Postracial Queer Romance: A Close Reading of Anthony Bowens and Michael Pavano's Interracial Relationship in YouTube (and Beyond)

Visibilities of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer-plus (LGBTQ+) celebrities, entertainers, and influencers are increasing in media and social media (e.g., Christian, 2018; Eguchi & Washington, 2016; Martin & Battles, 2021). One of the most well-known public figures is Black mixed-race male pro wrestler Anthony Bowens. He is signed to the U.S.-based second-largest promotion All Elites Wrestling (AEW), founded on January 1, 2019. Bowens is also an actor, model, and YouTuber. Born on December 18, 1990 and raised in New Jersey, former college baseball player Bowens made his wrestling debut in 2013. On September 18, 2016, Bowens and white male actor Michael Pavano, 3 years Bowens’ junior, uploaded the YouTube video content called The Laughing Challenge in which Pavano says Bowens is his boyfriend. Later, Bowens came out as bisexual on the LGBTQ+ sports news website Outsports in March 2017. ¹ He then came out as gay in January, 2019. ² Well-known gay magazines, such as Attitudes (2018 March) and Gaytimes (2019 February), featured Bowens’ coming out.

Since then, Bowens and Pavano have gained attention on social media as a queer influencer couple. The YouTube channel Michael & Anthony, where Bowens and Pavano co-share their couple vlogs and scripted parodies, has attracted 223K subscribers. ³ Bowens and Pavano's other platforms also drew an audience for their images and stories. Bowens’ Instagram (@bowens_official) has 123K followers. ⁴ His Twitter (@bowens_official) has 88.4K followers. ⁵ Pavano's Instagram (@michaelpavano) has 77.4K followers. ⁶ His Twitter (@michaelpavano) has 22.6K followers. ⁷ Moreover, Bowens and Pavano were invited to walk the red carpet for the 30th Annual Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) media awards ceremony ⁸ and the 33rd GLAAD ceremony. ⁹ This is a notable event honoring media programs promoting inclusive representations of LGBTQ+ people. Bowens and Pavano's attendance at these ceremonies signifies how the couple's images and stories expand the digital archives of queer romantic content.

In this essay, I perform a close reading of YouTube's Michael & Anthony's video content. I am drawn to the interracial aspects of Bowens and Pavano's queer romance. There are many media images available of an attractive white cisgender masculine man being romantic with another attractive white cisgender masculine man (e.g., Han, 2021; McBride, 2005; Puar, 2007). Queer people of color and their romantic stories remain underrepresented (e.g., Johnson, 2016; Rudrow & Edgar, 2023). However, the Internet is expanding media practices by offering innovative opportunities to produce content representing diversity (Christian, 2018). To illustrate this, YouTube provides an alternative platform for queer people of color to build support systems and networks (Rudrow, 2023). Still, YouTube reproduces dynamics similar to broadcast and cable networks in failing to promote the work of historically marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ people of color (Christian, 2020). The Washington Post (Bensinger & Albergotti, 2019) also critiqued how YouTube perpetuates unfair and unequal treatment of LGBTQ+ video content. Given these constraints, Michael & Anthony must work around the normative cultural logic to gain popularity. In this context, my reading of Michael & Anthony's video content contemplates how the interracial aspects of Bowens and Pavano's queer romance offer moments to question, critique, and reimagine the politics of interracial dating. This contemplation speaks with E. Patrick Johnson (2001)'s invitation to engage in queer of color research on “interracial dating and the identity politics such couplings invoke” (p. 19).

My particular interest in Michael & Anthony is to examine how the representations of Bowens and Pavano's romance reify or resist the logic of postracialism working with the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. Scholars (e.g., Griffin, 2018; Joseph, 2018; Squires et al., 2010) have suggested that the media falsely claims race is a matter of the past. This is a rhetorical strategy of postracialism to obfuscate histories of structural racism and to endorse the sanctity of individualism as an ideal social norm (Gray, 2013). Take as an example, the productions of queerness focus too much on the individualistic, anti-relational paradigm of coming out as the goal of minoritized sexual and gender struggles (Cohen, 1997). LGBTQ+ people are assumed to be given personal choices to come out of the closet that represses their non-conforming sexualities and genders (McCune, 2014). The paradigm of coming out, rooted in the logic of personal agency, responsibility, freedom, and merit, defines hegemonic queerness (Johnson, 2019). However, coming out not only takes place in relationships with people in political, economic, and historical contexts; it is also not the magic solution to minoritized sexual and gender struggles. Indeed, critiques of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement demonstrate its postracial erasures of relational and communal ties that are significant aspects of LGBTQ+ people of color developing collective resistances (e.g., Ferguson, 2019; Johnson, 2016; Muñoz, 2009). Hence, I am concerned with how Bowens and Pavano's queer romantic content offers raw material for investigating the logic of postracialism.

Below, I discuss my mobilization of queer of color critique to read Michael & Anthony. I also elaborate on how I perform my close reading. My analysis follows. Last, I consider implications drawn from my analysis.

Queer of Color Critique

Queer of color critique (e.g., Alexander, 2021; Cohen, 1997; Ferguson, 2019; Johnson, 2001; McCune, 2014; Muñoz, 1999; Snorton, 2014) interrogates the conditions and relations of power in which queer people of color struggle with multiple marginalized positions of differences (i.e., race, gender, sexuality, class, and the body). The incorporation of queerness into social institutions (i.e., media, family, education, religion, and politics) maintains the territories of whiteness embracing the sanctity of individualism (Johnson, 2019). This production of hegemonic queerness marginalizes historically saturated and culture-specific nuances of knowledge associated with queer people of color (e.g., Johnson, 2019; McCune, 2014). However, the (sub)cultural productions of racialized, gendered, and classed queerness are multiple, dynamic, and unstable (Alexander, 2021). Queer people of color, whose differences are shored up under the label, can never be reduced to a singular, fixed, and finalized notion of identity, performance, and representation (e.g., Rudrow, 2023; Rudrow & Edgar, 2023). The conditions of being queer people of color are continually shifting and ambiguous borderlands (e.g., Calafell, 2012; Eguchi, Calafell et al., 2014; Eguchi, Files-Thompson et al., 2018).

That is why queer of color critique approaches the conceptualization of queerness as impossible possibilities, struggling to depart from the present (e.g., Chambers-Letson, 2018; Keeling, 2019; Muñoz, 2009). The historical structures of power such as racism, heterosexism, classism, and capitalism colonize the present-ness that controls, disciplines, and surveils queerness as a moment of transgression (e.g., Johnson, 2016, 2019; McCune, 2014). Hence, a part of queers searching for possibilities accompanies impossibilities. It is difficult for queers to imagine the future as a destination that breaks free of power (Muñoz, 2009). The paradox of queerness that gestures toward the optimistic notion that everyone could/should be able to be who they want to be cannot be separated from the logic of pessimism. This tension feels like a failure. As Halberstam (2011) reminds, “Queerness offers the promise of failure as a way of life…but it is up to us whether we choose to make good on that promise in a way that makes a detour around the usual markers of accomplishment and satisfaction” (p. 186). The present moment working with the affective nationalism of family as civic responsibility makes queer possibilities impossible (Hsu, 2022).

Take as an example, the initial emergence of queer politics showcased its multidimensional concerns (Ferguson, 2019). Intersectional critiques of political struggles (i.e., racism, sexism, classism, capitalism, and more) were at the heart of queer politics. However, with increasing structural incorporation of hegemonic queerness to the state and capital, a reductive articulation of queer politics solely rooted in homosexuality arose (Duggan, 2002). The gay liberation movement operates as the marriage equality movement (Puar, 2007). The landscape of homonationalism that capitalizes on the depoliticization of homosexuality as nationalism fosters the market economy of sexual and gender liberalism (Ferguson, 2019). Intersectional queer critiques remain marginalized in the present moment.

Accordingly, queer of color critique embraces the paradox of how queer people of color engage in disidentifications with the normative cultural logic for their survival (Johnson, 2001). As Muñoz (1999) suggests, disidentification “is a reformatting of self within the social. It is a third term that resists the binary of identification and counteridentification” (p. 97). For example, gay sexual cultures that structure the beauty standard, sexual racism, and desirability politics support the territories of whiteness. The youthful white masculine ideal, characterized as the buffed-out gay Adonis (BOGA), is a center of gay sexual desirability (McBride, 2005). Racist phrases such as “No Blacks” are common on gay dating websites (Han, 2021). In this context, queer people of color are subjected to make over a gay sexual cultural logic within. The dimensions of disidentification that “works on and against dominant ideology” (Muñoz, 1999, p. 11) provide alterative paths for them to neither assimilate nor firmly resist the oppressive structure. Disidentification contemplates nuanced politics of minoritized sexual and gender knowledge, representing moments of resistant (im)possibilities (Muñoz, 1999).

The genealogy of queer of color critique as described above has focused on media representations of Black queerness. In his analysis of Moonlight (2016), the Oscar winning film focusing on Black queer masculinity, Johnson (2019) calls to approach Black queerness as a makeshift epistemology. By this he means, Black queerness is specific at the thick intersections of sexualities, racial identifications, gender expressions, religious and spiritual affiliations, and particularly class experiences (e.g., Alexander, 2021; Rudrow & Edgar, 2023). As Johnson maintains, “Like water, sexuality will find its way in—and out—no matter what boundaries are marshaled to police it” (p. 71). This epistemology of Black queerness neither privileges the individualistic paradigm of coming out of the closet nor concerns itself with visibility politics. It looks at Black queer particularities altered, shaped, and reinforced by their relational and communal ties (McCune, 2014). However, media industries mainstream representations of Black queerness in drama series and reality TV shows to make profits (e.g., Eguchi, Calafell et al., 2014; Eguchi, Files-Thompson et al., 2018). Mainstreaming is an ideological practice of middle-class whitewashing (e.g., Rudrow & Edgar, 2023; Yep & Elia, 2012). Doing so erases Black queer particularities “created from the scraps of one's life and grounded in a working-class epistemology” (Johnson, 2019, p. 71).

Still, social media offers alternative platforms to the legacy networks (Christian, 2018). Despite the structural constraints, social media distributes a wide variety of Black queer representations that may resonate with lived experiences of Black queer people (e.g., Johnson, 2016; Rudrow, 2023). This media landscape is a historical moment in which Michael & Anthony begins. As Johnson (2016) reminds us, “Technology has evolved so quickly that it has had an enormous impact on the ways queers enact desire” (p. 5). Yet, despite communication scholars (e.g., Eguchi & Calafell, 2023; Eguchi & Washington, 2016) having examined representations of interracial queer romance on the cable network Logo TV owned by Paramount Media Networks, queer politics of interracial dating remains overlooked. Thus, my reading of Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance contributes to the genealogy of queer of color critique interrogating how media representations of queer dating reify or resist a gay cultural logic of beauty standards, sexual racism, and desirability politics. Next, I discuss my method.

Method

I first watched Michael & Anthony's 228 videos available as of May, 1, 2023. These videos are categorized into the playlists such as vlogs, Q&As, challenges, pranks, and parodies. Because my focus is on the interracial aspects of Bowens and Pavano's queer romance, I selected and rewatched 87 vlogs and 4 Q&A episodes that represent their identities and relationships to let analytical themes emerge. However, most of the videos do not revolve around the interracial aspects of the couple. Here, I depend on queer of color critique to read between the lines. I attach high importance to how what is conveyed in the moment of Bowens and Pavano's digital co-performance itself reveals interracial aspects of their queer romance. Since queerness is stuck in the present moment that is toxic for queers (e.g., Chambers-Letson, 2018; Muñoz, 2009), unpacking the moments that gesture toward impossible possibilities of Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance requires attention. As I considered this paradox through the framework of queer of color critique, three themes—reconstructing masc/femme coupling trope, counteracting interraciality, and optimism (and pessimism)—emerged from this process.

To alter, shape, and reinforce these themes, I directed my attention to paratexts surrounding Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance. Literary theorist Gérard Genette (1997) introduced the concept of paratext as an additional, supplemental material surrounding the main text. According to Genette, “The paratext provides a kind of canal lock between the ideal and relatively immutable identity of the text and the empirical (sociohistorical) reality of the text's public” (p. 408). The paratext's functionality is to arrange what constitutes a text and how it is transacted to both potential and actual audiences, and to the public as a whole (Birke & Christ, 2013). The interpretations and circulations of meanings about a particular text reveal moments of how historical and existing power relations condition audience assumptions about and responses to it (e.g., Gray, 2008; McCoy, 2006). Brookey and Gray (2017) asserted that “paratexts are intrinsic parts of the text as social and cultural unit” (p. 102). Here, I followed Martin's assertion (2020) that “examining the image alone is no longer enough” (p. 70). Martin, who drew on D’Acci (2004), held scholars accountable that, when they study queer of color images, they must take into account media and cultural contexts in which the particular images and stories are produced. Thus, paying attention to paratexts, such as Tweets, Instagram posts, and news articles, surrounding Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance helped me to endorse the three themes that emerged from my reading mentioned earlier. Next, I present my analysis, with the selection of a few strong examples constituting each of the three themes.

Reconstructing Masc/Femme Coupling Trope

One of the identifiable themes around Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance emphasizes how queer people are forced to work around the heteronormative binary construct. Given the power structure of heteronormativity as a way of life, Michael & Anthony deploys the strategic reconstruction of the masc/femme coupling trope to produce images and stories of Bowens and Pavano's coupling dynamic. By strategic reconstruction, I mean how queer people disidentify with the heterosexualization of queerness to their advantage on the basis that there is nothing original to imitate to begin with.

Michael & Anthony's episode Our First Vlog – Night at the Gym (2017, October 11) begins with Bowens and Pavano's pre-entrance to a gym in New Providence, New Jersey. Bowens emphasizes that he does not usually condone filming while at the gym. Once they enter the gym, the camera focuses on Pavano beginning hamstring stretching. The next cut shows them doing two different workouts. Pavano, who carries the weight lift bar, is stretching. Bowens uses a 45-pound plate to work on his biceps and shoulders. The follow-up workout scenes exhibit similar dynamics. Pavano's workout is a buttocks exercise with stretching and jump squats. Bowens’ workout focuses on his upper body, including biceps, shoulders, and arms. After the last scene in the gym, they go out to eat in Union, New Jersey. When they enter the restaurant, Bowens opens and holds a door for Pavano. However, when they leave the restaurant, Pavano opens the door and walks out before Bowens.

The visual aesthetic of Bowens and Pavano with different body types, which is represented on the surface of this episode, can be read as an imitation of heterosexuality. The juxtaposition of Bowens’ mixed-race Black pro wrestler body with Pavano's toned white body frames Bowens as appearing more masculine and less feminine than Pavano. This perception is reinforced by Bowens’ workout menu focusing on his upper body as a sign of his athletic masculinity. This is in contrast to Pavano's workout menu which focuses on his lower body. The scenario of Bowens’ opening and holding a door for Pavano who enters the restaurant also supports the heteronormative masc/femme binary construct. To illustrate this, the Instagram post from @michaelpavano (2022, April 3) shares nine photo images of them attending the 33rd GLAAD ceremony. The post points to how Bowens wearing black suits with a black tie displays the classic masculine aesthetic in contrast to Pavano, whose facial makeup is recognizable. Pavano represents a youthful, attractive, effeminate queer male stereotype: twink.

However, Bowen's queerness complicates the reductive contempt of their masc/femme coupling trope as an imitation of heterosexuality. Had we not known Bowens’ queerness, he could easily pass as straight in our eyes. Hence, Bowens’ nuanced queerness ambiguously troubles the heteronormative imagining of Black hypermasculinity through which queerness is illegible in contemporary popular culture. Simultaneously, gay sexual cultures normalize the same-sex coupling trope masc for masc (Han, 2021). The vernacular means a masculine man who exclusively meets, dates, and has sex with another masculine man. Because a performative form of masculinity, known as the buffed-out gay Adonis (BOGA), is worshiped, this gay masculinist dating ideology implicates the devaluation of feminine and non-binary queer people (e.g., Johnson, 2003; Muñoz, 2009). Accordingly, queer media representations of a masculine man being intimate with an effeminate man are not quite as common as we may think (Eguchi & Calafell, 2023). In this context, Bowens’ queerness works as “a radical rescripting of the accepted performances of a heteronormative Black masculinity” (Neal, 2013, p. 4). Bowens being romantic with Pavano offers an alternative path toward reimagining racialized gender possibilities of masc for femme in gay sexual cultures where hypermasculinity is a social currency maintaining anti-femininity.

Michael & Anthony's episode Would You Rather (Dirty Couples Edition) (2021, December 6) also supports my reading of how Bowens and Pavano co-perform the strategic reconstruction of the masc/femme coupling trope. Toward the end of this episode, Bowens says that the last question for Pavano is something many viewers have been waiting to hear. Then Bowen asks, “So Michael, would you rather be a top [meaning anal sex penetrator] or bottom [meaning anal sex receiver]?” (6:14). Prior to this specific moment, the logic of sexual racism maintaining the colonial fantasy of Black male phallus has already organized the impression of Bowens being a masculine top and Pavano being a femme bottom. This racialized coupling trope is intensified by many previous Michael & Anthony's parodies. They imitate television scenes performed by celebrities and influencers and cast Bowens in a male role and Pavano in a female role. Take as an example, Pavano plays well-known media personality Kylie Jenner in their KYLIE + KARDASHIAN parodies. As a consequence, the visual rhetoric of these parodies working with the masc/femme coupling trope creates a façade of Pavano as more feminine and less masculine than Bowens. There is a take-for-granted impression of Pavano's feminized bottom role. That is why Bowens asks the specific question about sexual preference to Pavano in this episode. In response, Pavano strikes a pose and replies, “I…” (6:21). Then suddenly, this episode ends without Pavano offering a concrete answer.

Here, I argue that Would You Rather (Dirty Couples Edition) (2021, December 6) is quite queer. This episode's ending not only offers endless possibilities to imagine Pavano's preference to be a top or bottom. But it also troubles ongoing histories of sexual racism associated with the masc/femme coupling trope in which Bowens’ mixed-race Blackness is stereotyped as a masculine sign of phallus. Leaving ambiguity in Bowens and Pavano's sexual roles offers an alternative path to envision possibilities for interracial queer couples living outside the heteronormative binary construct. In doing so, Michael & Anthony's strategic reconstruction of the masc/femme coupling trope breaks through the anti-queer present moment.

Counteracting Interraciality

Another identifiable theme emerged from my reading points to the paradox, in which the interracial aspects of Bowens and Pavano's queer romance are sidelined from the couple's storyline. Michael & Anthony's content emphasizes Bowens and Pavano's individualism to market the queerness of the couple. This production technique suggests the operation of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. It overlooks the relational and communal significance of queer people of color in building collective resistances. Still, the couple's visual aesthetic is interracial. Hence, Michael & Anthony video content counteracts the interraciality of Bowens and Pavano's queer romance. By “counteract,” I mean a practice of postracialism that treats race as a matter of the past. The process of countering the interraciality of the couple marginalizes the particularities of Bowen's Black queer material realities and knowledge. Two videos, COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) and coming out (2021, January 3), exemplify my reading.

COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) focuses on Bowens rearticulating why he feels comfortable labeling himself as gay after his first coming out as bisexual. Bowens had become interested in “both genders” (2:45) toward the end of his high school years. However, because he was in the closet, he did not have a chance to explore the dynamic spectrum of queerness. The closet signifies Bowens’ proximity to what he thinks is the center of the LGBTQ+ community through which people generate in-depth understandings of queerness. After coming out as bisexual, he realized that he could no longer just be a pro wrestler. Media would frame him as a bisexual pro wrestler. Simultaneously, he began to feel disconnected from the term bisexual. Bowens said, “I’m picturing myself being with a man [Pavano] for the rest of my life. So the term bisexual just felt less and less me the more time went on” (3:58). Here, Bowens clarifies that his decision to label himself as gay does not stem from the disdain he feels about bisexuality. At this juncture Pavano, sitting next to Bowens, joins in the narration:

I could be technically bisexual. I could go out with a girl and I had fun with it. Does that make me bisexual? Should I come out as bisexual? I just don’t get it; like, labels piss me off personally. (4:33)

Pavano's articulation of “labels piss me off personally” points at the postracial practices of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement, suggesting the theoretical paradox of queerness. Because the central component of queer theorizing rejects labels as identity categories (Cohen, 1997), Pavano may be politically rejecting (or queering) the bounds of capitalism's compulsion toward sexual self-branding. However, queer people of color cannot easily abandon identity categories (Johnson, 2001). Due to ongoing histories of racism, sexism, classism, and capitalism, queer people of color find themselves recycling identity categories as platforms to cultivate shared dissatisfactions (Muñoz, 1999). Thus, Pavano's desire to dismantle labels points to the postracial erasures of relational and communal ties that play vital roles for queer people of color in organizing intersectional queer politics. Pavano's discursive erasure resecures the logic of sexual freedom. It works with the sanctity of individualism that obfuscates how differences matter. Still, Bowens and Pavano together advocate for suggesting all LGBTQ+ people are fighting for the same equality regardless of their differences in the same video. So I take a further step to question why Bowens and Pavano's co-articulation of LGBTQ+ people fighting for the same equality overlooks intersectional critiques of political struggles.

Bowen's tweet from @Bowens_Official for Mother's Day (2021, May 9) honors his Black mother and late Black grandmother with an old picture representing a younger Bowens with them on the couch. Here, it is important to keep in mind that the institutional legacy of the one-drop rule categorizes people with one Black ancestor like Bowens as Black. This tweet about Bowens’ mother and grandmother is juxtaposed with another of Bowens’ tweets where he comments, “On a scale of 1–10, how Italian is my dad?” (2019, June 16), with the old picture spotlighting his father sitting in the chair. These contrasting tweets allude to Bowens’ negotiation of queerness that can never be separated from his mixed-race Blackness. The multidimensional workings of anti-queerness, anti-blackness, and anti-miscegenation shape and reshape Bowens’ reality in which he is out and proud of being a gay pro wrestler. However, whiteness privileges Pavano's queerness. Pavano's negotiation of queerness is radically different from Bowens. That is why Ferguson (2019) reinforces that all LGBTQ+ people are not fighting for the same equality. Differences among LGBTQ+ people create diverse sets of queer political itineraries that are different from one another. Hence, COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) misses a critical moment for Bowens and Pavano to discuss the interracial aspects of their queer romance that reveal multidimensional concerns. Had they done so, it would have provided an excellent opportunity to consider impossible possibilities of interracial dating as a platform for forming anti-racist queer alliances.

Still, there remains a space to read how Bowens’ narration of shifting from bisexual to gay in COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) points to Bowens’ performance of mixed-race Blackness as a strategic ambiguity. It functions on and against the logic of postracialism. Joseph (2018) asserts that a strategic ambiguity calls “upon aspects of doublespeak, conflict-management, pragmatism, and code-switching” (p. 15). According to Bowens, the media has always marketed Bowens as a bisexual pro wrestler after his first coming out. Said differently, the media has not attempted to frame him as a mixed-race Black bisexual pro wrestler or bisexual pro wrestler of color. Because race is preferred to no longer be an institutional problem, this production technique is to marginalize the intersectional politics of race surrounding and emerging from Bowens’ negotiation of queerness. Whether identifying as currently gay or previously bisexual, Bowens’ queerness is framed as a major site of fighting for equality in the professional wresting industry. Bowens’ mixed-race Blackness remains pacified. This implicates how the media industry and production almost always require the mainstreaming of Black queer men to promote audience marketing (e.g., Eguchi et al., 2014, 2018; Rudrow, 2023; Rudrow & Edgar, 2023). Still, Bowens’ narration of how the media has scripted him as a bisexual pro wrestler works on and against the postracial technique. Bowens’ commentary alludes to how the media erases the intersection of Bowens’ queerness and mixed-race Blackness without him directly saying so. This is a textual product of Bowens’ performance of strategic ambiguity.

Then again, the juxtaposition of COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) described above to another episode, coming out (2021, January 3), contrasts Bowens’ coming out from straight to bisexual to gay with Pavano's coming out from gay to pansexual. This production technique distributes the liberal fashion of queerness as a symbol of individualism. In coming out (2021, January 3), Pavano comes out as pansexual after he has identified as gay. He says, “I can be attracted to men, women, transgender, non-binary. If I’m vibing with you, if you have a beautiful soul, then that's attractive to me” (1:18). Pavano rejects any categorical restrictions on his attractions to people. This is similar to his resistance toward labels boxing people expressed in the previously discussed video. By making it clear that “I am in a relationship with Anthony [Bowens]” (2:46), Pavano tells a story that he had the opportunity to explore his pansexuality before he met Bowens. Still, Pavano clarifies, “Nothing has or will ever change between the both of us; we’re not going anywhere” (3:50). Then Pavano concludes that “we all want the same thing, which is to love and be loved and that everyone is worthy of that love, no matter who they are or what they identify as” (4:14). Here, the paradigm of coming out is used to highlight the individualistic mobility and sexual freedom (McCune, 2014). COMING OUT…again (2019, January 1) showcases that Bowens is no longer bisexual and wants to be with Pavano forever. Becoming gay for Bowens is to practice his aspiration toward marriage equality. At the same time, coming out (2021, January 3) suggests Pavano's commitment to Bowens regardless of his pansexuality. Pavano's pansexuality is not only scripted as a fluid and dynamic fashion of queerness strengthening his love for Bowens, but it is also never a scandal breaking up their relationship. However, it is hard not to recognize how Bowens’ mixed-race Blackness and Pavano's whiteness remain marginalized from this storyline. This production technique implicates how Michael & Anthony subscribes to the postracial logic of individualism to produce its content.

I argue that Michael & Anthony's strategy to gain popularity is to counteract ongoing histories of sexual racism. The misrepresentation of Black male queerness, termed straight men who have sex with men, or men on the down low (DL), circulated in the popular media during the early 2000s (McCune, 2014; Snorton, 2014). Non-outness of Black male queerness, read as being in the closet, represents their sexual backwardness in the context of LGBTQ+ liberation movement as it concerns visibility politics. This racist perception worked with the prevention of transmitting sexual infections to women that emerged from the HIV/AIDS medical industry (Eguchi et al., 2014). However, this discourse ignored the intersectional particularities of Black male queerness (McCune, 2014). Given that homosexuality is stigmatized as a sign of effeminacy read as weakness (Johnson, 2003), Black men who combat anti-Black racism cannot easily be queer on the street (McCune, 2014; Snorton, 2014). The racialized and classed architecture of Black community and neighborhood, which normalizes a working-class heteronormative masculinity, requires performances of queerness that do not privilege the paradigm of coming out (Johnson, 2019). Still, the logic of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement advances the politics of outness as a sexual modernity. The content production of Michael & Anthony has profited from Bowen's visible performance and politics of coming out from straight to bi to gay. Hence, Michael & Anthony reinserts the individualistic paradigm of coming out as the core value of queerness that counteracts the racial differences between Bowens and Pavano. This production technique frames Bowens and Pavano as the interracial queer couple who climb their way up to the top in the age of postracialism where race is a matter of past.

Optimism (and Pessimism)

The last identifiable theme emerging from my close reading is the paradox of capitalism in which Michael & Anthony sells an optimistic outlook of queerness representing attractiveness and affluence. Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance is scripted to break through an oppressive system historically designed for queers. This narrative meets the expectation of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement that embraces the sanctity of individualism. Halberstam (2011) reminds, “Believing that success depends upon one's attitude is far preferable to Americans” (p. 3). However, I also find that Michael & Anthony's video content gestures toward the anti-queer present in which queers are almost always failing. Most queers are not privileged to be like Bowens and Pavano who are attractive and affluent. This is because “capitalism produces some people's success through other peoples’ failures” (Halberstam, 2011, p. 3). Hence, Michael & Anthony offer a paradoxical space to teach us how queerness is an ongoing interplay of tensions between optimism and pessimism.

Michael & Anthony's episode HE DID IT! AEW's First Gay Champion! (2022, September 26) features Bowens’ achievement of the All Elites Wrestling (AEW) world tag team championship under the group name of The Acclaim. This episode captures a moment in which Bowens tackles another fighter. Then, his wrestling partner Max Caster finishes him in front of the audience. Pavano and his family and Bowens’ family are watching this victory. The next cut showcases Pavano commenting at his family's house in New Jersey, “So we just got back and I’m still processing everything. It was kind of like a really surreal moment to be, like, with his [Bowens’] family and my family” (3:13). The comments from the YouTube subscribers reinforce how revolutionary it is for Bowens to break through the professional wrestling industry. Bowens’ tweet from @Bowens_Official (2022, September 22) highlights the sensation of Bowens being the first gay male champion as well. Bowens says, “When my Nana [his late Black grandmother] passed in 2015, I promised her I’d be a success. Nana, I made it!”

Anti-queer sentiments such as homophobia and transphobia are prevalent in the environments of contact, combat or fighting sports (Neal, 2013). Wrestling requires very close physical contact. It remains “one of the most homoerotic and homosocial forms of play and a common code in film and literature for same-sex attraction” (Johnson, 2019, p. 73). The body touching that misleads to sexual imagination can reify irrational fears of queers. This may be why openly queer identified athletes can rarely begin their professional careers in the contact sports industry built around the cisheteronormative assumptions of masculinity. Another Black gay male pro wrestler, Fred Rosser, formerly known as Darren Young, did not come out until summer 2013 in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) (Rogers, 2013, August 15). It is in this context that Deangelo (2022, September 22) writes that “[t]he journey for Bowens, who is AEW's first openly gay champion, has been memorable and historic.” Thus, Bowens breaking through the professional wrestling industry represents optimism for a future in which queers should no longer experience employment discrimination and harassment.

However, it is noteworthy to mention that multiple corporations invest in and capitalize on LGBTQ+ human rights as a part of their diversity mantra. The structural incorporations of hegemonic queerness cultivate markets where visual images of queerness are commodified into goods and services. And Bowens is an extremely attractive man. His physical appearance is marketable to begin with. Thus, Bowens’ wrestling career, which represents his social mobility and cultural capital, would have never emerged without the capitalistic investment in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement that privileges outness as a sexual modernity. The bounds of capitalism's compulsion toward sexual self-branding, which requires attractiveness, creates a path for Bowens to become the AEW's first mixed-race Black gay champion.

Similarly, various Michael & Anthony video content highlighting Bowens and Pavano's upward social mobility and cultural capital draws attention to the paradox of capitalism. Take as an example, Michael & Anthony's episode WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOME IN LOS ANGELES (2023, May 1), announces their first home purchase and their plan to renovate their rooftop. Because Bowens and Pavano could not produce more video content in recent days, Pavano says, “A lot of you [the channel audience] were asking if we were still even together. We are….” (4:45). Bowens jumps in, “Very much so. We’ll be seven years” (4:47). Then, after going back and forth about Pavano's desire to have a pet, Bowens and Pavano conclude this episode. Pavano states, “Thank you again for following our journey, staying subscribed, and being there for us since the twin bed in New Jersey” (7:47). The implication of Pavano's remark on “the twin bed in New Jersey” circles back to a few minutes prior in this episode, in which they talked about the new king bed they purchased for their home in Los Angeles. Bowens and Pavano being able to change from sleeping together on a twin bed to a king bed is an important reference to the couple's move from a smaller space in New Jersey to a bigger space in an expensive global metropolis. This episode centering on Bowens and Pavano's upward success reinserts the paradox of capitalism in which an optimistic outlook of queerness requires attractiveness and affluence.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic that deteriorated the U.S. economy, Bowens and Pavano became a queer influencer couple who have moved up the social ladder through their cultural capital and economic gain. Bowens and Pavano are extremely attractive according to the gay cultural logic of beauty standard. Their physical attractiveness helps them climb their way up to the top in media. Because the logic of homonationalism strategically incorporates “good” queers who are attractive and affluent cismales into the nation-state (Puar, 2007), Bowens and Pavano are privileged to perform as postracial queer subjects who excel beyond the anti-queer present that is toxic for queers. It is in this context that the queer media productions marginalize poor and ugly queers in the representational hierarchy. However, Bowens and Pavano may easily fall out of the “good” queer position as well. The historical Black man's compulsive hypersexual stereotype may produce racist suspicions around Bowens’ queerness. Pavano is openly pansexual, attracted to what he finds attractive. Thus, Bowens and Pavano may be framed as promiscuous queers who are harmful to the cisheteronormative society at any time. Still, the visual rhetoric of Bowens being in a monogamous relationship with Pavano minimizes such an outlook for the couple. This underlying implication is how Michael & Anthony works with the paradox of capitalism in which queerness cannot be simply optimistic.

Conclusion(s)

In this essay, I have attempted to unpack how the interracial aspects of Bowens and Pavano's romance represented in Michael & Anthony offer moments to reconsider queer politics of interracial dating. Specifically, Michael & Anthony's reconstruction of the masc/femme coupling trope works on and against the heteronormative binary construct to its advantage. However, Bowens and Pavano's digital co-performances of queerness counteract their racial differences. Doing so perpetuates the strategic working of postracialism to endorse the sanctity of individualism as an ideal social norm. Hence, Bowens and Pavano carry out the paradox of capitalism in which an optimistic outlook of queerness requires attractiveness and affluence. The major point of my analysis is that the logic of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement organizes the business-as-usual production of media content representing Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance. Because the LGBTQ+ liberation movement marginalizes intersectional critiques of political struggles (Ferguson, 2019), queers are not yet allowed to be truly (intersectional) queers even on a social media platform like YouTube.

However, this essay is clearly a product of how I perform queer of color critique to read Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance from my standpoint. The limitation of this essay is how my analysis originates from my body as a central platform of knowing about media, culture, and communication. Despite being a fan of the couple, I recognize impending reactions from the readers to my analysis of the couple as bitter and harsh. I also acknowledge that there remain many ways to analyze the representations of Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance. Moreover, Michael & Anthony is one of many queer romantic contents available online. The singular reading of Michael & Anthony as a case study is not meant to generalize patterns of interracial queer dating and its politics either. Hence, this essay is to create an additional step toward building queer of color research on interracial queer dating.

Still, the significance of my analysis is to value Michael & Anthony as the queer romantic content offering moments of transgression. Given the examples I have shared in this essay, some readers may wonder if Michael & Anthony disrupts the power dynamics associated with gay sexual cultures. Or they may not see how Bowen's mixed-race Black queerness troubles the connections among queerness, postracialism, and capitalism. However, the present moment is toxic for queers, and, particularly, queers of color (Muñoz, 2009). They are trying to recycle and reclaim the majoritarian codes of belonging to flip their disempowered narratives. As Johnson (2019) shows, Black queerness is a makeshift epistemology maneuvering the intersectional workings of unequal power relations that police it. Thus, dismissing possibilities of Michael & Anthony goes against the intersectional queer politics, embracing the nuanced modes of disidentification with the normative cultural logic. Therefore, this essay adds to queer of color examinations of how mainstreamed representations of Black queerness and its interracial dating suggest impossible possibilities of queerness as a brief moment of transgression.

I end this essay by reiterating that Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance remains transgressive in the anti-queer present moment. In March 2022, Florida's state senate passed a ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, prohibiting classroom instruction and discussions about LGBTQ+ content from kindergarten to third grade. This political move gaslights controversial debates about freedom and human rights. Even when the nation-state benefits from depoliticized gay liberation as a nationalist ideology to maintain the image of its exceptionalism (Puar, 2007), LGBTQ+ rights are always under attack. While the LGBTQ+ liberation movement always requires questions and critiques, it also offers a space of paradox in which open discussions and dialogues about certain kinds of LGBTQ+ issues and concerns are possible. What we have now may be precarious in the open re-ascendance of white supremacy and conservatism that discriminates against LGBTQ+ people. It is in this context that Bowens and Pavano's interracial queer romance provides an additional moment of queer (im)possibility. Differences should never prevent queer people from falling in love with one another. Thus, queers must act up even when what they do is imperfect.