Having worked in the fashion magazine industry the editors are well aware that a significant percentage of their readers are gay. They don’t market only to gays but they do market to them as an important demographic of their audience.
Vogue has had lesbian overtones for years. Models holding each other, looking at each other seductively, etc. It’s the nature of the business.
The gay community is often on the cutting edge of fashion, design, art, architecture and gentrification. High fashion magazines recognize gays to be an important market to capture.
Easy answer is that is their target audience. People who have disposable income and want to be in fashion.
Personally if a lady looks good in carharts or waders…mmmm…yummy!
I also think the OP is missing what the latest fashion ‘look’ is. Thin, androgynous, slightly geeky and suited is ‘in’. Does it look a bit gay? Maybe, but it’s still the current fashion. GQ is a fashion magazine.
Anyway, you’d have to look back at old fashion plates, and tell me if the looked less or more fem than current male models. Beau Brummell early-1800’s drawings of wasp-waisted young men were very homosexual to our view, but homosexuality wasn’t seen then as it is today: guys could embrace and kiss and walk arm in arm and share a bed, but none of that was mentioned in the bible as “sodomy.” As long as they kept their penises and anuses disengaged, they were giggled at, but not stigmatized (see Buchanan, James; Pres. USA)
1930’s male fashion ads were much more masculine than today, the image of decisive business executives who also fly-fished (and that’s not a euphemism), hunted and nightclubbed. The legacy of their era is still strong today.
What I do see in current GQ & Esquire, though, are suits too form-fitting and too short jackets. Perhaps in response to the obesity epidemic. Like women’s fashion: “only models look good on this. You look like a loser.”
Or, as Fox News would portray him, “James Buchanan (D),” the same way they would if he were a Republican living with another effeminate man. Who also happened to be a Democrat, if-you-know-what-I-mean.
I’m a gay guy whose sense of fashion includes little more than jeans and a t-shirt. Ok, I can clean up if I need to, but I’ll never look like a GQ model. But several decades ago, when porn was not accessible, GQ was one of my sources for “sexual inspiration.” It did the job.