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Gay guys unpack their secret fetish for backwards baseball caps

Man in baseball cap

Wanna round all the bases with your masc-obsessed gay crush? Seems like you can score a home run just by throwing on a baseball cap, especially backward.

In a Reddit thread this month, gay guys lusted over cap-wearing dudes after one user asked if he needed to “unpack” his baseball-cap fixation.

“Guys in porn wearing baseball caps is a huge turn-on for me,” he explained. “I’ve always loved seeing porn actors wearing baseball caps, and these days with OnlyFans, there are certain guys (Holden Hunt, Gunnar Joseph, Greg Dixxon) who wear caps mostly and have become favorites. … Is this just subconscious hots for straight guys and a locker room fetish?”

And as you might expect, many commenters on the thread could sympathize. “Right there with ya,” one wrote. “I have sometimes intentionally worn a baseball cap to go hook up. … Love turning it around as I get on my knees and also when a guy knocks it off my head.”

Another wrote: “It’s very, very hot. My [boyfriend] wears a hat sometimes, but when we first started dating, when he would flip his hat backwards when f*cking me. I thought it was just so hot. It’s a very ‘straight’ male kinda thing. He is bi though, so…”

Related: There’s a responsible way to be masc-attracted, says the Internet

A third commenter speculated that the original poster is “just really into sporty guys” and pointed out that plenty of gay people play baseball, too. “Only you truly know if it’s about straight men or not,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, someone else shared proof that this hat trick, so to speak, has been working its magic for decades. “Thirty years ago, a guy in college told me he went to another guy’s place while wearing his baseball cap, and the other guy told him to leave the cap on during sex,” that user wrote.

By the way, this baseball cap phenomenon among gay men is well documented.

In 2012, before he was a sex advice-giver at Slate, Rich Juzwiak revealed to Gawker readers that he too is “a big fan of the porn-approved turning of the hat brim from the front to the back.” (He was perplexed, however, when one date wore his baseball cap for their entire hookup and then kept it on in the shower afterward.)

In that same piece, Juzwiak called the baseball cap “the cheat of cheats—the easiest, most temporary way of projecting butchness in the entire Land of Gay.”

And in a 2017 essay for The Advocate, writer Ben Kawaller said he discovered the power of the baseball cap after seeing a photo of himself dressed up as a New York Mets player one Halloween.

“When I saw it, I knew I’d struck on something major: it turns out, throw a baseball cap on this thirsty theater queen and voila: She’s masc!” Kawaller wrote. “I’ve been wearing a baseball cap ever since. Crucially, a backward baseball cap. … With one simple accessory, I can imply a whole set of qualities utterly foreign to me—like, for instance, a knowledge of baseball beyond the plot of Damn Yankees.”

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