Help! My Dad's Gone Gaga!

Recently, my dad informed me that he's been watching music videos of - would you believe? - Lady Gaga.  You're probably saying, "Big deal, Mike, everyone's seen her videos!"  But what you have to understand is that this is highly uncharacteristic of my dad, because he is one of the biggest homophobes I know.  Up to this point, he seemed to have minimal tolerance for people of the male gender doing anything remotely effeminate.  I mean, this is a guy who once called his own son a certain three-letter 'F' word just because he used a washcloth in the shower; who once called my soundtrack from Les Mis "dandy* music"; who seemed to think everyone in LOTR was gay just because Sir Ian McKellen is gay; who even found ways to insert gay references into Yu-Gi-Oh (then again, they kinda set themselves up for it with the Flame Swordsman) and other cartoons that were beyond his understanding, verbally reeanacting scenes in which the male characters dress in French maid outfits while my sister and I were trying to watch TV.  In fact, I used to joke that one of the first two things I'd do when I went off to college would be to buy a pink shirt, just 'cuz I knew it would tick him off.  (For the record, the other thing was to shave my head completely bald, though I have yet to do either as of this writing.) 

Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating about my dad's apparent homophobia.  I say this because I've seen him watching such shows as Tim Gunn's Guide to Fashion (meanwhile criticizing my mom for watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).  He also seems to have a strange - well, at least for a male from his generation - obsession with P!nk, because I've caught him on several occaisions watching her music videos on YouTube over and over (the most recent being "Please Don't Leave Me"). 

Now, I'm not trying to criticize my dad's tastes in music, because I listen to Lady Gaga and Rihanna all the time when I work out.  What I'm trying to say is that I'm having a little trouble reconciling these two conflicting sides of my dad's personality.  I think the whole Marlboro Man facade comes from the way he was raised as a kid.  I still remember his impression of my pap the time he saw the earring on my aunt's boyfriend ("Aw, for Chri'sakes, what are ya, a friggin' pirate?")  But times have changed, and people as a whole are much more tolerant when it comes to issues of gender and orientation (cf. "Boy Bands", 30 May 2010), and my dad is no exception.  He's found that he's free to listen to whatever music he wants without the stigma of being labeled effeminate, and I like to think it's the start of my dad becoming a much more tolerant person. 

B-)


* For those of you not familiar with certain dialect, "dandy" is a slang term used to describe something seen as effeminate, in the same disparaging way that words such as "sissy", "gay", or "queer" have been used these days.  My dad's the only one I've ever heard use the term, though, so I don't really know where it comes from.