Thirty years ago …
January 6, 1984
Having served barely five years for the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, Dan White is paroled from prison. His release prompts protest rallies in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. “Yesterday was the last day Dan White could be assured he'd live through the whole day,” says one protester, pointedly eating a [Hostess] Twinkie before several thousand demonstrators in San Francisco. “I don't call for violence, but who knows, maybe one of us someday will be a little depressed, maybe off our diets, and who knows what may happen.”
Having been ordered by his parole board to stay away from San Francisco, White settles in Southern California.
--Leigh Rutledge, The Gay Decades
Oh, those Hostess Twinkies!
Pretty much everyone knows about Dan White's infamous Hostess Twinkies defense. And now that there the U.S. Post Office is releasing a stamp commemorating Harvey Milk, the outrage about the above really erupts. )
It's so horrible, White's act of violence and his attempt to justify it, that the only psychosocial defense mechanism is to laugh and make jokes. Like we do, and continue to do, about the bathroom and what goes on in there. (I would call Dan White one of the words we use to refer to something we do in the toilet, but I will control myself.)
But the word, brand name, and food I am most fascinated with here is Hostess Twinkie. Note I always preface that word with Hostess. Why? Because that is the real, true, authentic brand.
Remember when the Hostess plant closed? And they were no longer on the shelves? I was afraid of violence occurring not because of access to them, as Dan White claimed, but because they weren't there.
Knock-off brands like Cloud Cakes (not spongy enough) didn't cut it. The original Hostess Twinkies are back now, with a different manufacturer.
My question is, though: why did a certain type of younger male person come to be called that name, without the “ie?” Does the yellow color, vaguely phallic shape, and the cream filling evoke innocence but also hotness?
That whole youthful look really took off in the 1960s gay magazines. Then Toby Ross and some of the other early gay porn filmmakers actually made the look iconic and connected it with complex social issues of coming out and sexual identity.
And the look keeps transmuting into boy bands and the Jonas Brothers and the now infamous Bieber and all that tweeny stuff. Yes, they're back now, with different image manufacturers.
Of course, some (not all) of those younger males I might associate more with Hostess Ding-Dongs (not the shape, but the meaning of the word ding-dong).
The youngman or “Hostess Twinkie” is beautiful, but also dangerous perhaps because it straddles the boundaries between childhood innocence and adult experience.
Donatello's David is perfectly beautiful, but he holds the head of the older, more mature Goliath. Arrogantly and triumphantly.
I've always preferred Ho-Hos.
