playgirl finally put a gay man on the cover and he won't show his face

via Playgirl and PinkNews.

The mask stays on. Everything else is negotiable, and this month most of it was negotiated away.

Orville Peck is Playgirl's September cover star, shot by Anna Garbowska, interviewed by Candace Hansen, wearing the fringe and a hat and a strategic amount of nothing. The magazine's own account calls him "the first openly gay country music star to grace the cover of #Playgirl." PinkNews put it wider in its headline, as the first out gay male cover star full stop. Somewhere in there is a milestone, and the argument over exactly which milestone it is feels like a problem for a different magazine.

He is very good on why the costume works. "I think the idea of a cowboy is such a trope of masculinity," he told Playgirl. "What's sexier than a little bit of rebellion?" And then, closing the case: "And chaps? If you don't think that's gay I don't know what to tell you."

The rest of the interview is not a photoshoot interview at all. It is about getting sober, which is what his fourth album is about too. "It wasn't about changing or fixing myself," he said. "It was about clearing out everything to be more of who I have always been." He says the mask saved his life, because it let him write things he could not have written with his face showing, and that he has learned to ask friends the plain version of the question: hey, are you good.

Mule arrives September 18 on Warner. It is an album about a year of partying, pain and coming out the other side, which is a heavy thing to put on a record and a genuinely funny thing to promote by taking your clothes off. He did both in the same week, and the week also gave us a congressional candidate's old leather ads, so the discourse is in fine health.