, laptop or PC. Don’t miss anything!…

It was summer 2015. I’d graduated from the University of Leicester the year before and had entered the real world not really knowing what to do with a BA in contemporary history. I had always been somewhat interested in journalism but had never seriously considered it. But after a miserable time in retail, I ventured into BBC Bristol and eventually volunteered for four months with their political editor. It was exciting. I applied and was accepted to study a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism at the renowned School of Journalism, Media, and Culture (JOMEC) at Cardiff University. But I still questioned if this was something I should be doing at all. Then, one day, I was watching BBC Breakfast, and Ben Thompson appeared. A quick Google showed me two things:…

After bursting onto the UK queer music scene with spiky pop tunes ‘Str8 Acting’ and viral smash ‘Silly Boy’ — which has reached more than a million streams on Spotify — Lynks is ready to step it up a gear. Blending BDSM aesthetics with a unique electro-punk sound, the 28-year-old’s star is truly on the rise. How does it feel to finally give birth to your debut album? It feels so overdue. It’s been a long time coming, I will say that. I’ve had it finished for well over a year now, so it feels like I’ve been preggo for a long time and I’m ready for a nice and healthy birth. What would you say was the mission statement for the record? I don’t think I’m calculated like that.…

Sir Chris Bryant loves a long metaphor, as he admits after offering his take on the UK government’s current stasis: “It’s like if you buy a tuna mayo sandwich, you don’t eat it for a couple of days, and it goes past its sell-by date, but you still think ‘I could eat that.’ But then the bread starts curling up at the edges. You could go ‘Maybe if there’s literally nothing else in the flat…’ But it’s when that green crusty stuff appears, and that’s when you know it’s gone. That’s the stage we’ve got to.” It’s an unusual description but one that aptly captures the current political situation in the UK. In the preamble to our chat, the Labour Member of Parliament for Rhondda, Wales, recalled talking to Tory…

‘We’re eating chips — that’s funny!” cackles Mel B when I show her the Spice Girls’ Village People-inspired Attitude cover from 1998 (see page 49), for which Scary donned a leather ensemble. (“I stole that hat!”) As a teen, this writer dreamed of growing up and interviewing the Spice Girls for Attitude. To be doing so — and asking questions like “What’s your favourite solo Spice song?” — is surreal. “‘I Turn to You’ by Melanie C,” replies Mel. “Such a big one. The words are like poetry. Whenever she sings it, she loses it! It’s anthemic.” I’m catching up with Mel to mark the new, updated edition of her bestselling memoir Brutally Honest, which details her abusive marriage to Stephen Belafonte, who she divorced in 2018. “It was a…

May 1994 was a pretty gay month by all accounts. The charts were stuffed with divas and queer icons, with Mariah Carey’s Music Box and Crystal Waters’ ‘100% Pure Love’ riding high. The historic first issue of Attitude magazine was also about to hit the shelves, while synthpop duo Erasure were preparing to release their sixth studio album, the camply titled I Say I Say I Say. The album, their fourth consecutive number one on the UK chart, is a finely tuned electro romp. However, it’s in the record’s tender moments that singer-songwriter Andy Bell and producer Vince Clarke truly take off. Opening with the dreamy ‘Take Me Back’, Bell sings of returning to a state of innocence: “Let me sleep a little while / Underneath the trees / And…

The Fates by Rosie Garland (Available in hardback from 9 April) The Fates is the latest in a line of retellings of mythological stories with a modern twist. Not only does it feature all of our favourite ancient conventions — fantastical beasts, epic battles, spats with the Gods and familial in-fighting — but it delivers with punchy feminist zest. The Fates, often imagined as the old hags who spin, measure and cut the threads of mortal humans, tried to free mankind from the tyrannies of Zeus by altering the destinies of famous Grecians Atalanta, Meleager and Antiklea. Featuring thoughtful takes on polyamory, trans identity and non-conformity, it’s both a moving love story and rip-roaring adventure. Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue (Available now in hardback, in paperback from 20 June)…

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WALLFLOWERS Why hang a single piece of art on your wall when you can cover the entire room with it? The Lancashire-based brother and sister duo behind 1838 Wallcoverings recently launched their second collaboration with the V&A, taking inspiration from the museum’s archive of patterns to create a range of bright and bold wallpapers. The collection includes a stunning silk pattern from the museum’s treasured Leman Album from 1700s London, an intricate Indian mural from the same era, and a wonderfully kitsch reproduction of an original wallpaper pattern from 1920s England. The V&A Decorative Papers II range is priced from £84 a roll. 1838wallcoverings.com PERFECT PAIR Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: Tom of Finland and Beryl Cook — a pair of iconic artists born in the 1920s…

❌ 2018 Badenoch uses an outdated term for trans people in an explosive rant about LGBTQ+s, with audio leaking to Vice three years later. “It’s no longer about minority rights in terms of race any more or nationality,” she said. “It’s … not even about sexuality now, it’s now like the whole transgender movement, where, OK, well, we’ve got gay marriage, and civil partnerships, so, what are transsexuals looking for?” ❌ 9 July 2019 Badenoch abstains from voting on marriage equality in Northern Ireland. Hilariously, this was her one and only opportunity to concretely vote on LGBTQ+ equality, and she declined to do so. ❌ 13 July 2020 Badenoch has an “introductory meeting” with controversial campaigning group, the trans-exclusionary LGB Alliance. ❌ July 2022 In letters seen by Vice, Badenoch…

Marvel Cinematic Universe Without doubt one of the biggest cultural movements in recent times is the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). What started out as a brave venture by Marvel Studios in 2008 with Iron Man has gone on to become an interconnected universe of stories made up of (to date) 33 films and multiple Disney+ series. Looking forward, however, there are challenges ahead. Unevenness in quality and superhero fatigue could mean that when we arrive at Attitude’s 60 th anniversary, the MCU could have been snapped out of existence. Star Wars 20 th Century Fox’s infamous decision to let the plucky young director George Lucas keep merchandising rights for his 1977 Star Wars film indicated that it didn’t have much faith in the longevity of the project.…

I grew up in Greenwich and went to school in the suburbs of London. As a child in a pre internet age, I was often occupied with finding ways to not be bored. One example would be jumping into a box for my brothers to then push down the stairs. It was fun, though one time I did end up in hospital and had to have stitches. School was tough. They wanted me to play rugby, and the headteacher openly used homophobic slurs. As a closeted queer person of colour who was lanky with big curly hair and glasses, I was effectively at the intersection of the Venn diagram of reasons to be a target. When the growth spurt hit in my early teens, I shot up to 6 feet…

Like many LGBTQ+ people born in the 1980s, my first inklings of self-discovery as a pre-adolescent came from the telly. Early-90s RuPaul was in her ‘Supermodel’ era and on practically every TV show, Eurotrash was offering much-appreciated glimpses of the male human form, and then one night this little movie about three drag performers in Australia popped up on a cable movie channel. Little did nine-year-old me know that 30 years later, I would be treading the path of Mitzi, Felicia and Bernadette for myself on an epic adventure across Australia, complete with a troupe of drag queens — RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Sister Sister, Ginny Lemon, Joey Jay and Utica Queen — in our very own (not quite ‘lavender’) bus, all five of us sharing a sisterhood as Oz…

The Divine Sundays to Thursdays until 12:20am, and until 2:30am Fridays and Saturdays 33 Stoke Newington Road, London N16 8BJ ‘It’s Boy George!” I jokingly tell my straight friend as fully made-up performance artiste Jonny Woo takes to the stage of his brand spanking new queer club The Divine in London, dressed to the nines in a Pope-like ensemble befitting a ruler of London nightlife. She totally falls for it, all but jumping on her chair to get a better view of the fabulously strobe-lit, music video-ready stage. Who can blame her? With his piercing eyes, bang-tidy beard and New Romantics-adjacent style, cabaret star Jonny is surely cut from the same spiritual cloth as The Boy… But what really turbocharges my prank is the rapturous reception this underrated singer receives…

‘Some Guys’ (B-side) The B-Side to the brilliant ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’, ‘Some Guys’ is soft-rock perfection. Equally bombastic and punchy, it also features some of Cher’s greatest vocals, and the “ooh ooh” refrain is undeniably catchy. ‘Runaway’ (album track) The Believe album was the turning point in Cher’s career that took her from 60s songstress to modern pop diva. ‘Runaway’ could easily have been another single — a synth-laden, vocoder-heavy dance banger. ‘Take It Like A Man’ (album track) Released exclusively as a single in the USA, ‘Take It Like A Man’ is a double entendre-laden bop, showcasing both Cher’s sexuality and sense of humour. Fun fact: it also features the vocals of Jake Shears, the iconic Scissor Sisters frontman. ‘DJ Play A Christmas Song’ (7th Heaven…

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman It’s fair to say that Heartstopper has been both a literary and televisual phenomenon. It started out as a series of graphic novels. Oseman has also written a young adult novella to further bring the love story of Nick and Charlie to life. If you have somehow missed the biggest LGBTQ+ hit of recent years, the beauty of Heartstopper is in its innocence and purity — it’s a joyful love story that charts the challenges of discovering one’s sexuality with optimism. In fact, many older readers have commented on how they wish they had had such positive representation of sexuality when they were growing up. This novella is the perfect introduction for anyone new to the world of Heartstopper, or a refreshing new take…

The fashion world has long had a magnetic pull for the LGBTQ+ community. The very top of the industry has always been packed full of LGBTQ+ people and allies, whether they are designers and creative directors of the most successful brands, fashion editors of international magazines or photographers for the highest-profile campaigns. As a result, the industry has consistently been strides ahead of mainstream culture when it comes to pioneering inclusivity and diversity. Over the past 30 years, we have been proud to celebrate several LGBTQ+ icons of the fashion world on the Attitude cover and at our Awards ceremonies. Now, let’s take a look back at some of these fashion titans and learn how they have shaped the fashion landscape and championed the LGBTQ+ community, as well as hear…

PURE AND SIMPLE Louis Vuitton has gone for a triple fragrance threat with the Pure Perfumes collection. The French brand’s master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud has created three scents focusing on three iconic perfumery ingredients: oud, sandalwood and amber. These classic fragrances have been present since the beginning of humanity, with an appeal that has transcended millennia. With this trio of scents, Louis Vuitton has kept things subtle: Pur Ambre weaves in sensual woody and musk notes with rare Ambroxan; Pur Santal has creamy, woody notes; and Pur Oud emits powerful woody notes with animalistic undertones. Right through to the chic bottles, the fragrances offer a rich, layered simplicity. louisvuitton.com REVIEW THE HVN I’ve barely set foot in The HVN spa and it’s already delivering on a promise to relax…