This is my first trip to Vegas since coming out as trans and it's weird to notice how truly queer it isn't. Outside of a mirror I haven't seen anyone I would clock as visibly queer. It tries to wear a counter-culture veneer while avoiding being actually transgressive in the slightest. As a slutty glutton who loves the desert, I still have some affinity for what's been built here, but it is absolutely a cishet playground. Which is weird to reconcile given how much my earlier visits helped me figure out a sexuality and gender stuff.
I described it elsewhere as a city-sized Spencer's Gifts and I think that's accurate to one aspect of it but also doesn't touch on the side of it that's trying to be some illusion of wish fulfillment. You either get to pretend to be a caricature of idle wealth or some debauched hedonist for a few days. It has a lot of echoes to mainstream comics to me where everything is designed around male power fantasies, it just becomes aggressive to outsiders who struggle to see themselves in the content, or are actively discouraged from doing so. Vegas wants Certain People to be comfortable. If I had to generalize, that being American conservatives and Chinese tourists. Anyone can still enjoy those comics, or come to Vegas and have a good time, but you can rapidly become aware of how For You it isn't. And while comics are getting better about this in recent decades, it feels like Vegas is only becoming moreso some homogenous state of Safe Excess for the straights.
The food, however, remains Very Good.
