There’s an eagerness in his expression, like he’s trying his hardest to be the best boy in the world. In one post, Ian stands in front of a coffee shop, smiling widely, legs close together, thumbs looped over his backpack straps.
Their Instagram shows a prim life full of self-discipline, productivity, and predictable escapades. In photos, they hike at sunset, go to Equinox, and drink smoothies. Looking at these photos, it’s hard not to be astonished by their bodies: the miraculous shoulder-to-waist ratios, Ian’s Ken-doll abs, Rex’s biceps, which threaten to rip through whatever shirt he’s wearing. In one photo, they’re picnicking with gourmet food on the Seine in another, posted two weeks later, they’re swimming in Italy. They have plucked eyebrows, which don’t make them look feminine so much as clean-cut - their strong jawlines and self-assured poses let us know the men we’re looking at are, without question, men. They have the same haircut and the same pretty American teeth.
In one photo, they’re wearing royal blue suits and sipping what appear to be mojitos from striped paper straws. But Ian Spear and Rex Woodbury, an Instafamous gay couple, are particularly good at glory. Glory, it seems, is pretty generic nowadays. Social media has bestowed upon the masses the power to curate a self that is impressive and magnificent.
Thus, same-sex relationships and sexual behavior may be perceptually framed, understood, and possibly structured in ways similar to stereotypes about opposite-sex relationships, suggesting that people may rely on these inferences to form accurate perceptions.Every picture of Ian and Rex is glorious and yet each picture is the same. Together, these results suggest that people rely on perceptions of characteristics relevant to stereotypical male-female gender roles and heterosexual relationships to accurately infer sexual roles in same-sex relationships. Moreover, in Study 2, we determined that the relationship between men’s perceived and actual sexual roles was mediated by perceived masculinity. In Study 1, we found that naïve observers were able to discern men’s sexual roles from photos of their faces with accuracy that was significantly greater than chance guessing. Although some research suggests that the perceptions of potential partners’ sexual roles in gay men’s relationships can affect whether a man will adopt the role of top or bottom during sexual intercourse, it remains unclear whether sexual roles could be perceived accurately by naïve observers. “In intercourse between men, one of the partners typically assumes the role of an insertive partner (top) while the other assumes a receptive role (bottom). The authors conclude with this tantalizing suggestion: “it is possible that similar effects may be found in opposite-sex relationships: women may be able to identify submissive versus dominant men from brief observations of appearance or behavior.” Accurate Identification of a Preference for Insertive Versus Receptive Intercourse from Static Facial Cues of Gay Men Interestingly, they chose the correct roles at a rate better than chance, although they were biased towards choosing the male-stereotypical “top” role.Īs you might have guessed, the participants were using cues related to masculinity (e.g., thick eyebrows, large noses) to make their choices. The participants were asked to look at 200 photographs of gay men found on an online dating site (100 tops, 100 bottoms) and categorize them as tops or bottoms. To find out, the authors of this study recruited 23 participants from Amazon’s mTurk (including 7 females). But can facial differences be used to distinguish between different types of gay men - specifically, those who define themselves as “tops” versus “bottoms”? It’s been known for a while that it takes less than a second for people to use their internal “gaydar” to decide if they think a man is homosexual or heterosexual, and such snap judgements tend to be right.