I believe the red shirt at Disney was only done on the unofficial gay day at Disney. It wasn’t something done year round.
Never heard of it. Wouldn’t have worked anyway in my high school. Our rival high school colors are green and white, so we’d avoid wearing green on many Thursdays during football season anyway. Our two schools shared a football field so we had many Thursday night football games. As a band member, I’d be wearing our school colors pretty much every Thursday and Friday during the fall. I certainly wasn’t out then anyway.
In college, where I was somewhat out, I know you were supposed to wear some identifying clothing article on National Coming Out day, I can’t remember what it was. I was a typical college student and just wore whatever was clean. I wasn’t active in the Gay student union anyway, and was too busy with other groups. I considered myself student first, gay second. Barely even dated in college.
I’ve just remembered that the Moral Rearmament movement, which was quite big in the 50s, made a bit of a thing about this. I certainly remember something of the kind in "How to spot a homo’ articles in the right-wing press in the UK
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/alt.recovery.aa/xNXCis1_72I
They might have picked it up from Oscar Wilde’s green carnation:
http://queerstoryfiles.blogspot.com/2012/07/flower-power-green-carnation.html?m=1
My high school colors were red and green (class of '67). Athletes were entitled to wear letter sweaters and jackets with a big red A and sport-specific patches. The sweaters were green, and the jackets were green with red leather sleeves. I suppose they were exempt from the rule because “athletes aren’t gay.” Nonsense, I know, but this was back then.
Yeah, LA, SF, etc, never heard of it. Some type of code for a bandanna in your back pocket, vaguely, but never this.
I heard this in my small town mid-west junior high school in the early 70’s. One unpleasant girl in particular started calling me “fairy leprechaun” because of my stylin’ JC Penney ensemble of matching green jeans and jacket, with a lighter green sweater vest. I refrained from shaming her for her appearance, even though she would have been an easy target. I never really got worked up about being called gay, as it was a ubiquitous go-to bullying insult and I knew I wasn’t.
But as for taking it seriously? It never crossed my mind that it was actually “a thing” as being a signal to others.
This explains a joke which I’ve wondered about for fifty years. I read it in a joke book compiled by Canadian radio personality Al Boliska: a man dressed in green is driving down the street when a cop pulls him over. The man asks, “What did I do, officer?” The cop replies, “Nothing, I just wanted to hear you talk”.
Sort of related: a gay rights group where I went to college conducted an event to promote awareness. They wrote a letter to the student newspaper announcing that at a specified place and time, a group of activists would gather and point at people wearing blue jeans and make derisive comments (e.g., “Look at that queer in jeans!”), the goal being for straight people to understand what gay people had to deal with. I don’t know what ultimately took place, but I hope it was peaceful - this was West Virginia in the late 1970s.
The Lampoon had a cartoon showing a man in a gay bar with a plain white handkerchief sticking out of his pocket. Two guys discussed it: “I think it means he’s into S&M, but this week, he has a cold”.
I heard it used as an insult somewhere in the mid/late 60’s. I’m not going to look it up right now, but IIRC it was referred to in the National Lampoon’s* 1964 High School Yearbook *parody.
The boys in my early 70s Joplin,MO, high school were positively obsessed with it, but that NatLamp parody is the only place I’ve heard it since–and I dashed off to San Francisco!
There was a whole code language around bandannas (really, not handkerchiefs, they were big and colorful, not for wiping your nose). Different colors for different specific sexual interests, and left or right rear pocket for whether you were interested in giving or receiving whatever service it was. But it was far from universal among gay men (I didn’t move in those circles) and rather than identifying yourself as gay in a sea of straight men, it was designed to shortcut conversations in places like gay bars about what sexual activity one was interested in, making hooking up easier. This may have more or less died away with the advent of HIV.
As for the OP, when I was a kid (late 50’s, early 60’s) it was yellow one was not supposed to wear on Thursdays. It was not taken particularly seriously where I grew up, and would only result in brief teasing of the unfortunate who forgot.
I wonder if Bruce Springsteen was ever aware of the bandana in the back pocket thing.
My grandmother used to say green on Thursdays was bad luck. I don’t know if this was just a way of avoiding what she really meant, or if that was what she really meant, however I do remember it being mentioned in the same conversation as opening umbrellas indoors and other superstitions, so I’m inclined to think she really believed it was just unlucky.
Possibly so, but that’s not a red bandana in his right rear pocket; it’s a baseball cap.
Clearly the only safe course of action is to be naked on Thursdays.
Well, I guess we could protect one’s modesty with, say, rainbow underpants (a rainbow being a mix of all colors, so not showing favor to any particular color).
While we’re sharing stuff that’s just similar to the OP, in China there’s a saying / association that a green hat means your partner is cheating on you.
I don’t think it’s that big a deal to wear a green hat, but it would not go down well as a gift. Most Chinese that I’ve met (and I lived in China for 8 years) are aware of this association.
I always heard that yellow on Friday meant you were gay. S Cal in the '50s - early '60s
I do know if you wear purple and green you’re likely a baddie, but I doubt they’re connected.
My mother tells me as a kid if you wore yellow and green you were a “fairy.” She genuinely thought they meant a mythical creature at the time. Then again, it was upstate New York so who knows.
To get really obscure, there was - at least according to the Scottish antiquarian Sir Iain Moncreiffe - a proverb that “a Lindsay in green ought never be seen.” Supposedly, it arose from a brawl between green-clad supporters of the Earl of Crawford (chief of the Lindsays) and those of the Earl of Airlie (the Ogilvy chief), with whom Crawford was feuding. The Ogilvys routed the Lindsays and killed a number of them. But Sir Iain was a bit of a romantic (albeit even he expressed some skepticism), so who knows?
I’ve never heard of the “green = gay” before. Sounds like a bit of kidlore, like the spiders in the Pop Rocks and green M&Ms making you horny.
When I was in high school, you were a lesbian if you wore red and black together on a Friday. This was the 60s. I ignored it.
Around here it meant Green Bay Packers fan.
Never heard the green on Thursday bit, 70s-80s childhood in southern California.
About the time my kids started middle school, say 2011 or so, the playground scuttlebutt was girls who wore white pants liked anal.