Meet the plus-size, beefy gay model fronting Abercrombie’s new campaign

When fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch revealed its 2020 ‘Face Your Fierce’ campaign last month – to promote its various ‘Fierce’ fragrances – much was written about the diversity of the models featured.

In a noted move away from A&F campaigns of yore, the line-up included a mixture of body shapes, gender identities and sexualities. Well-known LGBTQ faces included the athletes Megan Rapinoe and Gus Kenworthy.

Related: Megan Rapinoe, Gus Kenworthy, Ryan Russell star in Abercrombie campaign

But not everyone boasts a slim, athletic physique, and Abercrombie is now keen to promote itself as welcoming all, regardless of size. The campaign utilized body positivity advocate Halle Hathaway and plus-size male model, Michael McCauley.

For McCauley, to be asked to be featured in the campaign was a dream come true. The 29-year-old, who stands 6’1” and 260lbs, has only been professionally modeling for around 18 months.

“It was funny because when Sergio [his agent] called me, he said it’s for Abercrombie, and I laughed and asked, ‘Have they got the right Mike?’ because there’s another Mike at LA Models who’s perhaps a more traditional Abercrombie model. And he was like, “No, they definitely want you.”

McCauley’s modeling career began when he met the aforementioned Sergio of LA Models at a party. The agent and talent scout suggested he do a test shoot.

“The photos came back. I was signed, and I think within a few days I applied for my first job. Since then I’ve also signed with Options up in Portland. And I’m looking at some other ones internationally.”

McCauley grew up in Portland, Oregon. He now lives in Los Angeles, California. Modeling, at the moment, remains a sideline. His day job is working for a company involved with programmatic and mobile advertising. He talks via Skype from a hotel in New York City, frantically trying to iron a shirt before dashing off to a work meeting. He is also pursuing potential acting roles.

Before being signed, professional modeling was not something he’d ever considered.

“No! I never thought it was possible. I mean, let’s be real, there really aren’t guys like my size who are models. There’s only a handful.”

Related: Colton Haynes’ new Abercrombie photos aren’t half as hot as his others

The Abercrombie campaign is a sign of changing times. The brand is still best remembered for its campaigns from the 90s and 00s when it promoted a strict aesthetic for men of washboard abs and hairless, toned torsos.

In fact, back in 2006, the brand’s then CEO, Mike Jeffries, told Salon, “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla.”

“They haven’t had the best track record, you could say,” McCauley concedes, “but when I got to the set, the team there were just the nicest people.”

He showed up expecting to be kitted out in the latest A&F fashions. He wasn’t expecting to pose shirtless.

“That was never really the initial plan. We’d been shooting for the entire day and at the very end of the day, they had one last picture for me [to do].

“The photographer asked me if I’d be comfortable taking my shirt off for a couple of pictures, and I was like, ‘Absolutely, of course.’ I’d always had it in my head to do something a little old-school Abercrombie. I dreamed of an opportunity like this, so it was pretty unreal.

“My only stipulation was we have to cue to music. We needed some energy, so we put on a K-Pop standard, “DDU-DU DDU-DU” by BlackPink,” he laughs.

Suitably re-energized, McCauley turned in poses that will now grace displays in Abercrombie stores nationwide.He says his image has already prompted plenty of feedback.

 

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A post shared by America’s Favorite Model (@michaelrobertmccauley) on Feb 7, 2020 at 5:39am PST

“I’ve seen tons of messages, DMs, people just so excited to see representation of guys like them in modeling. Especially in Abercrombie. I’ve had probably over 100 messages from people saying they’re, ‘going to go to Abercrombie to see you in the store’.”

Rewind to the 1990s and it was a very different story. McCauley remembers how his mom wouldn’t let him shop in A&F stores or own the brand’s catalogs.

“They [the catalogs] were very suggestive and hypersexual,” he says. “So just thinking that I could have gone into the store and seen a guy like me, that it was OK to have your body like that, and that’s sexy too … that would have been a powerful message to me growing up.”

McCauley is gay. He says coming out to his parents as a teenager was relatively smooth: “They are super understanding and super loving.”

Encouraged by their support, he decided to come out to his whole high school during his senior year.

“I was supposed to help out with planning our diversity assembly, [and] in the back of my mind I’d been wanting to profile a gay person.”

Given then he was gay himself, and his parents had been OK with it, he soon realized he might have to do it himself.

“So in front of 2,000 kids, I came out to my entire high school at the assembly. I told my whole story and basically confronted the bullies right in front of their faces. I didn’t name names but kind of referenced people and some things that had happened.

“My mom had been very ‘I don’t know if this is a good idea?’, and my dad was like, ‘Yeah, you should do this,’ but when it all came out, it had a really good effect on our community and I never got any trouble for being gay again after that. No-one’s going to make fun of you for something that you’ve already put out there.”

 

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Michael Robert Mccauley // Photographed at @justinhardinghair

A post shared by Aaron Jay Young | Photographer (@aaronjayyoung) on Sep 19, 2019 at 1:57pm PDT

Putting himself “out there” is intrinsic to McCauley’s new career path. He says friends and family are supportive of his modeling and other ambitions.

“They’re loving it. I think my mom was a little bit concerned at first … she’s always a little bit concerned. She’s a mother, right? She’s like, ‘Are you sure you want to take your shirt off? You look really nice in your clothes?’ But I think once the campaign came out, she got the messaging behind it. And the rest of my family and friends have really got the message.”

 

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This picture sums up our relationship! @kellengeha and I just celebrated our anniversary! I can’t wait to travel the world together and eventually start a family together! I love waking up with you to your cute smiling face every morning excited for what’s to come next! I LOVE YOU!!!

A post shared by America’s Favorite Model (@michaelrobertmccauley) on Feb 18, 2020 at 12:14pm PST

Another pillar of support is his boyfriend, Kellen. They met on Tinder, and McCauley says they work a lot together.

“We travel a lot together. When you’re seeing stuff on Instagram, a lot of the photoshoots, he’s often behind the camera or he’s helping me with content and editing… even just driving to auditions and go-sees, because LA can be a parking nightmare. We’re definitely a team.”

Is McCauley now having to cope with thirsty DMs in his inbox?

“Honestly, like, there’s comments and people send messages,” he laughs, “I’m very flattered, but I just ignore. I don’t hook into it. I’m very much in love and very happy.”

The Abercrombie campaign is opening doors for McCauley and he’s looking forward to seeing where modeling might take him. If he can challenge people’s notions of beauty along the way, all the better.

“This year I really want to circle into more acting, but keep up the modeling, obviously. I’ve been loving, loving it, so definitely more modeling.”

 

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No pill bottle or club will ever come close to the HIGH you get when you chase your dreams and do what you love. Thank you for helping me get where I am today and continuing to support me. Lots of love!

A post shared by America’s Favorite Model (@michaelrobertmccauley) on Oct 23, 2019 at 6:39pm PDT

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A Bunch of No-Talent Queens on This Week’s ‘Drag Race’ [RECAP and RANKINGS]

It may be episode three, but it feels like the first real installment of RuPaul’s Drag Race. This season’s 13 queens are finally all together, and the results are … a little tiresome.

Before we get into it, it’s worth noting that the Sherry Pie situation continues to affect the season. In addition to the disclaimer that aired before last week’s episode, this week featured a noticeable lack of confessional interviews and camera time for the queen whose history of manipulating and taking advantage of young men has recently been reported. (They also included a card at the end about donating to the Trevor Project to offset Sherry’s prize.)

It seems the show is taking a similar tact to how I explained I’ll be handling the queen’s contributions: Keeping mentions to an absolute minimum. Some of you disagree, and that’s OK.

Seeing all the girls together, I’m fine being short a queen anyway. The overstuffed cast struggled through a seemingly never-ending series of partially improv’d comedy scenes that would make Rock M.’s fart jokes look like Lenny Bruce. There are at least three or four more girls we could cut right now and still have a sickening season.

You wouldn’t know it by all the peacocking happening around the work room when the two premiere groups first meet. In typical reality-TV fashion, each group feels an inexplicable loyalty to their premiere sisters right away, and it casts a weird vibe through a mini-challenge and team selection that requires critical thinking.

First, Ru has winners Jaida and Widow each rank a group of girls from the most threatening to the least. Jaida puts Gigi first and Heidi last, while Widow picks Sherry for tops and Aiden Zhane at the bottom. All that matters are the bottoms (as usual, am I right? #justiceforbottoms). Aiden and Heidi will each captain a team, as will Jaida and Widow.

The basic framework for the main challenge is an America’s Got Talent–American Idol hybrid nightmare. The gag here is it’s a no-talent contest where the point is to be the worst. Let me tell you, it’s a very close competition!

The first (and easily best) group consists of Heidi, Jackie and Gigi portraying a geriatric group of sister singers. The (production-supplied) outline of the sketch has Jackie basically Weekend at Bernie’s-ing Gigi through most of the sketch. However, it’s Jackie’s quick-thinking and Heidi’s natural charisma that makes an otherwise stupidly silly sketch thoroughly enjoyable.

(Let is also be said that Gigi managed to play the part of a corpse perfectly, and she nailed her big moment at the end. I know it seems easy to play dead, but that’s a lot of trust to put in your teammates.)

The next group, Aiden, Sherry and Brita, serve a sort of mish-mash of The Craft and Hocus Pocus as three witches who were struck by lightning and now share a brain. They give their all, but it’s only so funny watching them slowly say prepared bits in sync. (Truly, the improv of these scenes is minimal, and what’s written is … not great.)

It only gets worse from there. Widow’s team, along with Crystal and Nicky, take the scene in a Shark Tank direction as abandoned scouts hocking nut butter. The jokes here are the most obvious, and this team basically leaves every single potential pun on the table. Widow makes a few character choices, which is a few more than either of her teammates, so her performance shines by comparison. Nicki merely fades into the background, while Crystal whiffs every groundball Ross tosses her way. (Whoa, did I just do a sports metaphor?) It’s uncomfortable watching Crystal squirm.

At this point, when the final group took the screen, I shrieked THERE’S STILL MORE?! #TooManyQueens

The final group is just … ho boy. Look, it’s not really the fault of Rock, Jan and Jaida. (Dahlia, well, she’s got some things to answer for.) As many times as I try to summarize the premise here (a group of straight … men? … pretending to be a group of gay activists dressed as fruit? And also a broccoli for some reason?) the more I start to dissociate and lose touch with reality.

It’s bad, y’all. Even Jan can hardly wring a laugh out of this drivel. By the time Jaida arrives and starts a “food fight,” it’s clear even the low-hanging fruit they’re mining for laughs is rotten to the core.

The runway this week featured buttons and bows, and the ladies continue to bring it with their fashions. We’ll chat about the individual outfits in our rankings.

Our top three are Sherry, Heidi and Jackie, with Sherry picking up the win. Heidi and Jackie out-performed her in the challenge, in my opinion, but Sherry’s high-fashion runway likely pushed her over the edge.

As for the bottom, Crystal, Nicky and Dahlia all face the judges for fading in their scenes. Crystal gets extra clocked for her makeup choices, which everyone saw coming. If she can’t get it together and push herself, she won’t be long for this cast.

She will at least live to see next week, since she’s spared the bottom two. That leaves Dahlia and Nicki to sloppily, lazily smack their lips together loosely to the rhythm of Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea’s “Problem.” It’s a weak sync, with Dahlia barely attempting to mimic the lyrics and neither queen pushing their dance moves beyond “disinterested go-go boy” levels of enthusiasm.

Nicky wins, whatever, and Dahlia quickly thanks Ru and scuttles right off stage. Bye, gurl!

Before our rankings, now would be a good time to remind you that drag queens (and LGBTQ performers of all stripes!) are all getting hit hard with cancelations right now. If you want to support drag, go order a T-shirt or other merch from your favorite queens. These artists depend on gig money and tips, neither of which is going to be easy to come by for the next few weeks. Go to your queens’ websites, or get started at DragQueenMerch.com.

Now, on to the rankings.

1. Although this was a sleeper episode for her, Jan still seems to be ahead of the pack. Her Voodoo doll runway finally delivered what so many other queens have attempted over the years. While her character had little to do in the challenge, even her initial approach to the character in the work room highlighted how savvy this queen is.
2. Gigi had another surprisingly successful comedic performance, proving again she’s not just a pretty James Charles-copycat face. She’s tackled rap, a wacky lip sync and now this slapstick character, each one requiring a different comedic muscle, and she excelled at all three. She’s smart about knowing her limits and using her weaknesses as strengths (like how she anti-danced to “Starships” in episode one). I adored her button lewk. Clearly, she plans on mopping the floor with these runways. Let’s see what happens when she needs to construct with unconventional materials on the spot.
3. Brita took charge early with her group (though with the Sherry edits, it’s hard to say how much share she really had in the leadership), but it looks like it paid off. She had solid notes and clear direction for the group, and she’s packed plenty of polished outfits, it seems. (Although, I do wish she’d do a better job steaming some of these gowns. They look a little wrinkly.) It’s evident she’s a multi-threat, even if she’s sort of flying under the radar for now.
4. Jaida clearly doesn’t work well with others, but she knows what she’s doing when it comes to looking out for herself. She wisely snatched the best role from her group, and she seems to have the perfect outfit for every runway theme. What she lacks in performance talent, she more than makes up for it with confidence and charm.
5. Widow had another strong week, but I do think her comedic performance was bolstered by being alongside some very weak teammates. She looked much stronger by comparison. The way she clowned the runway was a nice touch, but hard to see next to Jan and even Heidi who both did character work with much more fashion flare. My real concern with Widow is her over-confidence may blind her to her own shortcomings. That’ll catch up to her at the worst time.
6. I am fully here for the rise of Heidi. I hope she continues to shoot up the rankings until she is No. 1. A true oddball in the vein of Alyssa Edwards, Heidi is destined for internet adoration. She will be the queen to launch a million memes, and I love it. She was a top performer this week, and her Pinocchio runway could stand side-by-side with all the other pros.
7. Jackie is a fighter, no doubt, and she carried her team (metaphorically and literally). There’s clearly a ceiling to her fashion sense, but there is no limit to this queen’s smarts and talent. Let’s hope she’s packed enough to keep it interesting for the judges, because this season features some of the strongest lewk queens we’ve ever seen.
8. Even if Aiden feels like she’s not in the same league as the other competitors, there is something oddly compelling about her. In drag, she gives me Big Dark Fairy energy, if that makes any sense. She’s going to be struggling through these challenges, but her uniqueness will carry her beyond some of the other also-rans we’ll burn through first.
9. I get the sense Nicky is an incredibly talented, fully-realized performer, but this just might not be the arena for her to shine. A lot of times it seems like these queens need more time to incubate, find their voice, etc. However, it seems like Nicky is there already. Her Cinderella-inspired runway was so clever, and I couldn’t stop looking at it, noticing new details each time. She’s incredibly talented, but she’s never going to be a comedian.
10. Oh, Rock M., are you OK? Her meltdown in the work room after the first challenge was cause for concern, but now (on, what, day three?) she’s already needing help with her emotional core. She did better this week, and I really enjoyed her Alice In Wonderland runway, but it does seem like she is cracking under the pressure almost immediately.
11. Also cracking? Crystal. We were told on day one not to underestimate her, but, I don’t know, maybe we properly estimated her? I get that her whole thing is like Powerpuff Girls villain, but surely she knows she can’t maintain that for a whole season. Maybe she gets her confidence from Crystal’s paint, because it’s the only face she’s good at doing? If only her comedy chops could compensate for the narrow aesthetic, but that sketch was rough.
12. Yeah, no surprise to see Dahlia sashay away. Most disappointing, how is anyone from the Haus of Aja gonna do a lip sync like that? Aja was an assassin; Dahlia is an Ambien. Stay pretty, sis, and we’ll catch you on the ‘gram. Sashay away.

How would you rank the queens?

The post A Bunch of No-Talent Queens on This Week’s ‘Drag Race’ [RECAP and RANKINGS] appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

A Bunch of No-Talent Queens on This Week’s ‘Drag Race’ [RECAP and RANKINGS]