Horny pony

Late-night TV host Craig Ferguson opened an episode in summer 2009 with one of his recurring puppet-show skits, this time a unicorn who told viewers, “A lot of people think unicorns are GAAAY. And I say to those people . . . CORRECT!”

“I must be a bad homo,” jokes Queer Idol and Spectra Showcase creator Ralph Hamelmann. “I didn’t even know unicorns were a symbol for us.”

But are they? It’s not like anyone made an official decision about this, yet somehow it seems to have become a universal truth: unicorns are gaaay. In the 2007 web cartoon Planet Unicorn, we meet an eight-year-old gay boy named Shannon and his horned pals Feathers, Cadillac and Tom Cruise. “A unicorn,” explains co-creator Tyler Spiers, “is basically a glammed-up pony, and what could be gayer than that?”

Our connection to the animal is seemingly endless: witness Erasure’s “Always” as the soundtrack for the much-played video game Robot Unicorn Attack, and, of course, the entire hour of Glee this season comparing tiny waif Kurt Hummel to a horned mythological horse.

“I would say the unicorn has always been a bit of a gay symbol,” says graphic designer Darryl Mabey, “but recently, Lady Gaga has made it more mainstream. She uses the unicorn in a lot of her work.”

“We can be strong/Follow that unicorn on the road to love!” Gaga sings on “Highway Unicorn (Road to Love),” from her Born This Way album. She told the UK’s Big Top 40 Show that her obsession with the horned beasts stems from playing with My Little Pony toys in the 1980s. “I was obsessed with the idea of a creature that was born with something magical, that sort of made them misfits in the world of the stallion.”

“I’m sure a lot of wee homos played with My Little Pony sparkly unicorns along with their shirtless GI Joes,” says TUFF host and former fab editor Matt Thomas. “That shit changed colour when it got wet and smelled like strawberry — gay and awesome! Plus, there’s all the super-gay ’80s fantasy films that featured them, like Legend and The Last Unicorn.”

“For kids growing up in the ’80s,” agrees illustrator Glen Hanson, the unicorn “was a beautiful, magical, rare creature. I can’t remember it being a gay symbol prior to that. I drew Phillipe Blond as a unicorn. He is a child of the ’80s and a gender-bending fashion designer. Doesn’t get gayer than that!”

“Ponies are a girly thing,” says comedian Gavin Crawford, “and the unicorn is the prettiest pony of all.”

Associating unicorns with gay men in pop culture has been, he says, “a way to emasculate gays. Like calling us sissy and nancy boys.” He points to “The Unicorn Song” by The Irish Rovers, in which “the stupid unicorns are too busy frolicking to get on the ark — basically, veiled Christian homophobia.” There’s also Peter Steiner’s not-so-veiled 2004 New Yorker cartoon of Noah’s ark packed with animals and a man saying, “Bad news — the unicorns are gay.” In Timothy Findley’s classic novel Not Wanted on the Voyage, a unicorn on the ark suffers terribly.
The explosion of kitschy unicorn imagery in recent years, however, is a good thing, Crawford insists. “Now it seems gay culture is taking the symbol and using it for power instead of a slam, like saying, ‘I am tough enough/brave enough to wear this unicorn shirt/get this unicorn tattoo.’ It’s a way of saying, ‘Unicorns are fabulous and so am I, and you can no longer use them to diminish me.’”

Queer Ontario vice-chair Casey Oraa says the unicorn makes an obvious symbol because “it’s different from all the other horses in its own magical way,” though it’s also problematic because, well, they’re mythological and we’re not. Artist Troy Brooks echoes everyone here in praising the creature’s imaginative powers, and adds that the thick horn of this mighty stallion was “an introduction to all fun things phallic!”

That said, he segues into a topic for a whole other article: “I would have to say that I was more into the Pegasus thing. I blame Clash of the Titans: watching Harry Hamlin in a toga/napkin riding a white horse with wings made me gay.”

Scott Dagostino is the manager of Glad Day Bookshop and enjoys frolicking in fields while brushing his sparkly mane.