From Don’t Panic’s About Us:
Don’t Panic Designs was launched in 1990 on the back of the “Nobody Knows I’m Gay” t-shirt, was sold through a booth at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Festival. After just three months the company sold more than $30,000 worth of shirts. With a string of sexually liberating titles emblazoned across the front of shirts declaring slogans like “2QT2BSTR8″. Don’t Panic! has flourished into a thriving wholesale and retail operation. Stars like Madonna, Lily Tomlin, Rosie O’donnell, Will Ferrell and Axl Rose, (who sported a “Nobody Knows I’m Gay” shirt on stage in Japan) have added Don’t Panic! originals to their wardrobes. Since 1992, the Don’t Panic “Miracles Happen” scheme of AIDS-research benefiting products have raised more than $80,000 for the American Federation for AIDS Research (AmFAR).
Don’t Panic: Saving The World, One T-Shirt At A Time!
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Propitiously well-suited to discussions about a “Nobody Knows I’m Gay” T-shirt, this interesting glimpse into gay British history just fell into my lap whilst surfing about on Flickr.
Now your article begs the question of me: am I working with the Army because I don’t want to be perceived as too feminine from thinking too much, or is it because the alternative, working with the Navy would just make me a ‘Sea Queen’?!
My favorite line from the article is this one:
Is it a gay crowd, or simply a crowd of gays?
Funny, now that you mention it, I daresay my own decision to go Army over 30 years ago may have had a very similar motivation. Not even so much a conscious one, but simply the “background idea” that boys in the Navy took a lot of ribbing about their sex lives – which I preferred to avoid. On the other hand, it’s also true I’ve never really understood the “mystique” of the briny, cold, endless, unforgiving, dangerous and ceaselessly agitated sea. Give me a stand of pines on a mountain ridge somewhere, and I’m pretty much in heaven. ;p
As for crowds: if they’re dancing, singing, telling spontaneous good-natured jokes and laughing a lot, it’s a “gay crowd;” if they’re moping around staring at their drinks and bitching about what lousy sex lives they have and how inappropriately certain people in the crowd are dressed, it’s “simply a crowd of gays.” I think.
Heheheh.
I think it’s interesting that you mention ‘the background idea’. I think it relates to something on ‘covering’ that I was literally just posting when I read your comment. Perhaps if you looked at some more Paul Cadmus work you’d see what the attraction is!
Yes, alas, I see clearly now that I definitely “missed the boat.”