Reference to ‘gay dancers’ unnecessary

I read Colette Browne’s article (Opinion, Feb 27) with interest.

I am fascinated by her uncanny ability to ‘call’ quite complex matters with an easy and enviable certainty. Alas, I’m sure I can’t have been the only one who finished Wednesday’s effort with a strange sense of unease. With all her customary brio, Colette sets out her objections to the ‘We Saw Your Boobs’ song and dance number performed by Seth McFarlane at the Oscars. Colette didn’t like it and she may well have a point. After all, who does like ‘reductive offensive stereotypes’? I’m not that gone on them myself. That was why my attention was drawn to her rather dismissive description of McFarlane’s supporting cast as a ‘troupe of gay dancers prancing about the stage’.

How does Colette know that all — or indeed, any — of the dancers are gay? And even if they are gay, what difference does it make? Again, what are we to make of the verb she allocates their efforts, ‘prancing’? Why ‘prancing’? Is that what gay dancers do? As opposed to straight dancers?

It’s all a little dismissive, and slightly undermining of the point that she’s trying so earnestly to make. Stereotyping Hollywood hoofers as prancing gays is no less questionable than reducing Meryl Streep to the fact that she has female breasts. I’m sure that Colette will be disappointed to see how she has, unwittingly, reinforced a stereotype that Hollywood dancers have been trying prance away from since the days of Busby Berkeley.

But equally, I hope it will not stop her holding forth on whatever piece of institutional patriarchal bias she focuses on next. We all make the occasional small boob.

Cathal MacCarthy

Ennis Road

Limerick