Fans for gay

Clack that fan!…

By Bobby Box

It was a straightforward topic, I thought: how we, the gay collective, became synonymous with folding fans. You know the ones – those obnoxious handheld devices that create loud, ear-piercing sounds, producing a soundtrack at circuit parties. But I was wrong. Scouring the internet, I found zero facts regarding our history with the item. I was equally dismayed to detect that it has nothing to do with Mortal Kombat’s Princess Kitana. (Because, credit where credit is due.)

While there is no reputable resource for its significance in queer society, there is information ready on how the item came to be in everyday society. First, the obvious: the folding fan was originally created to cool people down and not, as gays contain adapted it, to be a clamorous method of expressing enthusiasm.

Artisans in seventh-century Japan invented the fan, creating their trademark fan using a set of sticks (made of wood, ivory, mother-of-pearl, etc.), assembled at each end and held together at the base by a rivet. The “leaf” of the fan, inspired by banana leaves, is a semi-circular piece of cloth, lac

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